91´«Ã½

Public Virtual Lecture Title: Raising Caring, Justice-Minded Children in a Morally Troubled Time

Tuesday, March 21, 2023, 5:30 pm, Virtual

"This talk will explore how we can raise children who care about others and about justice as well as the particular challenges of raising caring, justice-minded children in this time. These challenges include the degree to which parents have prioritized achievement and happiness over concern for others and the common good, moral corruption in our country and widespread political antagonism and polarization. How during this time can we raise children who are not cynical or detached in the face of these challenges but caring and committed to a better and more just world?"

Richard Weissbourd‘s work focuses on moral development, vulnerability and resilience in childhood, and effective schools and services for children. 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, ethical, mature romantic relationships.

Professor Weissbourd 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.

Professor Weissbourd earned a B.A. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Counseling and Consulting Psychology from Harvard University.