Learning to Give, Philanthropy education resources that teach giving and civic engagement

Agard: Dr. Gardner, thank you for having us with you this afternoon for the chance to talk about the issues involved with teaching philanthropy in schools and in youth groups and in religious organizations. We are delighted to be able to spend some time with you and are appreciative of your opening your home to us.

Gardner: Well, I'm very happy to be here, even though not in person. I addressed the Council of Michigan Foundations a couple of years ago and it was one of the most pleasant experiences I've had. I have many friends there. I'm a great admirer of Russ Mawby and glad to be with you.

Agard: Thank you. Can you talk a little bit about how you've been able to merge your intellectual life and understanding and research and all of your writing with your activism, with all of the things that you have done in your career? How have you brought those together?

Gardner: Well, it's not a very intellectual story. It is really World War II. I was always a good team mate and loyal to whatever enterprise that I was involved in, but I can't say that I was deeply engaged in larger purposes of the society. I was doing my work. I was a psychologist; I taught; I did research and so forth and so on. Well, I was 29 years old when Pearl Harbor was attacked and I got a war-time assignment with the Federal Communication Commission and then I joined the Marine Corps. And from then on I was hooked. From then on I never did anything that wasn't somehow related to larger social purposes. It was just the way I wanted to live my life once I discovered it.

Agard: I've heard you talk about, and was very impressed with, a speech you gave where you talked about the importance of the phrase "We the People" and you talked through what that was like in the summer in Philadelphia. I was wondering if you might spend a few minutes re-stating and talking to our colleagues about why those words are such important documents in the United States?

Gardner: I'd be glad to. When Governor Morris, one of the signers of the Constitution, one of the framers, was asked to prepare a clean copy of the proceedings, he wrote the preamble and he sat down and wrote these words: "We the People of the United States." Quite surprising to many people. Some delegates didn't like it. Patrick Henry objected. He said what it should say is: "We the assembled delegates of Massachusetts Bay Colony, Virginia, New Jersey, etc." But most people were thrilled, thrilled at the idea that the new nation would base its legitimacy on the people.

In Europe, the phrase just ran like wild fire through informed circles. And many Europeans, weary of monarchs, were not only thrilled but astonished that a new nation would be so bold as to find its legitimacy in that phrase.

Now, unfortunately, a lot of Americans have forgotten what the phrase means. The phrase was not "We, the government," or "We, the powerful," or "We, the experts;" just "We, the People." Us, all of us. And if we forget that, which many have, there can be dark days ahead. And I want you to call to mind that in the 1996 presidential election, fewer than 50 percent of the eligible voters voted. Now we've got to turn that around; we simply have to turn that around.

Agard: What is, then, the relationship between that concept of the power in individuals and philanthropy, and this third sector that we have in the United States?

Gardner: Well, I want to emphasize that in the United States, philanthropy involves a very large segment of the population. It is not a matter of a few wealthy people giving money to a lot of less wealthy people or poor people. All income levels participate. That's the way we do it in America. Philanthropy is a national activity. And in fact, lower income levels give a higher percent of their incomes than the higher levels. And the same generosity is evident in volunteering. It runs right through the populace.

Just to give you an idea of the power of this, in 1996, we gave $150 billion for philanthropic causes. Only 8 percent of it was from foundations; only 5 percent of it from corporations; maybe 7 percent from bequests; and all the rest from living individuals. A Mississippi River of small and modest gifts from you and me. I mean, from everybody. That gives you an idea of what we're talking about. We just have to break it away from that old image of a few rich people. This is something we're all involved in.

Agard: How would you describe the relationships between the big ideas of democracy and philanthropy and market economies?

Gardner: Well, this has been an astonishing century, and one of the lessons it has taught us, that we wouldn't necessarily have believed, is that market economies and democracy go together; they fit. Somehow they fit. Market economies flourish under democracy.

As for philanthropy, market economies provide the resources that make philanthropy possible and democracy provides the freedom and the sense of responsibility for the group that is so essential to our idea of philanthropy. So the three fit very nicely together, and those are lessons of history. That wasn't just thought up in the back room.

Agard: One of the things that has been tragic to watch recently has been the fragmenting of societies. Some of them have been historically fragmented for centuries and others we've just recently watched fall apart. Bosnia, for example; the fighting in Northern Ireland. Are there lessons in what has happened in those cultures that we need to think about here in the United States?

Gardner: Indeed there are; indeed there are. And the central lesson is that we must not take our coherence for granted. There's something mysterious, something almost beyond analysis in what holds 250 million very diverse Americans together. And we'd better think about it because we can lose it. We've seen the signs of social disintegration. We know that danger lurks and we know that sometimes a society can lose altogether that wonderful, unthinking coherence; that healthy access of agreement over disagreement; that tolerance of others that is born of the awareness that we're all in this together, that is so crucial to community. Those can be lost; and if they're lost, they're unimaginably hard to restore.

Agard: And is there a role that the independent sector plays in building that cohesion? Or that it plays if disintegration happens? What piece does this philanthropic sector play?

