Don't Force It: How to Get into College without Losing Yourself in the Process

Rick Weissbourd: Making Caring Common

Share episode

Today’s guest is Rick Weissbourd, Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Director of the Making Caring Common Project, a national effort to make moral and social development priorities in child-raising and to provide strategies to schools and parents for promoting in children caring, a commitment to justice and other key moral and social capacities. Tune in to hear how college admissions intersects with these efforts.

Bio:

Richard Weissbourd is a Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and he also teaches at the Kennedy School of Government. His work focuses on moral development, meaning and purpose, mental health challenges among teens and young adults and effective schools and services for children facing risks. He directs the Making Caring Common Project, a national effort to make moral and social development priorities in child-raising and to provide
strategies to schools and parents for promoting in children caring, a commitment to justice and other key moral and social capacities. He leads an initiative to reform college admissions, Turning the Tide, which seeks to elevate ethical character, reduce excessive achievement pressure and increase equity and access in the college admissions process. He is also conducting research on how older adults can better mentor young adults and teenagers in developing caring, mature romantic relationships. He is a founder of several interventions for children facing risks, including ReadBoston and WriteBoston, city-wide literacy initiatives that were led by Mayor Menino. He is also a founder of a pilot school in Boston, the Lee Academy, that begins with children at 3 years old. He has advised on the city, state and federal levels on family policy, parenting and school reform and has written for numerous scholarly and popular publications and blogs, including The New York
Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Psychology Today and NPR. He is the author of The Vulnerable Child: What Really Hurts America’s Children and What We Can Do About It (Addison-Wesley, 1996), named by the American School Board Journal as one of the top 10 education books of all time. His most recent book, The Parents We Mean to Be: How Well-Intentioned Adults Undermine Children's Moral and Emotional Development (Houghton Mifflin 2009), was named by The New Yorker as one of the top 24 books of 2009. Follow Rick on LinkedIn.


Visit our website at SignetEducation

Access free resources and learn more about Sheila and her team at Signet Education at signeteducation.com or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheilaakbar/.

Rick Weissbourd:

You know, in our research, almost all parents say what matters to them most is that their kids are caring. When you ask kids what's most important to their parents, almost all of them say achievement or happiness. They don't say caring. So there is this gap between what parents espouse and they convey day to day, especially, I think true around college admissions and my own kids have called me out on this.

Sheila Akbar:

Hi everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I have got such an amazing guest for you today. I had so much fun talking with him. It's Rick Weissbourd, who is a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is a psychologist who really focuses on moral and social development in children, with a particular focus on I'll use the name of the project that he directs on making caring common right, helping us develop more caring young people, as you know, you'll hear in our discussion, we think that is, you know, one of the solution to society's many current ills. So in addition to teaching at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, he also teaches at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He's written a number of books, and his writing appears in, you know, all the major publications, but his books, which I strongly suggest you check out, are the parents we mean to be, how well intentioned adults undermine the moral and emotional development of children. And previous book, the vulnerable child, what really hurts America's children and what we can do about it. And you can check all of this in the show notes, and check out the show notes for the making caring common project which publishes really insightful articles and shares a lot of really valuable resources. All right, let's get into the interview, and then I'll see you on the other side. Rick, thank you so much for joining me. I'm really, really excited to talk with you about, you know, your journey, the work that you've been doing, and where you think we need to go from here. If we could, I'd love to start with a little bit of your origin story. Tell me about where you grew up and how you got to do what you do now.

Rick Weissbourd:

