April Wrap Up: What We're Reading

Here at the Good Project, we have been zooming, emailing, and Google Doc sharing our way through the first month of this “new normal.” Between research and writing, we try to take time to share-out articles and reports with one another related to our own work and the work of partners and colleagues in the field. 

Here are five reads you might enjoy as well: (link in title)

1.  New Report: Character in the Professions: How Virtue Informs Practice

The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues recently released a new article on character and the professions. The paper examines tensions between following prescribed guidelines (i. e. professional codes of conduct) vs. one’s own autonomous judgments. In making on-the-spot decisions, do professionals fall back on virtue-based or rule-based reasoning? 

2. The Financial Fallout of COVID-19: Business as Usual?

We are all making tough choices about how we can do our part in response to the novel coronavirus. In this blog post, The Good Project’s own Danny Mucinskas reacts to an ethical dilemma many landlords and tenants are facing during these times of uncertainty.

3. Craft a Career That Reflects Your Character

Have you heard the chatter about “job crafting”? Our neighbors from across the river at HBS have been noodling over ways to take the reins of your career in an effort to encourage your best self. 

4.  How Can We Stop Prejudice in a Pandemic?

We’ve all heard the devastating stories of racially motivated attacks during the start of the coronavirus outbreak. The Greater Good Science Center takes their coverage a step further and asks why this happens and what leaders can do to stop prejudice and panic. 

5.  Called to Action

When we self-isolate and practice physical distance, our world can feel like it’s shrinking. How do you remind yourself of whom or what you feel most responsible? Let’s not forget the rings of responsibility that extend beyond our nuclear families. Danielle Allen’s team at Harvard offers strategies and approaches to encourage a civic mindset in students despite the pandemic lock-down. 

What are you reading these days?  Please let us know!  And, on behalf of The Good Project, please stay home, stay safe, and stay well. 

Take care,

Kirsten McHugh

Do family ties equal tied values?

by Shelby Clark, The Good Project researcher

In this moment of extreme polarization in much of our country, it is helpful to find ways to find common ground while also acknowledging and examining the differences amongst us.

To that end, I thought it would be instructive to explore the commonalities and contrasts between myself and a close family member-- by making use of two of the Good Project’s most common tasks, the Value Sort[1] and an ethical dilemma. Although we are both registered “independents,” we certainly would be classified on different ends of the political spectrum; indeed, I proudly voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, while my more conservative family member (let’s call him Ray) cast his vote for Donald Trump. We have similarly disagreed on and off over the course of my life regarding several traditional American controversies (e.g. gun rights, the role of government, the level of taxes for the wealthy).

The Good Project Value Sort presents an individual with 30 different values such as fame/success, power, honesty and “the common good”, and asks the participant to first choose their top 10 values, from which they will narrow these choices down to their top four values. The participant is then asked to do the same regarding their top 10 lowest values, and then to choose their top four lowest values. So how did Ray and I score? Did we share similarities despite our political differences? Or, alternatively, are our values polarized due to our politics?

An outsider might have expected our results to be polar opposites given basic knowledge of our political lives, yet our Value Sort results help to shed light on the nuances of identity. Ray and I shared two of our top four values and also shared two of our bottom four values. For the top, we both ranked hard work and commitment as well as self-examination and self-understanding as two of our top four. For the bottom, we both ranked efficient work habits and fame/success as two of our choices. Our reasonings were also quite similar. For example, regarding putting efficiency in the bottom four, we both argued for the importance of going slow and deliberately regarding your work sometimes. As Ray noted, “It’s like Thomas Edison said, he didn’t discover electricity, he discovered 4,000 ways that it didn’t work. If he was efficient, he wouldn’t have taken all the time not to try those other 4,000, he would have just waited till he figured it out.” We also both thought self-examination and self-understanding is important in terms of remembering where one “comes from” and how that impacts one’s interaction with the world. Given my many interactions with Ray over the course of my life, it is perhaps not surprising that some of his life views have influenced me, political party notwithstanding.

