Raising standards top goal

     By Tina Allen
     View staff writer
      Raising intellectual and moral standards for children was the topic at a recent lecture during Character Counts Week, presented by the Summerlin Children's Forum.
      The lecture, at Lummis Elementary School, featured speaker William Damon, director of the Center on Adolescence at Stanford University and author of "Greater Expectations."
      Damon said society has diminished its standards for children in recent years, and the community needs to work together to bring them back.
      "It really came as a surprise to people when ("Greater Expectations") first came out because everyone was saying `I thought we were pressuring kids too much,' " Damon said. "Kids aren't like that, they respond to pressure. I'm not saying yell at them, but they like to be urged a little bit."
      Damon, who also has authored numerous other books on intellectual and moral development through the life span, including "The Moral Child" and "The Youth Charter: How Communities Can Work Together to Raise Standards for all our Children," said he recommends people who are in contact with young people and who are influential in their lives to establish forums for communication.
      This type of open communication would allow parents and teachers to learn from each other what behavior is acceptable or not acceptable at each location, to avoid the possibility of sending children mixed messages, he said. Children may not be picking up the same thing in school as at home, which creates confusion for a young person trying to put it all together, he added.
      "These meetings can take a lot of different shapes," he said. "They can be parent-teacher meetings É but usually that's not enough. It's much more useful to try to create a real forum where at some point the issue of standards is brought up."
      Rick Watson, principal at Lummis Elementary, said the school is looking at ways to develop a community-based television show that would allow roundtable discussions on children's issues.
      "We have our kids not only involved in school, but we have them involved in church and we have them involved in Little League ball or dance or music," Watson said. "Those are all important things, but wouldn't it be nice if there was some way that all of those entities in the neighborhood all talked to each other and they all agreed on some common things they are going to try to achieve along with their specific responsibility."
      The idea ties in with Character Counts, a nationwide initiative aimed at encouraging different entities in the community that have influence over children to link.
      "Parents cannot do it by themselves and schools cannot do it by themselves," Watson said. "If everybody in the community does some part in this whole thing, it can fortify kids."
      In another point, Damon said stereotyping has contributed to lowered standards for children living in areas of lower socio-economic means or attending at-risk schools.
      "People have to be very aware of their own biases," Damon said. "There are a lot of kids who have come from the most distressed backgrounds that go right to the top. You're not being fair to those kids if you're prejudging what they can do.
      "The other thing is, kids get labeled learning disabled," he said. "There are a lot of those kids these days that get a label like attention deficit disorder. A lot of these kids are put into that category because they run around a lot. They are boys and they act out. They may have been the next Isaac Newton or Einstein, but just let them alone or teach them how to control themselves."
      Damon also said he believes parents and teachers should try to inspire children to be intrinsically motivated in their activities, but the idea that it is incompatible with extrinsic motivation is wrong. There are times when extrinsic approaches are appropriate, he said, perhaps when a child does not want to read.
      "Often children discover intrinsic motivation after they work through a lot of the hesitation and fear, even laziness," Damon said.