I grew up outside Chicago. I grew up in Evanston, Illinois, and, you know, I think there really been two North Stars in my life. One is from a very young age. I felt violated by inequality in the country, by injustice in the country. This was during the time of the war on poverty, when Lyndon Johnson had launched the war on poverty in 1965 and I used to, my mother used to joke that I wanted to be a general, but not in the army. I wanted to be a general in the war on poverty, and I was always trying to earn my first stripe. And so, you know, part of it was this awareness and inequality, the sense of unfairness about it, and part of it is my father had a very interesting real estate developer who became very interested in moral development and and how kids develop a sense of justice and fairness and learn to care about other people. And from very early ages, he would give me moral dilemmas, and we would read parables and stories and talk about moral questions. So it was very much in the fabric of my house. And, you know, it's a wonderful way to lead a life, to think about these moral questions and to be engaged with them. And so I feel, I just feel very lucky that that was a part of my upbringing, steeping my blood steeping my bones.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, I mean, that sounds, that sounds really interesting and amazing, almost like, I mean, literally, the beginning of, you know, a movie. And of course, I wonder if maybe you can tell us, was it that clear to you, you know, you were steeped in this as a child. It was a passion of yours, a deep commitment of yours, to think about moral development, and, you know, issues of equality. Did that feel like a calling to you when you then went off to college and thought about career? Or is it only now in hindsight, can you put those dots together?

Rick Weissbourd:

You know, it's a great question, and I, and you're part of what I teach about now, and I'm starting to write about, is meaning and purpose. And I really, I'm sort of allergic to the idea that we have a single purpose, and that, if we can, we can burrow into ourselves and find a passion or a calling or a purpose. I think some people from very young ages do have a purpose and calling, but most of us don't, and so, you know, I would describe, you know, my my passion, around around justice, around leaving poverty, around moral development, these were things I cared a lot about. It didn't translate immediately into a career path for me. I was. Was interested in in understanding the mind. I was interested in literature and philosophy and public policy. I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do. I was interested in doing clinical work in low income communities. I didn't know whether I want to do advocacy or policy or practice work, and I still am, you know, fissuring it out.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah. I mean, I think that's part of the beauty of it is you, you just try things out. You see what

Rick Weissbourd:

I was in a very lucky position where, you know, lots of folks can't just try things out, but, but I was able to try things out and, and that's right, I think I figured out by doing,

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, and this may be a little bit off topic here, but I talk with a lot of high schoolers who say, you know, they just, or their parents use this language that they have known motivation. And the high schoolers, of course, aren't saying, I don't have motivation. They say something else. But a lot of the times, they think the motivation comes before the action. I have to feel like I want to read this book in order to read it. But what research has shown is that action precedes motivation, you start doing a little, and then you find, you know, a way to do the next step and the next step and and more from there. And of course, there are a lot of factors contributing to this, but I'm seeing more and more young people who don't want to give something that first try, because it's not doesn't seem that exciting, or it's not resonating, or they can't see it becoming, you know, their career, and they're not even taking that first tiny little step, dipping their toe into the water, because it could be something that changed their life, or it could be something that's like, okay, no, that's not for me, but at least I know.

Rick Weissbourd:

Yes. No, you know, service, community service, is interesting in this respect, because, you know, there's a lot of resistance to mandating service for kids, and partly this feeling like you can't force kids to do something that they don't want to do. And but, you know, the research is is quite clear about this. It's, you know, what it indicates is, it's, it's much less important whether it's required or not than whether it's high quality or not, whether kids have choices about what they want to do, whether they have structure supervision, whether they can have meaningful impact. And to your point, some kids kind of fake it until they make it. They don't really want to do it, but they start doing it and they find themselves having impact. And some kids, you know, get ignited, get inspired. So you know, there are times where we have to tell kids, they have to do things, yeah, structure them. You know, we have to be really mindful about structuring them in ways that might instill motivation rather than depress motivation, I mean, but I think, I think that's right, yeah.

Sheila Akbar:

So, well, let's get back to your story. You had all these interests. What did you decide to do in college as a major, and then what happened from there?