We also found that we had differences, though. I ranked curiosity and social concerns and pursuing the common good as the other two top values of my top four-- perhaps not surprising for an academic who studied curiosity for her graduate studies and who works on encouraging character development in adolescents. Ray, on the other hand, ranked rewarding and supportive relationships and personal growth and learning-- also perhaps not surprising for a self-made and educated man who works in a relationships oriented industry.  For the bottom values, I ranked faith and spirituality as my other bottom two values, whereas Ray ranked power/influence and solitude/contemplation.

We, at the Good Project, often pair our Value Sort task with our dilemma tasks as we’re interested to see how individuals’ values do or do not influence the ways in which people think about and interpret dilemmas. I asked Ray to think about our “Money Matters” dilemma, printed below, as I was interested to see whether or not we’d think about it differently.

Money Matters. Felicia is the twenty-eight-year-old founder of a national nonprofit organization that works with schools, families, and volunteers to help create safe schools and communities. Some years ago, Felicia needed to raise money quickly. She talked with a potential funder about doing a challenge grant: if Felicia could raise $20,000 from other sources, this funder would give her an additional $20,000. Felicia and her coworkers at the nonprofit sent in a proposal, and then raised $20,000 from other sources under the premise of the challenge grant. Then the funder who had offered the challenge grant called to say that she had “changed her mind.” Felicia was faced with an ethical decision: should she tell the other funders the challenge grant had been reneged on, or should she keep quiet and keep the money?

Ray looked at the dilemma before completing the Value Sort and says that completing the Value Sort did not change his decision-- he knew what he would advise Felicia right away, saying he encounters decisions like this all the time in his work. Ray notes that Felicia “absolutely has to tell [the other funders]” noting that she can “call and say this is what happened” and tell the funders that she made a “sincere effort and had the commitment” but that she had “no control and the person reneged.” Ray emphasized that Felicia should emphasize that she could “still do some decent work” with the money but that she has to give the funders “the option” to take back their money. When describing his reasoning, Ray noted that “in this day and age, it would get out [that Felicia kept the money]” and says that Felicia “could never raise money again...nobody would listen to her again...she’d be shooting herself in the foot.”

When asked if the amount of money made a difference-- say if it were a million dollars rather than $20,000, Ray didn’t change his mind, noting that Felicia should be prepared with data to argue why she could do good with the money, but that the funders should have the right to take back the their contributions. He noted, “I’d go to them each individually...go to them personally...say I’m here because the situation has drastically changed...be prepared with data, what I could do with a million dollars…. [but] they have a right to take it back, it’s up to them.”

For me, my answer was perhaps not as nuanced as Ray’s-- I simply said it was wrong for her not to tell the funders even if she could perhaps do good with the $20,000 that the funders could take back. I simply don’t wish to promote a world where more people are lying and dishonest with one another, as I ultimately don’t think that leads to a good society.

For both Ray and me, you can see how our top values are infused in our responses to the dilemmas. For Ray, one of his top values is rewarding and supportive relationships. Much of his response to Felicia’s dilemma is focused on how to maintain a trusting and supportive relationship between funders and fundee; indeed, he notes that without telling the funders Felicia will never be trusted again by future funders. He further notes that if he were Felicia he would go individually and personally to each and every funder to describe the situation to them, and, perhaps, further garner their support. Again, such actions could be a result of Ray’s focus on deliberately cultivating and maintaining supportive relationships in one’s life. Meanwhile, one of my top values is social concerns and pursuing the common good. This value might be seen in my very deontological and “duty bound” answer to this dilemma-- for me there is a right and wrong response to this dilemma, where the right answer is to be honest to your funders because I believe a poor society is one where everyone is dishonest and lies to one another. For me, Felicia can support the common good by modeling honesty for all.

Despite supporting different political agendas, Ray and I share many values and ultimately came to the same decision regarding the Money Matters dilemma. What might account, then, for our differences in political views? Perhaps, as psychologist Jonathan Haidt has argued in his moral foundations theory, conservatives and liberals may value similar things but may give different orders of preference to those values. Haidt’s research has found that American liberals tend to particularly value two of the five moral foundations (care and fairness) whereas American conservatives tend to value all five moral foundations (fairness, care, loyalty, sanctity, and authority). Thus, it may be that Ray and I both value hard work and commitment, but when it comes to choosing for our country, different patterns of values for each of us might prevail.

