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Prudence Is A Gateway Virtue For K-12 Education
Prudence as practical wisdom combines foresight, judgment, and discretion.
Prudence as practical wisdom in the classroom.
"We need to offer the coming generations an education in morals as rigorous as their technical and career education,' writes political and cultural commentator David Brooks in The Atlantic. What might be the foundation for the main elements of this rigorous education in morals?
As I thought about this question, I kept returning to two of my parents go to maxims, directed to me—and my siblings—on a regular basis. They offered me a springboard to answer this question.
The first maxim was, "Use your common sense." The second maxim, meant to reinforce the first, was one of the worst things they could say about someone: "That person doesn't have any common sense."
As a young person, I was attracted to the simplicity of these maxims, though not always sure how to apply them as I navigated my way around Collinwood, our Italian-American neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio. They have been with me for over 70 years, shaping my perspective on life.
As with simple truisms, it has taken me years to understand the complexity and insight behind them. I now realize that my parents' guidance was grounded in the virtue of prudence, or practical wisdom, which I'd learned about during my Catholic school education. Moreover, I came to a deeper understanding of how prudence is the gateway to other virtues that are important to a young person's K-12 education.
This motivated me to re-educate myself on the meaning of these virtues. It led me to conclude that in today's fast-paced, often chaotic environment, the need for prudence—a virtue that combines foresight, wisdom, and discretion—has never been more critical, especially in our divided politics.
As the gateway virtue, prudence offers a pathway to three other virtues--justice, fortitude, and temperance. Taken together, they offer a framework for a rigorous education in morals that complement technical and career education. And in fact, a growing number of K-12 schools are seeking to integrate them into their approach to teaching and learning.
The Cardinal Virtues
Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, outlines the foundation for the classical understanding of prudence. He views it as an intellectual virtue that enables us to consider different options and then choose the most suitable means to achieve a good end. This practical wisdom links knowing what is right and acting on that knowledge to attain human happiness or flourishing. It guides the other virtues by helping us choose the right means to an end.
The Catholic tradition describes prudence as one of the four human or 'moral virtues acquired by human effort,' along with justice, fortitude (or courage), and temperance. They are the cardinal virtues, derived from the Latin word cardo or hinge. Prudence, or practical wisdom, is the foremost among the cardinal virtues. In The Four Cardinal Virtues, Josef Pieper says it is "the cause of the other virtues being virtues at all."
Without prudence, justice is misapplied, courageous actions are harmful, and temperance is misguided. Prudence requires us to make the right decisions, considering immediate benefits and long-term impacts on ourselves and others. 'Prudence means practical common sense, taking the trouble to think out what you are doing and what is likely to come of it,' writes C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity.
The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue sees prudence as central to his attempt to revive the field of virtue ethics. He, too, considers prudence not just one virtue among many. It is that intellectual virtue that helps people deliberate well about the means to achieve an end within a tradition. It also enables us to integrate actions over time in a coherent way. He contrasts this ability for moral deliberation with the actions of a bureaucratic manager who is transactional and focused on technical ends rather than human flourishing.
The Bourgeois Virtues
Nor is prudence merely a Catholic virtue. Deirdre McCloskey, in The Bourgeois Virtues, calls prudence 'the executive function . . . the grammar of the virtues.' Prudence is not only about judicious wisdom. It is also an entrepreneurial virtue. It involves the courage to take calculated risks and the wisdom to foresee the benefits of temperate actions in the economic sphere. Prudence is a balancing act between daring and restraint—a quality indispensable in our current political climate.
McCloskey also suggests that prudence plays a role in economic development, arguing that it underpins progress in capitalist societies. "The prudent use of resources, the weighing of costs against benefits, and the careful assessment of risk and reward are all essential to the entrepreneurial spirit that drives growth," she writes. Her view challenges the often negative perception of capitalist virtues, highlighting how prudence is pivotal in achieving ethical and economic outcomes that benefit society.
McCloskey further explores how prudence functions in everyday life. Prudence is not merely about avoiding risk but about cultivating reflective habits that allow people to flourish personally and contribute to the well-being of others. "To be prudent is to be mindful of the practical implications of one's actions,' she notes, 'to foster a habit of reflective and deliberative engagement with the world."
How K-12 Schools Are Responding
Prudence, as practical wisdom, has much to say to America's ongoing discussion about young people, schools, and jobs and careers. The Purpose of Education Index, produced by the nonprofit Populus, is a multi-year, nationally representative study examining what Americans perceive as the primary purpose of education, including K-12 schools. While there are differences on some hot-button issues, two top priorities cut across every demographic group.
First, Americans want schools to be places where young people learn how to solve problems and make good decisions. Second, Americans want schools to equip young people with practical skills that prepare them for life. According to the information gathered from the survey respondents, these priorities encompass ensuring that young people can read, write, and perform arithmetic, are ready for a career, and learn how to plan for and achieve their goals.
The late psychologist and senior Gallup scientist Shane Lopez, in his book Making Hope Happen describes how this occurs. He identified three strategies that young people should develop to prepare themselves for life in general and their future career in particular.
The first is 'future casting' or 'goals thinking', which helps them define and set achievable future outcomes. The second is 'triggering action' or 'pathways thinking', which creates a specific route to those actions. The third is 'agency thinking', which produces the mental energy and self-reliance needed to pursue goals along defined pathways. Pathways and agency thinking work together to foster the pursuit of goals.
This framework implies that mastering a discipline is more than just acquiring a marketable skill. It also shapes our thinking in ways that allow us to set and achieve goals for our lives together, which is the basis for '…a theory of hope [that helps] to explain how to arrive at successful aspirations,' write the authors of a paper on youth aspirations.
One example of how this virtues-based approach is being integrated in the classroom is the growth of K-12 classical education schools. These schools are 'a recovery of liberal arts education [that] place character…at the center of students' formative years,' according to Rob Jackson, founder of Classical Commons. a web-based social network that provides information and other resources to those interested in these schools.
Classical schools now enroll around 677,521 students in 1,551 schools, according to Arcadia Education, a market analysis firm. Around 39% of these students receive their education through home schooling, co-op schooling, or microschools, with 34% enrolled in Christina evangelical classical schools, 18% in public charter schools, and 9% in Catholic classical schools. Enrollment is projected to reach 1.4 million K-12 students by 2035.
I recently visited Vertex Partnership Academies in the Bronx, New York, an International Baccalaureate (IB) high school whose educational program is based on the four cardinal virtues. All students pursue the IB Middle Years program in ninth and tenth grade. They then choose between the IB Diploma or IB Careers pathway for their junior and senior years. Ian Rowe, CEO and cofounder of Vertex says, 'The four cardinal virtues shape every aspect of our school, We seek to develop virtuous high school graduates. There are no victims in our school, only architects of their own lives.'
Anchoring Technical And Career Education
Recovering the roots of common sense in prudence—practical wisdom—has much to contribute to today's debates over education, citizenship, and character. In an era of complexity, division, and distraction, prudence offers clarity, coherence, and hope.
It helps us think critically, act wisely, and live responsibly. As the gateway virtue, it supports justice, fortitude, and temperance and help today's young people thrive not only in careers but in life.
My parents' simple advice, 'Use your common sense,' echoes with deeper meaning now. It is, I believe, a call to revive the virtue of prudence as a gateway virtue in how we educate, live, and shape the future together.
