Why Teach Self Governance

In this conversation, Katy McKinney discusses the critical role of religion in democracy, emphasizing how it fosters a culture of voluntary law obedience. She explores the importance of teaching virtues and character in education, particularly at Lafayette Academy: A Classical School, where faculty and staff help nurture self-governance and personal responsibility within each student. McKinney shares anecdotes illustrating how children can learn to govern themselves and express gratitude – even at a very young age.  She highlights the need for families and schools to work together in nurturing these values for the betterment of the nation.

For more information about Lafayette Academy, A Classical School please visit https://lafayetteacademy.org/

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Transcript

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All right, we're back again. Katie McKenny, founder and head of school for Lat Academy. I wanted to share with you an excerpt, um, entitled Religious Freedom from Clay Christensen. Clay Christensen was a professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. Um, he was awarded, uh, as one of the number one or the number one management thinker in the world. And he shared this quote and I was captivated by it. Um, I'll just share it and then I'll share some thoughts about it. So, this is the quote. He said, sometime ago, I had a conversation with a Marxist economist from China. He was coming to the end of a fullbright fellowship here in Boston and I asked him if he had learned anything that surprised, that was surprising or unexpected. And without hesitation, he said, yeah, I had no idea how critical religion is to the functioning of democracy. The reason why democracy works, he said, is not because the government was designed to oversee what everybody does, but rather democracy works because most people, most of the time, voluntarily choose to obey the law. And in your past, most Americans attended a church or a synagogue every week, and there they were taught by people who they respected. That's the quote from his friend. His friend then went on to say that, quote, Americans follow these rules because they have come to believe that they weren't just accountable to society, they were accountable to God. Unquote. Clay then continues, my Chinese friend heightened a vague but nagging concern I've harbored inside, that as religion loses its influence over the lives of America, of Americans, what will happen to our democracy? Where are the institutions that are going to teach the next generation of Americans that they too need to voluntarily choose to obey the law? Because if you take away religion, you can't hire enough police. This, uh, that's the end of the quote. But after hearing those thoughts from Mr. Christensen, I couldn't help but ask myself, You know, is our culture, is our educational system, are they preparing the next generation to voluntarily choose to obey the law, or is it the opposite? Um, part of, part of what we do at our school is not only teaching the best that's ever been thought or the best that's ever been said, but we also teach excellent character. And you say, okay, well, who has the authority to do that? Well, if we go back, and we look at basically best practices, what has allowed humanity to flourish, we can come to some pretty ubiquitous principles. And we have adopted four of those, and we call them our four classical virtues, and they are prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude. And our aim is to help our children fall in love with this goodness, because when you, when you demonstrate, when you enact these principles of goodness, you find that goodness happens more in your life. Um, it makes life easier, as as hard as life can be. When you are kind to people, when you are respectful to people, that usually comes back to you in return. So, we teach our children how this, how this operates in everyday life, and we do it through virtue talks we have on Mondays. We do it on the recess field, when someone grabs the ball out of your hand, you know, how do you handle that situation? If someone is cheating at Gaga, for example, one of the students recently came into my office, fighting back the tears, a fifth grade boy, he was so incensed that there was cheating going on. So we talked about, okay, how are we going to handle this? We always go back to our virtues as to how to handle that. One thought comes to mind that religion obviously plays a major role. It is a function. It is something that helps our society learn about these beautiful principles and and how to live them. But if you do take that piece of religion out, which does seem like it's really under attack these days. How do we do that? Well, if you can find a school that is practicing these Judeo-Christian principles and beliefs that can go a long way. And of course, if you're teaching it in the home, those two I I think of it as book ends. You've got the school as one book end, and you've got the family as the other, sort of encompassing that child. The child has nowhere to go hopefully, but up, right? So, Um, I think of a scenario we had a kindergartner, it was I think our one of our very first years, and he was he was uh, the youngest of his family of uh, three other boys, so he's one of four. And um, you know, you're going to get lots of influences when you're the youngest. It's just the nature of the beast. So, one day we were at school and I heard him saying things like, what the and he would never fill in the blank, but we all know what would fit in the blank. Um, and so, I thought, you know what? That's not going to that's not really going to be helpful to him right now in kindergarten. So, we need to eradicate that. So, I took him aside quietly and