Rick Weissbourd:

So I majored in human biology. I thought I wanted to be a doctor, a psychiatrist. That was a bust. I wasn't very good in the sciences. I wasn't really into it, so I decided to major in psychology and literature, and I've always felt like the novelist and the poet and the dramatists are the best psychologists. I feel like they're the most astute observers of the mind, and so it was a broad psychological education. But I was always interested in politics, and I when I graduated, I worked briefly for Ted Kennedy's presidential campaign, and then that campaign fell apart, but I ended up working in Washington doing anti poverty work, working for an organization that was advocating for low income folks across the country. And then I decided I want to go back to school in in psychology and and I wanted to learn clinical skills, so I went to a program here at the Ed School where I now teach in counseling, consulting, psychology, selected literature courses, philosophy. It's always been this sort of integration that I've tried to do and in my profession, you know, I've taught at the Ed School and the Kennedy School, but it's always been half time, and the other half of my time, I've been doing work in the field of different kinds, you know, starting a school, advising the political leaders, writing so, you know, I'm always telling my students, there isn't one road to Rome here. There are a lot of ways that you can put to get put together a life and and, you know, again, some people have very defined interests, but many of us don't, and we have to get creative and figure out right?

Sheila Akbar:

So tell us now about the work that you do at the Ed School and the particular type of research that you're most interested in right now.

Rick Weissbourd:

Two things happened over the last, you know, I'd say 15 years, 20 years, that had a big impact on me. One is, you know, raising kids myself and seeing the parenting environment that my kids were growing up, and I did feel like too many parents, particularly in a middle class and upper class white communities especially, were very organized around their kids, and were hypersensitive their kids, moment to moment, moods. Were wanting to respond to every need very quickly, sort of allergic. To their kids having disappointment or failure one kind or another, and I was worried about my kids becoming self centered and entitled, and that was one big motivation for me, and that's what led me to write the parents we mean to be subtitle is how well intentioned parents undermine their kids moral and emotional development, because I think there's a lot of well intended parents who were doing things that were making their kids hyper focused on their own feelings and self focused in a way that was troubling. If you can get kids to focus on other people like the irony is that all this focus on kids moment to moment feelings was, in fact, robbing them of those capacities that are going to be more important for their long term well being, that if kids can focus on other kids feelings and other people's feelings, they're going to be better friends and romantic partners and parents and neighbors and colleagues, and those relationships are the most durable and robust sources of well being that we have. Yeah, I mean, to expand that point, that's, that's where a lot of our own emotional re gulation can come from, right? That's a great additional point that we co regulate, right? And when we learn to co regulate with other

Sheila Akbar:

Right people, that's also very important for our well being. So, you know, I'm not against happiness, I'm not against achievement. It's this sense that we were really out of balance, and that we have really elevated these aspects of individual well being and success and demoted caring for other people. And the irony is that we were raising kids who, I think were less moral in some ways, but also kids who were less happy Right.

Rick Weissbourd:

That was the irony. So that was a big motivation for me. The other motivation has been in the last 15 years, and frankly, since Trump was elected in part and and feeling like the world is off the rails. You know that we are polarized, fractured, escalating meanness, an intensifying focus on the self and the well being of the self, that we are having a lot of trouble caring across difference. You know, humility seems in short supply. And, you know, I think the troubles we're having this country are puzzled with many pieces, but I think one big piece is that we have not prioritized caring for other people and caring for the collective. We haven't demanded that our kids care when it's really hard. And so that's been a powerful source of motivation for me, too. I don't want to, you know, I think we need to raise kids to create a much better world than we've created at the moment.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think what, when we think about, obviously, this is very reductionist and is probably more applicable to, you know, a certain segment of our society. But when we think about that parenting culture that you're talking about, I mean, has it changed since you were raising young kids? If anything, it's gotten worse, and it's gotten hyper focused on the toxic achievement culture, on college admissions, on very much individual success and achievements in a very transactional way. And you and I have talked before on sort of the bigger systems at play here. But you know, when I when I think about what's happening there, it just seems so short sighted, right where we're thinking about, okay, my individual kid, or maybe my nephew, or whatever it is, you know, related to me. I need them to be as successful as possible, make as much money as possible, go to the best brand, high school and college and maybe grad school as possible. Work in the best company as possible, but to what end and to what sacrifice, these are the leaders of our future generations, and they're the inheritors of our society. And you know, it's mess, it's mess right now, and we need to be looking to these young people, not only to kind of instill in them this sort of moral development and community consciousness that you've been talking about, but also to learn from them, because they're born with a lot of empathy, and the world we live in seems to train us out of our empathy.

