News from Lisa
Ethics and Girls
The middle school years - which occur at the height of a brain-restructuring hormone onslaught - can be difficult, but they are also the opportune years to introduce girls to some of the "big picture" questions that will frame their adult lives: who am I, and how shall I chose to live? And who are all these strange people that I am sharing the planet with?
According to Joann Deak, author of Girls Will Be Girls, middle school girls become more attuned to moral issues and are thinking in more mature ways about moral dilemmas and what is worth standing up for. Teens can thoughtfully consider high-level ethical dilemmas and concepts while still managing to engage in the teenaged-girl behaviors they are notorious for—mean looks, notes, and comments. The piece that is missing is how to put these concepts into daily practice so that how they want to live more closely matches how they are actually living.
Girls view the world through the lens of relationships, and while that is a wonderful thing—possibly the glue that holds communities together—it is also complicated. A mean look, or even a look that is merely unclear, can ruin a day. Sitting at the wrong table (or near the wrong locker) during lunch might ruin the whole week. Sorting out all this relationship stuff is the work of middle school (and you thought it was math and science!), and it's never easy.
So with that in mind—the overwhelming need to sort out relationships and to figure out how to act and interact, along with a desire to think about how the world works—let me now introduce The Girls' School ethics course.
The course, which begins in January, will be taught by GSA parent Dr. Matthew Daude Laurents, chair of the Department of Philosophy at Austin Community College. Dr. Daude Laurents has been collaborating with GSA teachers and a team of community members—Ian Farrell, Lisa Straus, and Davidson Loehr—for the past several months. The course will draw upon themes from the 7th grade humanities program as well as the social conflicts that seem to naturally develop in middle school girls. We will also hold sessions for parents, including a few lunchtime seminars, for anyone who would like to attend.
Stay tuned after the new year for announcements about attending a parents' ethics workshop or lunchtime seminar.
Lisa K. Schmitt
Head of School
(12/08)