Perhaps more importantly-- Ray and I both left this conversation feeling like we had learned a little more about each other, what we value, and how we think about things, which is our main hope for these tools. How might you use these tools in your own life or classroom? Do you think there are some decisions in your life that your values impact more than others? Do some of your values impact some decisions and some impact other decisions? What pattern do you see?

[1] Originally designed by Jeanne Nakamura

The Financial Fallout of COVID-19: Business as Usual?

by Danny Mucinskas, The Good Project researcher

City of Boston

The COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the globe has had detrimental effects on many aspects of modern society. The primary concern is naturally the toll that the virus is having on human life and national healthcare systems, which many governments have attempted to ameliorate by enacting unprecedented lockdown measures and social distancing guidelines. 

In addition, the crisis has also been wreaking havoc on the economy: stock markets have become volatile, businesses have lost revenue, and unemployment claims have hit record highs. The financial instability has caused many people to face dilemmas related to doing excellent, ethical, and engaging work at a time of intense stress. For example, employers have had to lay off valued and loyal employees; essential workers daily weigh the risks to their health as they report to their jobs; and vast numbers of people are now figuring out how to deliver services online that were formerly conducted in-person. Needless to say, these are challenging times for doing “good work.”

In the Boston area, small businesses have been especially hard hit by the loss of customer revenue as Massachusetts has been in a state of quarantine for a month. The Boston Globe reports on April 8 that a group of vendors with leases in the landmark Faneuil Hall marketplace has appealed to the real estate company that acts as its landlord for an extension on their rent payments. Despite the circumstances, the landlord has responded that the tenants are still required to pay their rents on time and should take advantage of government programs if they are unable to do so on their own.

What does it mean to do “good work” in this situation, for both the tenants and the landlord? How can both sides uphold their responsibilities to one another, in formal and informal ways?

In “normal” times, the formal working relationship between tenant and landlord comes along with responsibilities that fall under the umbrella of The Good Project’s concept of the “ethics of roles.” Those in the role of tenants are expected to pay their rents on time and fulfill the terms and conditions of their leases. On the other hand, landlords normally fulfill their role by collecting rent, holding tenants accountable, and maintaining their properties accordingly.

However, as American society faces the first true pandemic in a century, tenants and landlords may have to recalibrate their formal contracts with one another for a period, as others in different working roles have already done. For example, medical professionals who would normally require patients to visit their offices have begun conducting remote appointments; retail operations have instituted new rules about store capacity and hours; and companies like Amazon that pride themselves on fast delivery have prioritized the shipping of crucial materials, resulting in delays on other orders. Despite the set of assumptions under which we usually operate in our work, sometimes adjustments are advisable or necessary, given mass events beyond anyone’s control.

In the case of Faneuil Hall, the tenants, most of whom are small business owners, are not currently able to fulfill their leases by paying rent on time, given the downturn in customers. Yet they have not simply defaulted or refused to pay but instead appealed for a reprieve, asking for the real estate company to temporarily adjust expectations for the period of the crisis.

Unfortunately, the real estate company’s representatives have demonstrated that they are not at all thinking differently about their relations with tenants during this time, expecting the literal terms of their agreements to be respected as they would be during “normal” times. The landlord effectively rejected the tenants’ requests. How can the disconnect be bridged?

One way to broaden perspectives is to think not just about what landlords and tenants should expect of one another during normal times to satisfy their respective “ethics of roles” but also to consider what it means to be a “good citizen” of a community and show “neighborly morality” to others (think of the Golden Rule as one example). 

The Good Project’s rings of responsibility are one tool to guide decision-making in tricky situations. As the rings show, wider responsibility means not only prioritizing oneself, a contract (such as a lease agreement), or one’s institution (such as a real estate company), but ultimately entails a responsibility to the communities and societies in which one participates. 

Given the wider lens, my belief is that the real estate company should not just seek to act in the normal role of landlord, given the disruptions that COVID-19 has wrought on the economy. A better way to approach the dispute would be to demonstrate a responsibility to the tenants as mutual members of a business community and as fellow “good citizens” of the city and country.

