(4/2003) - Back in the 1930s, Culver embarked upon an ambitious program of analysis and restructuring. Then, "distinguished advisers from Harvard, the University of Michigan, and the University of Wisconsin were called in. The whole educational program was appraised in the light of increased enrollment, recognizing changes in educational practice, and new trends in our national life.”Critical reflection on past practices and openness to new ideas resulted in significant reforms to the Culver curriculum, including greater flexibility in course selection and new teaching methodologies. Academic reforms were part of a broader initiative to "educate the whole boy." With implications for student life, guidance services, athletics, and extra‑curricular activities, the "Culver Plan," as it was called, was ambitious in conception and sweeping in scope. It enacted a coherent and comprehensive vision that served the Academy for decades and helped to make Culver one of the premier boarding schools in the country.

From the daily schedule to the length of the academic year, the topics discussed by the faculty seventy years ago bear an uncanny resemblance to those under consideration today.  At the end of the 1999‑2000 school year, a faculty committee  (The Program Design Committee) was created to harvest the best thinking on teaching and learning with a view to recommending reforms to the curriculum consistent with that thinking. The goal has been to build on the historic strengths of the Culver curriculum by designing and implementing a "continuous improvement model" that will look forward to the next century while respecting the achievements of the last.

Teaching and Learning

The Program Design Committee developed a teaching and learning model for Culver that is sensitive to the rich history of The Academies and attuned to the latest developments in learning theory. Building upon a heritage that reaches into the nineteenth century, the Committee has created a visionary model for the twenty‑first. The three basic principles of the Culver teaching and learning model are as follows:

1. The classroom must be student‑centered as well as teacher‑centered. A variety of teaching methods must be used to respond to different learning styles, and to reach into the private universes of meaning children have constructed.

1. Children are active makers of the worlds of meaning they inhabit. In this view, known as constructivism, students are active builders rather than passive receptors of knowledge.

1. The curriculum should strive to elicit in every child deep understanding that can be used in novel situations to solve new and unexpected problems.

The view that young people are actively involved in constructing the worlds of meaning they inhabit is called constructivism. In constructivism, understanding is built by the student, not by the teacher, so new learning depends heavily on what is already understood and therefore is heavily dependent on context. New knowledge is built into and onto current knowledge. The teacher, through teaching methods and assessment practices determines what is learned and not just how it is learned.

One teaching method is the use of “learning technologies.” The Academies have implemented an ambitious laptop computer program for both students and faculty. Teachers are using these computers across the disciplines. For example, in conjunction with special data gathering technologies, the laptops can bring real-world problems into the classroom by making primary sources, real-world data, virtual experiments, and other electronic resources available to students. The computers can provide scaffolding support to students who are in the process of building sophisticated understanding of complex subjects.

Still, the central question of any curriculum should be this: What do we want our students to understand? Experts argue that understanding can be analyzed into six overlapping facets: explanation, interpretation, application, perspective, empathy, and self‑knowledge. Students who understand can give detailed and sophisticated explanations where explanation is warranted, subtle and convincing interpretations when interpretation is called for. They can apply what they know to new problems in unfamiliar contexts and they can demonstrate their understandings through performances modeled on the practices of professionals and experts.

The next three facets, perspective, empathy, and self‑knowledge, are essential to what the philosopher Martha Nussbaum calls the cultivation of humanity. Nussbaum believes that this can be achieved only through the development of three capacities: the ability to see oneself as a human being "bound to all other human beings by ties of recognition and concern" (perspective), "the ability to think what it might be like to be in the shoes of a person different from oneself” (empathy), and "the capacity for critical examination of oneself and one's traditions" (self‑knowledge). As Nussbaum's comments suggest, teaching for understanding has far‑reaching implications that go well beyond the classroom. Teaching for understanding therefore involves teaching for citizenship.

In giving an account of "deep understanding," researcher Grant Wiggins emphasizes the importance of "mental self-management" or reflection: "A key notion implied in the [six] facets is that understanding involves rethinking - reflecting upon, reconsidering, and perhaps fundamentally revising the meaning of what we have already learned and what we believe to be knowledge or adequate account. Wiggins goes on to say that “deep understanding is inseparable from what we mean by wisdom."