Rick Weissbourd:

Yeah, I'm sure you work with a lot of just absolutely wonderful kids who really care about the world a lot. And you know, I feel like this is a generation that's moved us light years in terms of race and and in terms of gender and sexual orientation, you know, in lots of ways. But I do, you know, worry a lot about the amount of treatment pressure that that kids feel. I worry also that achievement is so connected to love that, you know, they feel like they will not be of value if they don't achieve to people that in their family or people that they care about a lot, if they're not achieving at a high level, and that's a very dangerous, very precarious way to live.

Sheila Akbar:

I couldn't agree more, and that's exactly what I was talking about, that we have a lot to learn from these younger generations. Conversations because they they have a great capacity for empathy and understanding and fairness and and instead of molding them to the world, we have, let's learn from them how to how to change the world, right? And to your point about toxic achievement, yeah, that that sense that, I mean, even the language you use there, that they won't be a value if they don't achieve. I mean, the fact that, like, we talk about valuing people like value is a as a problematic word here, as we're not trying to translate anybody into a monetary equivalent or anything like that. And but so tell us about making caring common, because that that's a big initiative that you're a part of. And I'm, you know, always really impressed by the work that comes out of that group.

Rick Weissbourd:

So I mean, fundamentally, making care in common is based on the degree to which we have lifted up individual success as the primary goals of child raising and marginalized caring for others and caring for collective flourishing. And we are trying to, you know, shift the balance. We are trying to put front and center again, caring for other people, caring for the collective. I don't think there's anything more important we can do in child raising than raise kids who care about others and care about the common good. So that's that's the quest we're on, is to try and make that at the heart of how we think about raising children. And that's not a pollyannish idea throughout most of our history. You know, mothers should have been fathers too. Mother's primary responsibility was to raise kids who were good citizens and respectful, caring citizens. Schools in this country were founded to cultivate ethical character. Colleges to cultivate ethical character too. So I'm really talking, in a sense, about returning to a mission that we've had through most of our history. I think it would take a different form now, but I'm talking about returning. We do three main types of work. We do work with schools and families. You know? We give family schools resources, strategies for raising kids who are empathic, self aware, feel responsible for their communities. Are able to listen to other people deeply care across difference, care across race, class, gender, sexual orientation, etc. So part of our work is giving strategies schools and parents. Part of it is trying to change college admissions and send, you know, broadly, send the signals that high schools, K 12 students and their families. Hear about what's important in the adult world, that college admissions in kids mind, it's a proxy for what adults care about. And right now, you know, the signal a lot of colleges are sending in our work is trying to change, is what they care about, is how many AP courses you take, or how many extracurricular activities you do, or how many awards you get. It's sort of long brag sheets. It's not meaningful ethical engagement or meaningful intellectual engagement. And the deans that I work with you know are quite committed to this and trying to change the signals that students receive about the importance of being a good person, about the importance of being authentically interested in I don't your experience, but by and large, I feel like the admissions officers are pretty good at sussing out what's authentic and what's not authentic, with lots of exceptions. You know, one day, I would love for us to work more with corporations businesses, about the signals they send to young people, about what's important. But I think this is going to be very, very hard to change if our major institutions, like colleges and employers are sending messages that all they care about is academic achievement.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, I agree with you. I think those are the two big players that that we can lean on to try to change those signals. If we could get a little bit more specific, I suppose one of the things that came out, oh my gosh, how many years ago was it now?

Rick Weissbourd:

Turning the Tide, yeah,

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah. Turning the Tide exactly caused quite a stir. And, and what are some of the changes that you saw that came out of, of putting that out there?