Gardner: Well, the philanthropic sector tackles this at almost every level. When it attempts to restore social health to a part of the city that has fallen apart, it's doing part of the job of restoring coherence to our society. When it builds community, wherever; in the nation as a whole, in the city, in the neighborhood, in institutions. It's rebuilding that coherence.

And it's terribly important that young people learn this. If their school is a community, they learn the lessons of community. They learn the importance of seeking wholeness that incorporates diversity. They learn the importance of honoring mutual obligations, which is at the heart of community. They learn accommodation. They learn trust and being worthy of trust. And those are lessons that benefit the whole society. Young people who learn those lessons in face-to-face communities are much more able to understand how they can benefit the city, how they can benefit the country.

Agard: The phrase "wholeness incorporating diversity," tell me what that is.

Gardner: I've studied community at some length over the years. You start to study community and the first thing you discover is there can be too much community. Totalitarian groups have more community than you can handle. Cults often have more community than is healthy. And what is generally missing is the element of diversity. There aren't enough different ideas and different people, different cultures rubbing up against one another, so that you soon find yourself saying, in some way: we don't want community that is not inclusive. We don't want community that rules people out. We want a community where a diversity of ideas come together.

And it is so important that I tend to mention it right off in talking about community, and I have particularly used the phrase "wholeness that incorporates diversity." Now I happen to believe that that is the transcendent task for our generation, at home and world-wide. To accomplish that would be absolutely transcendent.

Agard: In your book on self-renewal, you talk a little bit about the importance of transmitting this United States' tradition to our children. And I'm wondering if you might spend a few minutes talking about how that might be done? What teachers might do, what youth workers, what parents might do to help young people?

Gardner: Well, certainly the duties associated with inducting young people into our moral tradition are, first of all, parental duties. The most important things happen in infancy, fairly early in infancy, when a tiny baby learns those first lessons about what it means to be a social creature, what it means to be loved, what it means to be responsive and be responded to. These are crucial lessons for later social interaction.

The school is equally important; picking up after childhood, introducing the child into the big world and still teaching those lessons of mutual obligation, accommodation, tolerance, the things that hold a society together, or hold the school together, terribly important. Teachers and mentors teach both by precept and example and they do one very important additional thing: They create the conditions in which children can learn from one another.

Agard: What unique roles do private citizens in the U.S. play; that citizens in other parts of the world don't, relative to the United States and how we operate as a country?

Gardner: Well, I don't want to rule out other countries that have our same predilections about democracy, but, in my opinion, and again, I'm going to go way back to basics, the first role a citizen should play is this: If you believe in a free society, be worthy of a free society. Start with yourself. Everyone teaches by example. Sometimes some very bad lessons, and hopefully, some very good lessons. Everybody should set the goal of teaching the truth by living it. It's the hardest way but it's the best.

The second role that I see for citizens is to preserve the family. Be a good parent. There is no civic duty you will ever do, no matter how much you love your civic duties, no duty you will ever do is as important as bringing up your youngster in a healthy, value-oriented way. That's central.

And the final role is being a participating citizen, an engaged citizen. That means knowing how your society works and your government works, understanding the issues, deliberating with other citizens, voting, monitoring, and holding power accountable. That's the first rule: hold power accountable.

Agard: When you talk about private citizens doing that, how would they do that, hold power accountable?

Gardner: First of all by voting. But, by joining like-minded citizens. The environmentalists have done an astonishing job. Whether or not you agree with everything they've done, they've done an amazing job of joining together to gain political power to get their points across. And that's how we got the vote for women in 1920 and that's how we got civil rights; the citizens joining together and acting together. None of those movements could imaginably have been hatched in the bureaucracy. And I respect the bureaucracy; I respect government; I respect government agencies. After all, I was the head of an agency with a very large number of employees, well over 100,000 employees. But you can't imagine the Civil Rights Movement being hatched in a government agency, nor the women's movements. National Parks, the Pure Food and Drug Laws, they came out of citizens, banning together.

Agard: What would you want your own grandchildren to know about this sector?

Gardner: Again, I'm going to go way back to basics. I want my grandchildren to know their history, the history of their culture, the history of their religion, the history of their kind of people, the history of the various cultures which impinge on our culture or have been assimilated within our culture. I want them to know the long road that humans have traveled to get where they are now. All the glorious victories and all the dreadful defeats and the grandeur and the misery that is the human story. I want them to know that it's there and they're a part of it. I want them to feel very deeply their commitment to this. I want them to understand that history has a lot of chapters and they're going to have to write the next chapter. And it matters deeply how they do it. Not to carelessly throw away freedoms that their forbearers won in hardship and suffering; not to fail in the trust that we've placed in them to write that next chapter. That's what I want my grandchildren to understand. And if they understand that they will find the non-profit sector a very fruitful way to pursue some of those goals.

Agard: There are some people, groups, in our society who will take exception to our attempting to infuse this information into the school curriculum. And I'm wondering if you have some thoughts regarding the position that teachers and other educators might take about why these democratic values are important to be taught in schools?