Character Education

To explore the meaning of Wiggins' remarks, we need to examine more fully the complex and ramified connections between deep understanding, virtue, and critical thinking. To begin with, we note that wisdom had both a broader and a narrower sense. In the broad sense, wisdom is essentially synonymous with deep understanding, as Wiggins' remarks suggest. In the narrow sense, wisdom refers to deep understanding in the ethical realm. Deep understanding of self and others - deep moral understanding - is what the ancients meant by wisdom. They considered it to be one of the most important moral qualities (or virtues) a human being could possess.

Underlying an ethics of virtue is the optimistic view that the passions - desires and feelings - can be educated. The moral life is less about doing "the right thing" by overcoming our natural inclinations than it is about educating those very inclinations so that "the right thing" is what we are disposed to do anyway. The virtuous person is like the tennis player whose years of arduous training make each victory appear easy: she participates joyfully, plays gracefully and competes confidently. Of course, we also admire the player who - through sheer force of will - pulls out an agonizing victory against all odds, but we praise her more for a persistent mastery of deficiency than for a consistent expression of excellence.

As Wiggins' remarks suggest, the moral virtues depend on the intellectual virtues in a fundamental way. Perhaps a more fascinating question for educators is this: Do the intellectual virtues also depend on the moral virtues? To answer this, we need to take a closer look at critical thinking. Critical thinking - the capacity to reflect critically on what we know and how we have come to know it - is necessary for deep understanding in any discipline. If common sense is just another name for the rough and ready thinking dispositions that we rely on every day, critical thinking depends upon dispositions to clear and deliberate thinking that must be carefully cultivated. If common sense is good enough for the typical circumstances of the everyday, then critical thinking is necessary for the circumstances of novelty and uncertainty that the typical student finds herself in everyday. Nothing was ever understood deeply by means of common sense alone.

Under the auspices of the American Philosophical Association's Committee on Pre-College Philosophy, forty-six panelists have identified central qualities of the good critical thinker: "The ideal critical thinker is habitually inquisitive, well-informed, trustful of reason, open-minded, flexible, fair-minded in evaluation, honest in facing personal biases, prudent in making judgments, willing to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly about complex matters, diligent in seeking relevant information, reasonable in the selection of criteria, focused in inquiry, and persistent in seeking results which are as precise as the subject and the circumstances of inquiry permit."

While one might consider "honesty in facing personal biases" a moral virtue and “orderliness about complex matters" an intellectual virtue, it isn't always easy to draw a line between what is moral and what is intellectual. Where, for example, are we to place open-mindedness? What about fair-mindedness? More to the point: Where in the curriculum should open-mindedness be taught? Where in the school should fair-mindedness be cultivated?

The answer to our questions must certainly be that good critical thinking depends on moral as well as intellectual qualities. Drawing together the twin strands of our discussion, we may conclude that the development of intellect and character are so intricately intertwined that we cannot hope to achieve one without the other. Cultivation of character is not incompatible with a rigorous academic curriculum. But if we agree that deep understanding - wisdom - is central to both, then we can come to a much more sweeping conclusion: teaching for understanding means teaching for both moral and intellectual excellence. Any curriculum that accomplishes this is integrated in the sense of the Culver mission.

Global Studies Institute

The Global Studies Institute (GSI), largely the recent brainchild of members of the history department, continues with its exciting programming on global issues. The GSI's primary purpose is to "prepare Culver students for citizen­ship in a rapidly changing and increasingly complex world by giving them the opportunity to interact with thinkers, scholars, and leaders from different coun­tries, cultures and backgrounds.”

The Institute has hosted seminars on “The Nuclear Threat,” "A Cross­Cultural View of Islam," "The Indo-Pakistani Crisis," "Civil War in Asia," "United States ‑ Latin American Relations," "The Future of Sub‑Saharan Africa," and "China and the Pacific Rim." Students who have participated in these seminars have been able to interact with internationally recognized scholars on subjects of great topical interest and political importance. This kind of opportunity is almost unheard of at the secondary‑school level.

Seventy years ago the “Culver Plan” ushered in comprehensive reforms to the Culver curriculum, the consequences of which were still being felt decades later. In 1939, Culver believed that the school “is doing a real piece of work in integrating the various educational forces – academic, physical, military, social – into one harmonious system.” As the result of this work, Culver won national recognition as one of the country's top boarding schools. The initiatives of the past few years are part of a comprehensive plan that empha­sizes character education through integrated programs in academics, leadership, and wellness that are designed to capture the spirit of Culver for a new century. We are once again engaged in a "real piece of work," and can only hope that we achieve a fraction of the success of Culver's great educational leaders of the past.