Rick Weissbourd:

Yeah, we are considering writing and doing another one. You know, so we had a bunch of colleges who added an essay question about ethical character, you know, made some additional efforts to increase access and equity, signaled to high school students that it wasn't the number of AP courses that really mattered to them. It was your engagement in those AP courses. I mean, in their materials, they changed the signal some, but it was never really about changing college admissions. I mean, it was certainly partly about that, but mostly it was about sending a signal to high school students. You know, I had an admissions officer say to me at one point from an elite college, if I say that I'm interested in bassoonists, bassoon sales are going to go up in New York and Los Angeles and Chicago. And so what the Dean signal is important matters. And if the Deans signal the high school students, we. Really want you to be engaged in service. It doesn't have to be high profile service. You don't need to go to Costa Rica. You don't need to build a school in Africa get involved in some kind of care for others that's meaningful to you. I think that signal matters to high school students. And you know, we heard from a lot of high schools that they had heard the signal and that principals at high school said, you know, we were using this report in our conversations with parents as a way of saying these things are important and they're important to the deans. I don't want to overplay this. You know, we made, I think, some significant strides. We got a long, long way to go, and it also created some backlash, because some high schools, particularly independent high schools, felt like this was just a big marketing ploy by the deans, and they weren't serious about it. And so it used the word ster it was a stir in a, you know, in a good way, in the sense that I think it inspired some very good things, and it also met a lot of resistance.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, as anything does, right? I can't say enough about how excited I was by that, and the fact that, you know, the NACAC survey of important factors in the admissions decision now includes character positive character traits, as you know, one of the measures that's really right there after all of the academic factors. So I do see that that is starting to shift. And whether it's value signaling or it's an actual meaningful shift, you know, we'll have to see. And of course, everything is evolving. But one of my friends in the industry is to say that what looked like the, you know, the college admissions recipe, you know, how many AP classes you had to take, the scores you needed to get, whatever that became the sort of de facto parenting guidebook for people with teenagers that in the absence of something else meaningful, to figure out, how do you get a kid through adolescence, you know, ready for their adulthood? Parents are defaulted to saying, Well, this is what you need to do to get into this college. Or, you know what we assume you need to do to get into this college, because there isn't a recipe, and that became how they decided to raise their children, right? You know, emphasis on playing sports, the requirements for community service, the forcing them to, you know, play an instrument, even if you have no talent or interest in playing it. And honestly, that's where the title for this entire podcast comes from, is don't force it. Really, we want to be spending time helping students, young people, discover what lights them up and and then, you know, support them in doing those things, instead of imposing a framework onto them. I feel like that's the thing. We can feed two birds with one scone. Is something another friend of mine says. So we don't have to kill any birds, but you we can help people understand what is important to colleges what they want to see, and we can start to shape that parenting culture away from achievement, or blind achievement, let's say, and more towards a healthier sense of achievement, of community, of personal development and all of those things. I just think there's a really amazing opportunity here. And of course, we're up against a whole lot of forces, including social media, where anyone can, can, you know, put up a video and claim to be an expert and influence a lot of young minds in the wrong direction? Yeah. So where do we where do we go from here? What do we do? Do you have an answer?

Rick Weissbourd:

I think this is work on many fronts, you know, I think this is partly, is this is in a big way on parents. You know, in terms of raising moral children, parents are by far the biggest influence on kids. I think we need to do a lot to expose to parents the rhetoric reality gap that you know, in our research, almost all parents say what matters to them most is that their kids are caring. When you ask kids what's most important to their parents, almost all of them say achievement or happiness. They don't say caring. So there is this gap between what parents espouse and they convey day to day, especially, I think true around college admissions and my own kids have called me out on this that, you know, we say we want our kids to go to any college we want, but the only colleges we visit are highly selective colleges that are going to reflect well on us, with our friends or provide status to us. And adolescents are razor sharp alert to hypocrisy. I mean, they see it right away. So part of it is, I think us as parents, really closing this gap between what we espouse and what we believe. And none of this is easy. I don't mean to suggest any of this is easy. Part of it is really, in my mind, systematically elevating a wide range of colleges. I you know, I think Harvard's a great place to go to college. I think there are 100 colleges that are just as good or this. I. Harvard is not or hundreds that are just as good as Harvard as an undergrad experience. So I think there's this mythology that there are 25 great colleges in the country, and it's just absolutely not true. Anything we can do to expand the number of colleges that students are interested in, I think is very important. I think it's on admissions deans to really get serious about ethical character too, like right now, my experience with admissions deans and in our surveys is that ethical character is a factor. Like, if there are two kids that have roughly similar scores, grades, etc, and one kid has been doing service and really seems to demonstrate a commitment to their community, Deans also don't want scandals on their campuses. They don't want kids who are going to violate an ethics code. They're going to put a thumb on the scale for the kid who is ethical. But it's not a big factor in the way that your grades and your test scores are often big factors, and I think it needs to be a bigger factor if we're really serious about this. So I think, you know, I think there's, there are things that people can do on many fronts. I mean, I'm just giving you a few examples, things that employers can do, a lot of different, things parents can do, and none of them are easy. But I think we are learning, you know, every day, what the toll is, what the cost is when we don't pay attention to these things. Let me just say one other thing, which is, parents are worried about the mental health crisis, and so even if they're not especially concerned about their kids' morality, they are concerned about their kids' mental health. And I, you know, I don't think we're going to therapize or medicate our way out of these mental health woes. I think this is a matter largely of creating healthy communities where people really care about each other, and I think around colleges too, and around achievement pressure. You know, if we don't find ways to dial down achievement pressure, we're going to continue to have high rates of mental health problems in many communities. So there's hope. There's more and more motivation, I think, for parents to get focused on this.