Gardner: Right. Well, first of all, there is no way, no way of banishing values from the classroom. The teacher in the way she or he teaches, behaves, scolds, rewards, is teaching values; they can't help it. We all teach by example and you can't rule out the value dimension. Now actually there are relatively few values that are controversial, and of course, they get all the attention. Everybody talks about the ones that people fight over and throw bombs over and so forth and so on. But, the United States Constitution has a lot of values imbedded in it and there's practically no controversy if you pass those on to children. There will be no controversy if you teach children to be fair, to be honest, to have integrity, to have courage, to be generous, etc.

Eric Champs, who has done a wonderful job of creating communities within schools, teaching children to be members of a community has a wonderful exercise, which I want to mention to you. I remember the one example.

The teacher says to her assembled six- or seven-year-olds, very young children: now I want to know what kind of class you want this to be. You come to me saying so-and-so did something wrong, I want us to decide what's right. So, what kind of class do we want this to be? Little Mary gets up and says, I want it to be a class where Johnny can't steal my pencilbox. And all the kids laugh and discuss it; they all agree. The teacher writes on the board, "We're a class that doesn't steal." Johnny gets up and says, I would like it to be a class where bigger kids can't beat up on littler kids. Johnny's somewhat small. So, the kids laugh and they talk about that and they agree with him. So she puts some distillation of that on the board. And by the time the session is over, she's got almost all of the eternal verities written down on the board; coming from the children.

And then she has that typed up, handed out to them, and she reminds them all year: This is your Constitution; you're the ones that decided on this. It all goes off with practically no controversy. It's a wonderful way of introducing values into the classroom.

Agard: There are going to be young people at the conference. There will be highschoolers, age 15 to 22, some of them just in the middle of their college experience. What advice do you have for them, the next generation, they're right on the cusp of moving into leadership positions? What would you offer to them that they should be thinking about?

Gardner: The first thing that I emphasize with young people is find the kind of service that interests you; that stirs your passions; that has meaning for you. Because there's all kinds of service, all kinds of volunteering, all kinds of giving, some of which are interesting to you, some of which are not. It may be your church, it may be work with children; everybody differs. But you will learn more and grow more if you choose a kind of service that really goes to your heart.

Agard: Anything else that you have that you would offer to this group who are starting out to try to write a curriculum and to infuse it into what's happening in schools and in church groups and in youth groups? Anything that you want to make sure gets into that process?

Gardner: Well, I'd like to go back--I'd like to tell you a story of a bit of philanthropy that is so American and so out of the roots of our culture that it doesn't fit the common conception of what philanthropy is.

I was chairman of the National Urban Coalition, which was created by a group of private citizens, leading citizens from all sectors, from labor, from corporations, from religion, government, whatever, possibly the most distinguished group we've ever put together in the private sector, to deal with the terrible riots, urban riots of the late '60s. The cities were burning, people were afraid and so they created this Urban Coalition. And I was asked to be the first full-time chairman of it.

Well, one day, busy day, a letter came across my desk from 10 young soldiers, GIs, from Fort Ord, California, trained in their training and about to be shipped to Viet Nam. And despite the imminence of that and the turmoil that that created in many minds, they were worrying about what I was worrying about: What's going to happen to our cities? And a very American thought about it: What can we do about it? So they said, if everybody would just contribute 10 percent of their income, we could build a fund that would be so huge, that we could rebuild our cities.

Well, that was a very appealing argument, but the stunning thing was that attached to the letter were ten checks. Each representing 10 percent of the pay, the monthly pay, of that GI. Well, you can believe that all work stopped in the office and everybody crowded around to see this letter and those checks. One young woman whose husband was in Viet Nam burst into tears. And the reason I tell you this story is it's right out of the grass roots of Americans. It's right out of the way so many Americans think, that we can be proud of them.

Agard: Dr. Gardner, thank you for your insight and your wisdom and sharing with us all of the experiences that you have gathered during your research and your practice. You certainly are a great model for all of us in philanthropy and we are delighted to have been able to spend some time with you.

Gardner: Well, thank you very much. I must say I really do thank you for the opportunity to talk about my pet ideas. I care a lot about these subjects and this is an opportunity. So thanks.

Agard: Thank you.

 

Dr. John W. Gardner

Dr. Gardner is a Consulting Professor at Stanford University in the School of Education. In 1955, John Gardner served as President of the Carnegie Corporation and of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

He served as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare from 1965 to 1968. He then became chairman of the National Urban Coalition and, in 1970, he founded Common Cause. Dr. Gardner resigned as chairman of Common Cause in 1977. From 1978 to 1980 he worked with others to found a new organization, Independent Sector, designed to preserve and strengthen the voluntary sector in American society. He has served as consultant to a number of organizations, among them the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies and as a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Educational Testing Service.

He served on President Kennedy's Task Force on Education and was chairman of Kennedy's Commission on International Educational and Cultural Affairs. He was chairman of President Johnson's Task Force on Education and of the White House Conference on Education (1965).

In 1964, Dr. Gardner was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civil honor in the United States.

(Self-Renewal, John W. Gardner, 1995)