For example, the real estate company’s representatives could at least come to the table with more information about why a rent extension is impossible (perhaps they are in dire financial straits themselves or would not be able to carry out other responsibilities to other properties without the income). Instead of outright rejecting the tenants’ proposal, the landlord could have also proposed another solution to assist tenants with their leases.

“Good work” can still be carried out in the era of COVID-19 and in other challenging circumstances in the future, but it requires openness, honesty, and a commitment to making choices that take into account long-term social and community benefits, not just short-term gains or consequences. I hope that the landlord will ultimately make decisions that uphold both “good work” and demonstrate a responsibility and understanding of the circumstances of others, which may help ease the return to “normal” and “business as usual” for all of us.

Purpose and “Good Work” in Brazil: An Interview with Ulisses Araujo and Valeria Arantes

University of São Paulo, Brazil

Over the past decade, our colleagues Ulisses Araujo and Valeria Arantes, professors at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, have been researching the meaning of “purpose” in Brazil. This year, Ulisses and Valeria are visiting scholars at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, further exploring how their work intersects with The Good Project’s theories of “good work” and professionalism.

We spoke with Ulisses and Valeria about the latest developments in their research, their forthcoming book on educator practices, and their continued commitment to helping students and educators discover and explore their purpose.

Below, we have released an edited Q&A based on our conversation.

Q: Please take a moment to introduce and provide an overview of your work.

Ulisses: I am a full Professor at the University of São Paulo. I work at the Schools of Education, and of Arts, Sciences, and Humanities. I think of myself as a pedagogue. I am also President of the Association of Problem-Based Learning and Active Learning Methodologies.

Valeria: I am an Associate Professor at the School of Education at the University of São Paulo. I work more with the role of emotion in purpose, and my students and I investigate the way people relate their purpose to their goals, obstacles, and feelings. We are trying to understand reason, but also how people feel about their purpose.

Ulisses: In the past, we have twice worked in residence at the University of Barcelona in Spain. In 2008, we were in residence at Stanford, where we worked with Bill Damon and Anne Colby on the topic of purpose. We began doing some research in Brazil related to purpose, using previously created instruments on purpose but adapting them to the Brazilian social context, and interviewing over 2000 people across 12 years. We found that participants’ ideas of their “purpose” fell into six categories:

• fragile (lack of concrete direction);

• idealized (aspirational but unrealistic, with no path to achievement);

• family-oriented (connecting ambitions to family outcomes, e.g., “I’m going to become a businessperson to earn money to help my family”);

• work-oriented (focused on professional goals);

• desire for economic stability (focused on money/resources); and

• altruist (selfless acts of help for others).

Q: Tell us about the book you have recently written.

Ulisses: Our book Life Project: Psychological Foundations, Ethics, and Educational Implications will be published May 2020. In this book, we talk about the history of purpose, or “life project” as it is translated in Portuguese, in positive psychology. We describe how a “life project” (or purpose) is internalized by the self, psychologically.

Valeria: We worked with other scholars to explore how values, beliefs, and feelings also guide purpose development. The main goal of the book, though, is to provide insight about how to incorporate what we know about purpose formation into teacher professional development and classroom practice.

Q: How does your book and recent work connect to The Good Project?

Ulisses: For a teacher to support their students and the development of purpose, they must be “good teachers.” We believe that for teachers to be good teachers, they must embody the “three Es” outlined by The Good Project: excellence, ethics, and engagement.

There are three dimensions to purpose: personal, social, and professional. We want teachers to help students develop purpose in these areas, but we also believe teachers need to have their own defined sense of purpose. Teachers need to reflect on their “life project” and decide how their own personal purpose as an educator connects with the social world (or, as Bill Damon puts it, the world beyond the self).

Q: How can educators make sure they are helping students develop purpose in their classrooms?

Ulisses: We utilize active learning methods with teachers with whom we work. Active learning methods place the activity of the student at the center of pedagogy, including strategies like project-based learning, design-thinking, and conflict resolution. Because we want students to build their own “life project” or purpose, we try to help students think through realistic situations where they have the possibility to experience different kinds of perspectives.

