A Better School Environment for an Academic Excellence

This essay is about the sub-conscious and conscious and how they both work in a specific environment to a further Excellence. Such a student often sees little opportunity to improve or to effect any change so he or she becomes at-risk for dropping out of school completely. This decision is a traumatic one, and contributes to a self-defeating cycle of low confidence and low self-concept.

A component of learning that contributes much to school culture and climate is moral education. This component is often missing in American schools. Moral education is, however, a compulsory subject in most Asian schools. The objective is to make students morally aware and to foster their moral development. Lessons in moral education are both theoretical and practical. For instance, in Japan, teachers may use textbooks or innovative techniques such as role-playing. One of the commonest forms of teaching is for students to watch short dramas on a weekly basis. These dramas emphasize fundamental matters such as the value of life, the foolishness of fighting, the importance of friendship, or the problems of the elderly. The dramas need not focus on a specific message. In discussing the moral problems raised by the drama with the class, the teacher is free to steer the discussion toward a specific theme or allow the class to explore related themes.

Practical moral education in Japan also takes the form of requiring students to take responsibility for the upkeep of their classrooms. Rural schools, in particular, do not have the funds to support the full-time maintenance staffs typical of American schools. Thus Asian children and the teachers themselves are often required to do the domestic work of the school, such as serving, clearing up school lunches and general cleaning. Although there is a distinct advantage of saving money with this practice, the primary purpose is moral. It conveys to students such lessons that if they litter, it is they themselves who must go around and pick it up later. These chores also foster a collective sense of moral responsibility for the cleanliness and appearance of the school since the students realize that everyone can make a contribution to this end. Japanese elementary school students exhibit such pride and ownership in their schools and classrooms that vandalism is rarely a problem: "In fact, while students in America can't wait to leave school, Japanese students never seem to want to go home" (Baris-Sanders, 1997, p. 3). Moral education empowers students.

In the past, American educators have been reluctant to include a moral education component in the curriculum. Many fear that moral education will inevitably translate into the teaching of religious values, thus threatening the separation between church and state. The preference of educators is that morality be taught at home. The situation at many schools, however, has reached such a stage of crisis that the concept of morality is intimately connected to school effectiveness: "Although virtue is a justifiable end in its own right, the evidence from research on school effectiveness . . . and school culture . . . increasingly suggests that effective schools have virtuous qualities that account for a large measure of their success" (Sergiovanni, 1992, p. 99). Teachers must provide students with the moral leadership to overcome the negative pull of certain student subcultures.

In many schools, student subcultures create patterns of behavior that hinder learning. Social norms are very powerful. Once they are in place, patterns tend to determine what is and is not acceptable behavior. Negative group norms can be so powerful that they destroy a person's reality: "It is no secret that the norms of the student subculture can often force students to behave in ways that they might not choose otherwise" (Sergiovanni, 1992, p. 101). Such norms encourage antisocial behavior, ranging from skipping classes, smoking or drug abuse on school property, and vandalism, on to a wide range of serious criminal behavior. Only by altering such group norms and substituting positive expectations can educators create a school climate and culture that says its acceptable to study, cooperate, be civil, and excel in academics.

The starting point for altering negative group norms is with a discussion of core values. This instruction in virtues should begin with the acknowledgement that Americans have more in common than they realize. Sergiovanni (1994) cites a recent school study that suggests that despite wide cultural differences, variation in values is minimal: "parents, teachers, students, staff and administrators of all ethnicities and classes, value and desire education, honesty, integrity, beauty, care, justice, truth, courage, and meaningful hard work" (pp. 19-20). Unfortunately, very little time is spent in classrooms discussing these core values.