Great Minds Think Alike

I will come right back to my ideas about what should go in the three categories for an educated student (knowledge, skills, and character). But first, check out this commentary by Howard Gardner at Education Week. He starts his discussion from a very similar premise: imagine what your students will be like when they finish school. He also suggests three categories that we should be looking at when we answer that question, which he calls the three E's: excellence, engagement, ethics. Gardner's thoughts on how the nation's different school systems--the inner city, the working class heartland, and the suburban elite--all fall short in one of these categories is an interesting way to frame the problem. As a teacher in the third kind of school, I will be coming back to the question of teaching ethical behavior frequently in this blog.