Valeria: As a concrete example, we have used conflict resolution in the form of ethical conundrums to help students understand that there are many different ways to resolve a dilemma, and not necessarily one right and one wrong way to do things. The ways we might choose to solve a conundrum relate to our sense of purpose and identity. We also use concept maps to help students reflect on what it means to be “good.” We ask questions like, “What makes a good teacher? What is a good life project?”

Q: Why is having a sense of mission/purpose important?

Valeria: When we interviewed students, we find that they talk about happiness, satisfaction, and self-accomplishment. It’s important to integrate these different dimensions, and we find that purpose plays a role here.

Ulisses: We are also trying to understand how values become part of identity from both a pedagogical perspective and a psychological perspective. Our ultimate goal is to help shape “good” people who do good for others. When we ask the question, “What makes a good person, and how can I be good?”, we need to know how people form and integrate their values and beliefs, and in an ethical manner. We want to encourage “goodness” in personal, social, and professional dimensions, and a truly “good” purpose is one that impacts the world beyond the self in positive ways, which is important for a well-functioning and healthy society.

---

You can learn more about the work that Ulisses and Valeria are doing related to The Good Project in Brazil at this website: http://www.thegoodprojectbrasil.org/

Teaching about Genocide and Atrocity Prevention: Challenges faced by Educators

By Anne Burt and Lynn Barendsen

With thanks to our funders: The Argosy Foundation, Eiichiro and Yumi Kuwana, and The Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

January 27, 2020, marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, commemorated in the United States and other nations with national media coverage and events in many cities. Yet despite continued awareness of the Holocaust among many older Americans, a 2018 national survey found that two-thirds of American millennials could not identify what Auschwitz is, and 22 percent had not heard of the Holocaust, or were not sure whether they had heard of it. The study defined millennials as adults ages 18-34, and was commissioned by The Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. As reported in The New York Times, the study involved 1,350 American adults interviewed by phone or online, and millennials were 31 percent of the sample.

This important finding places educators who are trying to tackle the already difficult topics of the Holocaust and atrocity prevention in an especially tough position. In terms that we have been using, teachers who are trying to do Good Work (defined as work that is excellent, ethical and engaging) are facing challenges on multiple fronts. Few have the time or the resources for the professional development opportunities currently offered by institutions such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, or by excellent education organizations such as Echoes and Reflections, Facing History and Ourselves, and the USC Shoah Project. In fact, many institutions don’t even have the capacity to bring students to visit local museums, let alone to national museums requiring travel and lodging. Teachers struggle with ethical challenges in the classroom, trying to tackle these topics but fearful of not doing so well. As a result, some avoid teaching these topics altogether. Those teachers who do try to address these subjects on their own report feeling isolated, wishing they had a network of peers and mentors they could turn to for help. Without time and resources for professional development, these teachers’ options are limited, putting them at risk of abandoning the struggle to teach difficult topics altogether.

For the past year, we have been working with The Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide (CPG) at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. Our charge: to research how the Museum might help emerging adults make meaningful links among the Holocaust, contemporary atrocities, and their lives today. Additionally, we are trying to understand not only the challenges teachers face in trying to do good work, but also the challenges encountered when they teach about the models of bad work.

CPG leads the Museum’s genocide prevention efforts through conducting research and documentation in countries where people are at high risk for genocide and other atrocities. Staff members work with policy makers, create exhibitions, public programs, and online resources, and, through CPG’s Early Warning Project, help governments and nonprofits take action before violence escalates. Our specific assignment: to conduct research on secondary school educators’ interest in, and barriers to, teaching their students about contemporary instances of genocide and atrocities alongside teaching about the Holocaust. The long term goal is to help CPG develop a generation of teachers and students who are willing and prepared to view atrocity prevention as a priority. Additionally, CPG hopes to empower this generation with knowledge so that they will be in a position to take action.

For the first stage of this research, we developed a broad educator survey, held in-depth educator interviews, and conducted a landscape analysis of existing programs and resources on contemporary instances of genocide and atrocities for secondary school teachers. In this post we highlight notable issues uncovered thus far.

We began our research with an online survey, sent via email to a combination of educators who have experienced the Museum’s current professional development opportunities, educators who have inquired about the Museum’s professional development, and a broad list of US-based secondary school teachers not known to be connected to the Museum. 366 responses to the survey were received.

