School Helps Kids Learn Virtue Reality Program Based Entirely On Ancient Values Of Fortitude, Justice, Temperance, Prudence

There is nothing random about the acts of kindness at the Benjamin Franklin Classical Charter School. Or the acts of fortitude, prudence, humility, or obedience - which happens to be this week’s Virtue of the Week.

Opened in September, this public elementary school is based entirely around what 90 percent of Americans tell pollsters they think schools should teach: good character.

There is a Virtue of the Month as well as a Virtue of the Week, which students reflect upon daily in character journals. In the front hall, they paste paper leaves in a Forest of Virtue to honor people - from students to Ringo Starr - who have done good deeds.

With a nationwide debate over how to teach character, skeptics say it’s a concept too squishy to teach. Critics ask: “Whose values?”

But a growing number of people are responding the way Franklin headmaster Christopher Schoeberl does.

“It’s not a question of Pat Robertson or the Pope,” he said. “We’re talking about universal values that cross lines of race, religion, economics, and politics: respect, integrity, friendship, patience, honesty.”

Based on these ideas, the school has generated almost no controversy among parents or educators. Its experience may suggest that there can be common ground in teaching children to be better people.

The parent founders of the K-4 school adopted four “cardinal virtues” based on those of the Ancient Greeks: Fortitude, Justice, Temperance and Prudence.

Each month, founding parent Peg Murphy meets with the school’s eight teachers to brainstorm ways to teach the virtues. The definition of the month’s virtue is posted in school hallways and sent to parents, with suggestions for how to teach it at home. For learning patience: make bread and wait for it to rise; generosity, bring cookies to a neighbor.

In school, students do community service projects - fourth graders this week were making lunches for senior citizens. To teach “obedience,” Lynn Dwyer asked kindergartners to draw a picture of the rule they have the toughest time obeying at home. One drew himself somersaulting on the couch.

“Every once in a while, you really hit it, other times you can’t quite get them to catch on,” Dwyer said. “Fortitude, they loved. But flexibility, they couldn’t get beyond the idea of ‘a gymnast bends back and forth.’ “

Each of the 100 students writes in a character journal, on “What did I do to embrace the virtue today, what didn’t I do, and what can I do tomorrow.” And each week, at a school meeting, Schoeberl pastes new leaves in the Forest of Virtue. (Ringo’s was for friendship - he tried to keep the band together.)

The Franklin was able to design the curriculum this way because it’s a charter school - one of 14 statewide that are publicly funded but free from local school committee control.

But in his State of the Union address, President Clinton called for every public school to teach character. Education officials in Massachusetts, who are holding a character education conference with New Hampshire next month, say they like what they see in the Granite State, with a state law requiring character education and five hours of training in it required for teachers each year.

And in two recent polls, 90-95 percent of Americans said schools should do more to teach values. Their list of values, in order of importance, sounds remarkably like Schoeberl’s: honesty, democracy, acceptance of racial and ethnic differences.

Public schools often argue they already teach character: turning playground fights into lessons on friendship, using teachers as role models.

But Kevin Ryan, head of the Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character at Boston University, said only comprehensive approaches like Franklin’s work. Putting teachers in a workshop isn’t enough; you have to create an ethos.

And, as character education skeptics would agree, much depends on parents. Educators at the school say their definition of a value doesn’t always match what is being taught at home.

Yet Schoeberl’s biggest worry - that people would lose interest - hasn’t happened.

Fourth graders - raising their hands first, of course - eagerly name for a reporter historical figures who represent fortitude (Benjamin Franklin, because he kept inventing even when his inventions failed.) Kindergartners hold doors for one another, and sweeten their chatter with regular “thank you’s” and “excuse me’s.”

“I don’t mean to brag, but I think our school’s better than than the other schools,” said Amy Samerjian, a fourth grader. “My friends at other schools, they’re watching movies in school, we do community service.”

And parents notice a distinct difference in attitude. While her third grade daughter “hated” boys in her former school, Alexis Mosca notes that at the Franklin school, she has become friends with them.

“In this school, they’re taught to respect each other,” Mosca said. “They’re learning friendliness and kindness. It’s made things the way they should be, in my opinion.”