Education is more than academics. It’s also about learning to get along, Mackey Pendergrast, superintendent of the Morris School District, said on Thursday, in the wake of this week’s assault on democracy at the Capitol.
Below is his message to the school community, which includes families from Morristown, Morris Township and Morris Plains.
From the Morris School District:
Jan. 7, 2021
Dear Morris School District Community,
One of the most oft-repeated essential questions we as Morris School District educators ask ourselves is “How do we want our students to learn?”
Teachers may frame the day’s lesson or a course syllabus in terms of this question; principals may reflect on it as they conceptualize their annual building goals. And district administrators look broadly at how this question applies to the overarching objectives for learning, social-emotional growth, instruction, and professional development throughout our 10 schools.
But equally important, “How do we want our students to learn?” is a question that asks us to recommit to our district’s fundamental values and beliefs.
Today I write to you to emphasize our commitment to these fundamental values and beliefs in the context of our ongoing district priority to create a more equitable and inclusive school community–a healthy community, in which students will develop the skills, knowledge, and disposition to be able to contribute to our democracy as productive, engaged, informed members of a larger society comprised of many different people with many different perspectives and ideologies.
I’ve summarized a few key precepts here from the MSD’s District Priorities & Strategies for 2020-21 (available here on our website) that seem to me especially relevant today as thoughts about the tenets of democracy weigh heavily:
- We regard academic discourse as a tool to elevate understanding of complex social justice topics through the highest quality dialogue marked by listening, civility, and kindness–and not zero-sum debates designed to establish putative winners and losers.
- We will promote and sustain a school culture that will equip our students with the civic tools necessary to actively participate in a national democracy, to build and refine social institutions and systems rooted in justice, not oppression.
- We will teach our students a nuanced understanding of history–both the conditions whereby democracies have thrived as well as those conditions that diminish democracies and suppress our most prized and enduring national ideal that all humans are created equal and that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights.
- We will refine our social studies and history curriculum so that it equips students with the deep and discerning historical understandings, judgement and wisdom necessary to participate in and strengthen our democracy now and for future generations.
- We will help students navigate reasoned, evidence-based, civil discourse, debate, and even disensus as they explore complex topics.
I appreciate your partnership as we continue to work together toward the realization of this vision. When students belong to a healthy community, they are stronger, more resilient, more united, and more prepared for life. That is how we want our students to learn.
Sincerely,
Mackey Pendergrast
Superintendent of Schools
A good message for us all.