In brief, analysis of the survey results shows that teachers identified the following needs as most pressing, in order from most frequently mentioned to least frequently mentioned:

1) resources to teach contemporary genocide and atrocity prevention

2) resources that save time

3) resources that are flexible

4) resources that alleviate isolation and financial constraints

5) resources to combat resistance to teaching these topics

Respondents to the survey who indicated that they would be willing to be interviewed to help the Museum delve deeper into survey findings were selected for telephone interviews. Respondents were chosen to represent a range of demographics: geography, race, ethnicity, subject matter taught, length of time teaching, whether or not they were recipients of the Museum’s professional development. The interviews reinforced the survey findings and allowed us to delve more deeply into key themes.

First, we will discuss the issues presented by those who are currently teaching the Holocaust and contemporary genocide; then we will turn to the themes presented by those who are not currently teaching these topics.

Educators currently teaching the Holocaust and contemporary genocide

Themes that emerged from these interviews focused on why teaching these subjects matter to them. We learned that teachers hope to make historical events real for their students and to help students relate to survivors. Many educators’ goals can be framed within the larger category of creating empathy; by doing so, they are able to help their students make connections, both to history and to those who have survived genocide. Even within our small interview sample, however, teachers grappled with both the positive and negative consequences of trying to create empathy.

Pros and Cons of Creating Empathy

Some educators explained that they want students to believe they can do something to stop these events, that they have power, and that they should try to make a difference. Others explained that they hoped their students would become kinder, more empathetic individuals as a result of studying these events. However, one respondent, a social studies teacher from a public school in Tennessee, voiced concern that a focus on emotion and feeling can be overwhelming: “… we’re trying to have students feel too much…empathy. They can come away with the impression that the world is bad, people are terrible”.

By contrast, another educator who teaches world history in a public school in South Carolina, said he hoped to make students uncomfortable by pointing to the complexities involved in studying historical events, that he hoped they would “come away from this with having more questions than answers.”

Numerous teachers mentioned that they want their students to be able to recognize warning signs in order to help prevent future genocide. A global studies public school teacher based outside of Seattle, Washington, hoped to contextualize current events both around the world and in the U.S. for his students:

We should be progressing as a society and in fact it’s just getting worse. Numbers, statistics, surveys – how little people know about the Holocaust. It feels as though the same attitudes are pervasive again. History repeating itself – I worry that it’s a realistic possibility. Modern atrocities happen. Could it happen in a modern country? Things happen in developing nations; I don’t actually know that it’s going to be exclusive to those….

Another educator– an English Language Arts teacher from Washington, D.C. who has taught in both private and public schools — qualified this notion:

We shouldn’t burden our students with this huge responsibility – [it’s] not just on them and that’s not fair. I want my students to feel that they have agency, their voice matters, absolutely, but I tend to do that more at a local level. True change can happen right in front of you.

Yet another example points to the fact that reactions to studying the Holocaust, or to meeting survivors, vary greatly based on the students’ life experiences. This educator works primarily with public high school students in rural Texas who are in the custody of Child Protective Services (provided to children who are at risk of or are experience physical, sexual or emotional abuse). In relating the experience of inviting a Holocaust survivor to talk with his students, he described a particularly poignant connection, and thereby message, his students received:

[The students] had been through some horrific stuff, abuse, mostly from family. I brought a Holocaust survivor in to speak to them…The way he connected with them – I mean, they heard all the horrible stuff, but it was like, to them, nobody understands the horrible stuff I’ve been through and I’m not going to ever be anything. And here’s someone who’s been through horrible stuff who’s done something with his life, ‘If he can do it, I can do it.’

Educators not currently teaching the Holocaust and contemporary genocide

Among those educators who do not teach about the Holocaust, contemporary genocide or atrocities with any depth or regularity, a few themes emerged: resistance from students, families, or administrators, or teachers themselves being concerned about “getting it wrong.” Teachers indicated that they feel isolated and without the support they need to manage these difficult subjects, especially because they do not have time or resources for professional development or even to bring their students to a museum.

