Wisdom & Morals

Synchronocity continues to occur! The latest TED video I just watched directly reflects on my yesterday's blog on "Regulate or De-regulate" plus a number of other sympathetic thoughts we share. Barry Schwartz's 20 minute talk covers a range of important observations and principles that I've been working on and concerned about for years:

• practical wisdom, that can't be prescribed by job descriptions (reminding me of Total Quality Management and the Ritz-Carlton's example of quality service by all their associates);

• bureaucratic rules and incentives vs. moral skill (expanding on my regulate/de-regulate quandry);

• rigid rules (like school curricula), that prevent disaster, but ensure mediocracy;

• community responsibilities vs. individual interests.

His answer is to re-moralize work, not through more ethics courses, but by identifying and celebrating moral heroes, being the examples of the ordinary heroes we need, and embodying the character and virtues we want our kids to develop.

It's certainly heartening to hear such views after working with some state education leaders, at least one of whom said she couldn't even mention the words "character education" lest she be accused of being a communist!