On Cooperation
Headmaster’s Perspective
On Cooperation
12 September 2022
Note: This is the first in a series of perspectives on Ridgeview’s character pillars. Over the coming year, a perspective will be published on each of the character pillars and their relevance to the Ridgeview experience.
Ridgeview’s founders made a peculiar choice in choosing pillars rather than virtues as the touchstone of its student’s character education. It would have been more fitting and more obvious for a school seeking to establish its classical roots to incorporate the cardinal virtues instead. Such a thing would have been the obvious choice if Ridgeview’s founders had Plato and Aristotle in mind by their use of the word classical, but they did not. By ‘classical’ they meant ‘traditional’, and the ‘classical’ part of its educational offering only became more academically oriented later in its history.
In reading either Plato’s Republic or Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, one is given an abundance of opportunity to reflect on the four cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. These virtues have an historical founding not only in Hellenistic philosophy, but Roman philosophy as articulated by Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, in the Judeo-Christian context within the Old Testament books of Wisdom of Solomon and Maccabees, and in the New Testament’s Corinthians. In addition, Christian theologians such as Ambrose and Augustine made clear their intent to link the cardinal and theological virtues.
These virtues, through elaborate exhortations and long precedence, came to undergird the Western conception of who we are and what we ought to be. These virtues are certainly discussed at length within our curriculum, but it is the pillars that are on the walls and that all of us who are a part of this community put our names to. The eight pillars include cooperation, citizenship, courage, perseverance, honesty, integrity, respect, and responsibility. We will begin with cooperation.
The preamble to our character pillars includes this declaration: “These pillars represent the qualities we believe most important to the preservation of our community.” They are also instrumental in the formation of our community. A community or society is held together by an appeal to a common code, and in order for that code to be known, it must be taught and bequeathed from one generation to the next. Consequently, the next line of the preamble: “We teach them beginning in Kindergarten, and we find opportunities throughout the curriculum to discuss examples of each pillar and reward those exhibiting these qualities.” Similar to what William Penn remarked of government, the purpose of our community is to reward virtue and repress vice. As an aside, and somewhat confusingly, despite Ridgeview’s founders calling these ‘pillars’, they are referred to twice as ‘virtues’ within the preamble. This begs several questions: Is cooperation a virtue or a pillar? Can it be taught? Ought it to be lauded?
Cooperation is detailed as follows: “I recognize that I am engaged in an endeavor to develop my character and intellect, which I must pursue with a purpose while recognizing that others are integral to my success in this.” There is a great deal in this sentence worth considering. First, not all people, children, adolescents, or adults, recognize any endeavor, let alone one that consciously seeks to improve one’s character and intellect. They may think of pleasing parents or teachers, impressing friends, being validated by a peer group, or gaining admission to a particular college or university, but whatever happens in the way of intellectual or moral development just sort of occurs along the way. The assumption seems to be that it is a byproduct of conventional education and normal maturation. Ridgeview seeks to make this intentional, to cause us to be deliberate in our moral and intellectual growth, and to comprehend that it is an endeavor that may begin here but ends only with the conclusion of our lives. We are not, however, expected to do this alone.
The word ‘idiot’ has a Greek etymology that means “private person or individual as distinct from the state,” but the word later took on a derogatory connotation. Many scholars in the nineteenth century contended that the word was a substitute for ‘fool’ since it would be foolish not to participate in public life. While the Greeks highly esteemed civic participation and certainly criticized non-participation as is evidenced by Thucydides’ quotation from Pericles’ Funeral Oration, there is scant evidence to suggest that ‘idiot’ was synonymous with ‘fool’. Still, the suggestion that there was this connection has an appeal because virtually every worthwhile enterprise, whether it is exploration or education, requires cooperation in order to be successful. The man who sits this out, or worse, intentionally frustrates or sabotages an endeavor he is ostensibly a part of or the beneficiary of, is reasonably held in low esteem.
We come to this project of education with a purpose and an intentionality: to remove ignorance. Our efforts will have other benefits, but success is principally constituted of this. In order to be successful in this, we must have the humility to admit that we do not know, and we must possess the courage to seek a redress of our deficiencies. Sometimes and in some things we are intellectually weak; sometimes and in some things we are physically or socially weak—none of these are inherently immutable conditions. By effort and will, and with some help and the cooperation of others engaged in a similar project, these weaknesses can be attenuated or eliminated so altogether that they become our strengths. While adolescence may make this process painful, adulthood and its attendant responsibilities will conspire to make it nigh to impossible. It is better that we should become acculturated to self-reflection and personal improvement in our youth so that the lessons that must be learnt and re-learnt over a lifetime can be incorporated into our adult lives.
To this end, there must be an element of our culture that insists on the notion that what begins with our effort and will, will be complemented and enhanced by our cooperation with others travelling a similar path. This cooperation, which is the “association for mutual benefit,” influences everything from our conversations in classes, to the performing arts, to the feedback we receive on our essays. When it ceases to be competition in the sense of “me at the expense of you,” or “argument for the sake of winning rather than coming closer to the truth,” our community is the stronger for it, and a stronger community produces more resilient and thoughtful human beings.
While cooperation is not a ‘virtue’ with much historical lineage, it has always been an important element in momentous endeavors. Whether it has been war or scholarship, scientific discoveries or great works of art, cooperation has almost certainly played some part. "Non nobis solum nati sumus ortusque nostri partem patria vindicat, partem amici – Not for us alone are we born; our country, our friends, have a share in us.” Thus wrote Cicero in De Officiis (On Duties) around 44 BC, and it remains as true today as then. Not only in the sense that we have responsibilities or obligations to others, but that we derive benefits from our community with others, and that some part of what we are intending to achieve is impossible without them. They have a share in us, and we in them.
D. Anderson
Headmaster