Sheila Akbar:

I couldn't agree more. At the same time, parents had a lot on their plate, and we just don't do enough to support them. And I think one of the things that is standing in the way of building those communities of care is a lack of trust. Actually, I think you told me that the first time we met, and it has stuck with me, because it really resonated. It's true that when you feel your neighbor's kid is your kid's competition, there is a lack of trust there, right? And and, like you said, I mean, this is a puzzle with many, many parts, but I think that's, that's a fundamental ingredient to moving towards where, where we want to go is, is rebuilding trust.

Rick Weissbourd:

Yeah. I mean, these are the kind of decision points that I think are really important for parents to think carefully about. I mean, there's one way. And this is just, again, illustrative. It's intended to be example. You can if you have another kid in your kid's class who's also interested in Cornell, let's say, and you're going on a college visit, you can offer to take that kid with you on a college visit. One way to think about that is, well, that might give this other kid a leg up, and they may not take two kids from my high school, at court, at same high school at Cornell. Another way to think about it is, you're modeling something critical for your kid, which is, it's not about you, and this is what we do. We are generous. We do things sometimes that have a cost to ourselves. And these are these kind of forks in the road where I think parents really need to do the right thing. They need to encourage their kids to help other kids on a test, even when it's graded on a curve. And then these are things that you know happen week to week, day to day. And if parents have want their kids to have a strong moral compass, and they say that they do, this is the direction they need to go.

Sheila Akbar:

Well, I think that's a great place to leave it. Rick, thank you so much. This is a wonderful discussion. I'm so excited to continue talking with you offline and see what thoughts you have to share on all the things that are absolutely going to be coming up over and over again over the next 10 or 15 years.

Rick Weissbourd:

It's been a delight to talk to you. So thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it.

Sheila Akbar:

Thanks, Rick. So as you could tell, I could have gone on and on with Rick about everything that he said, and I'm sure you heard themes in there that I've echoed before on on other episodes of the podcast, but I do think it's important to reiterate here, like our goal as parents of teenagers should not just be to get our kids into the best colleges possible. It's to prepare them to be the adult they're going to be, and instill in them the values we want them to have, and those values should include ethical and moral values, and I'm not going to tell you what they should be. That's for your kid to figure out for. Themselves, but we need to have a placeholder for that sort of character, and to really help our kids understand how how vitally important it is to develop that sense of self, to develop the ability to care for other people, to care across difference, and to put that care into our lives and into our communities. All right, as I wrap up here, I do want to plug our September live learning session. You can go to Signet education.com/events, to register, it will be broadly on what matters most in selective college admissions. And if you want to get a sneak peek at some of that content, or you want to get access to my asynchronous course of the same name, you could check out our website for more information. As always, I'm really interested in hearing your feedback, suggestions for other guests, questions that you might have, so feel free to email us at info@signeteducation.com, and we'll get those questions answered. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next time.