Resistance

One educator, a social studies teacher from North Carolina, addressed the resistance to these subjects she encountered from her students:

Particularly in our area, people have come to accept hate. That sounds really harsh, but things that they see on TV, they don’t recognize the people who are being shot, or beaten. They don’t see them as people, almost as though they’ve been demonized already. [I can hear evidence of their] Families’ closemindedness, saying the press is fake, facts aren’t facts.

Lack of Time to Create New Units

An English Language Arts teacher from a public high school in Michigan described the barrier she faced due to diminishing support from schools for teacher professional development:

A unit that could take 12 hours to plan ends up taking 50 hours to plan, and when you have 5 classes to plan, that’s not ideal. There are schools that will give teachers PD time, or days, to create new units. But most of the schools around here won’t do that anymore. So there’s no curriculum time. That’s all on your own time. So if you’re creating from a documentary, or whatever, and you have to start from scratch and try to fill all the holes and tie into something else, it doesn’t always work. It’s not as cohesive.

Getting it wrong

Another teacher from a dense urban area of Texas gave voice to many of his colleagues’ fears of teaching difficult subjects:

As a US History teacher, I’m African American, and we talk about the last section of US history that we cover (Civil War, Reconstruction) there are SO many who don’t cover slavery, reconstruction, civil war with fidelity because “it makes me feel uncomfortable”. I can see this happening as well with the Holocaust…It doesn’t mean that you have all the answers, but you can’t gloss over the hard stuff.

* * *

In our Good Project research, conducted two decades ago, educators were among the “Caring” Professions we investigated. These were individuals who worked directly on behalf of others, including, for example, those involved in the medical professions. We learned that educators were especially vulnerable in terms of burnout. To summarize, without the support of peers or institutions, they often found it difficult to stay engaged. Although many found meaning in their work with students, maintaining their commitment to that work over time became increasingly difficult without a shared mission or sense of purpose.

Using this frame to understand our research involving contemporary educators, we can confirm that many of them feel vulnerable. Of all the survey respondents, 53 percent answered “yes” when asked if their students raise questions about recent or current instances of genocide or atrocities in the classroom. Overall findings from the survey and interviews showed that teachers want to be able to address these questions but either lack resources, awareness of resources, or resources they can realistically integrate into their classrooms based on constraints such as time and requirements.

As much as educators expressed a need for resources, they also expressed real fears about their own lack of knowledge. Many don’t feel ready to search for curricula or for extensive professional development: first, they’re seeking straightforward resources from a trusted source, even before beginning to tackle the creation of lesson plans. Teachers are looking for help with their own basic understanding because they are being asked tough questions by their students about the world today, whether educators teach instances of genocide or not.

While we didn’t survey students directly, we did survey educators about the kinds of student questions they found most challenging. Perhaps not surprisingly, educators reported that they found students’ existential questions about humanity’s capacity for genocide and atrocities difficult to answer. However, we were equally struck by the many teachers who reported that it was difficult for them to answer when students asked questions such as: “What is genocide?” or “Did the Holocaust really happen?” or “Why should I care?”

With the general population’s awareness of the Holocaust lower among millennials than older generations, we cannot simply assume that new teachers, most of whom are themselves millennials, will come to classroom teaching with knowledge of the Holocaust. Without access to broad, basic, introductory opportunities to make these connections themselves they cannot be expected to teach their students how to make meaningful connections to contemporary atrocities. It is our hope that this research will provide a useful foundation for the Center for the Prevention of Genocide to help both teachers and students turn the alienating question of “Why should I care?” into the shared mission of “I want – and need – to know more.”

Anne Burt is a consultant specializing in projects at the intersection of public engagement, communications, education, and the arts & humanities. From 2012-2018, she was Chief Communications Officer, then Chief Creative Officer, for the nonprofit organization Facing History and Ourselves. She teaches graduate courses in communications and marketing for Columbia University’s Nonprofit Management Program.

Lynn Barendsen is a Project Director at Project Zero, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Since 1996, she has been part of the Good Project, an effort to identify individuals and institutions that exemplify good work – work that is excellent in quality, socially responsible, and meaningful to its practitioners – and to determine how best to increase the incidence of good work in our society.