I said, you know what? Sweet little guy, we don't say that at our school. We don't say what the. And then I ended up saying, you know, to the whole school. I wanted to help everyone kind of elevate their thought in that way. Well, Well and behold we go out to recess that day and um I wasn't I wasn't in the midst of where he was playing and what he was doing, but I did hear him go, what the. And he stopped on the word the. It clipped it and he stopped and he kind of looked around, see if anybody was looking, and then he just pulled back and he handled it handled it a whole different way. And I didn't say anything in that moment, but as he came in from recess, I went up to him and I said, hey, I uh, I heard that you stopped yourself. You you didn't say the whole phrase. And I said, I just wanted to compliment you. That was that took a lot of temperance, which is one of our virtues. And he knew at that time what that meant. It means being the governor of yourself. I say being the boss of yourself, and someone doesn't have to babysit you, but you actually can do it yourself. Well, you should have seen his his smile just beamed. And I told him, I said, you know what? A lot of people in this world think that a a five-year-old can't govern themselves. But I said, you just proved them all wrong. Because you did. You governed yourself in that moment. Nobody told you what to do. You did it by choice, voluntarily. So this circles around back to how our founders set up this beautiful country. You know, previous to this, you had King George, who was, um, you know, the dictator overall, and would tell everyone how and what to do and when to do it. And obviously, the the Patriots did not like that and hence the revolutionary war. But what was one of those guiding principles was that we were going to be a country that was not a police state. Um, we had to govern ourselves. And how do you do that? You look back in history and you look at the best principles, and you look at how what were the civilizations that flourished? And the ones that flourished were were the ones that were governing themselves. But we have to teach this at a very young age, as soon as possible, even when they're babies. You can do this at 18 months, and I've I've done it with my own children, how to govern themselves and talk to them. They're, you know, the human species is a very intelligent species, and we can learn this very early on, but to find a school that aligns with that principle to help support the family and the family to support the school is tremendous. So, in any case, Um, this idea that a child can self-govern, um, plays right into helping them become a tremendous contributor to a Republic. A Republic that depends on the citizens who align with goodness, with the Judeo-Christian principles that founded this country, and then do it themselves. Follow, follow the laws, follow the rules of the road, voluntarily. That's going to do a world of good. And the more we can do it, teach it to our children, the sooner we can teach it to our children, the better off we all will be. Um, another thing we do is teach our children that our students that when they see a veteran, most likely they're going to be wearing a hat or something that designates that they're a veteran. Just make it a law to yourself that you just go up and you just say thank you. Thank you for your service, whether you're in an airport or a restaurant or in the mall or a grocery store. And sure enough, you know, we're teaching our kids, and I hear stories of parents saying, that's exactly what my child did. I didn't even know they could do that. You know, the parent wasn't even aware that that we were teaching that. One was, um, a family who was traveling from St. Louis to Gettysburg. We were heading out there for a beautiful field trip, and they stopped, I think it was in Columbus at an airport to pick up a family member, and while they were waiting, huge busload of veterans came up. And this little one, who was incredibly shy, Um, I believe she was probably seven at the time. She just finished first grade. Um, she sees this whole slew of huge, burly men, and she looks at her mom and she's like, I want to go say thank you. And her mom's like, really, you know, that's there's a lot of men and it was a little intimidating. And sure enough, that little one went right up and just said, thank you for your service. And they were so touched and she ended up shaking their hands and just having this wonderful moment. Well, That's that's that child governing herself for good. Um, and we have a slew of examples like that. And uh, I can share those at another time, but but this is uh, I think it was a quite an observant um, perspective from this Marxist economist. Um, and on top of that, gosh, we just had last week at our school, we just had, um, a North Korean refugee, who's now an American citizen, come and talk to our children, talk to our students, and she explained how they aren't allowed to do, um, you know, anything, practically, think anything, um, without it being governed by someone else. And she said one of the hardest things for her to do when she came to America to adjust, was the fact that she had choice. She said, to be independent, that was just a whole new concept for her. And yet, of course, that's something we take for granted. We all have choice. Probably, in some some cases, we have too much choice. But, um, with that freedom of choice, we have to teach the responsibility of governance, of temperance, of of how to control oneself. So, I uh, I share that with you. It's something we we strive to do and and nurture and cultivate every day at our school. We look for families who are looking to do that as well. And anything you can do at your house now is is appreciated. So, I say thank you for doing your good work.