An Act of Caring and Courage

The Good Life: On Preparing Young People to Lead Moral and Ethical Lives
‍Making Caring Common, Harvard University, January 2025

Character-building is, of course, just as important today as it was for prior generations of parents and teachers. But the ground has shifted. The Making Caring Common (MCC) Project at Harvard University, missioned with promoting moral development in children and youth, has used its robust mandate to provide an accessible program and clarion voice for research, problem-solving, and strategies to address how to increase caring for one another in these times. This recent video, featuring Dr. Richard Weissbourd, Director of Making Caring Common, is one of many substantial professional growth offerings for teachers and parents on the project’s website. It looks first at two documented problems and then at strategies for schools and families to use. The problems are linked: the elevation of personal achievement and hyper-individualism over caring for others, and the demotion of morality noted in the documented amounts of meanness, polarization, and aggressiveness around us, both on social media and in community. Weissbourd outlines specific interventions and invites wider perspectives in our curricula. While imparting key moral and social justice capacities may involve an uphill climb, there are steps at the steepest places. These include service work, valuing a culture of gratitude, linking our students to the generations before them and those to come, learning to listen to those who think differently, and kindness. Being kind neither is a reach too far nor is it only available to some. It is an act of caring and courage to teach as if there is nothing more important.