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Moral Education
January/February 2005
by Baolu Lan '06

Baolu Lan, an English major, plans to attend law school and then work for social justice.

Sallie House in St. Petersburg, Florida, is a children’s crisis shelter that provides care to victims of abuse and neglect who are in the custody of the state. From June through August 2004, under the auspices of the AYA’s Community Service Summer Fellowship Program and the Yale Club of Tampa Bay, I worked full-time at Sallie House as a direct-care provider to 18 children. I took part in all aspects of their waking lives—from meals and diaper changes to field trips and conflict resolution. When the children slept, I mopped and cleaned the house.

The fellowship experience transformed me.

I come from an immigrant family that has always believed in education, a solid work ethic, and big dreams. We were poor when we first came to the United States from China, but I have been lucky enough to go to Andover and Yale on scholarship. If I could summon a genie from a bottle and grant all the children at Sallie House one gift only, I would wish for parents who were as supportive and loving as my own. Perhaps then the world of disadvantages in which they live, and the world of education and privilege in which I now find myself, would not seem so far apart.

One disadvantage that Yale students face is that we can lose sight of the ultimate goal of higher education: not only to learn about the history of ideas and human struggles, but also to carry this knowledge and vision into society and to transform ideals into social reality. In college I have loved reading some of the greatest ethicists in Western thought, such as Aristotle, Plato, and Kant, but their moving writings on goodness and moral character did not have much bearing on my life until I worked at Sallie House. There I found my faith in goodness challenged daily by the sight of the hurt children around me.

They all come from damaged homes, and they are emotionally handicapped in ways I cannot begin to fathom. Beneath their grinning faces they are not like children I have known.

Parents are a basic unit of society, but when I saw these kids, I felt an overpowering sense of frustration that both their parents and our system had failed them. When I lay in bed at night, it upset me that each child’s past was yet another story of how human beings can be so inhumane, even to their own offspring.

But somewhere during my first month at Sallie House, I discovered that despite his or her history, each child’s present time, the time we spent together, could bring healing, reform, and hope for a break in the cycle of intergenerational violence. One of my favorite kids was a chubby-cheeked little boy who liked to tap new people on the shoulder and introduce himself, pointing at his chest with his thumb. When I first met him, he would lash out at others unpredictably. One moment he would be climbing up on my knee and blowing kisses—and the next moment, he would start shouting in anger and using profane language that no three-year-old should know.

Yet only four weeks into my stay at the Sallie House, this toddler made amazing improvement. He became affectionate, caring, and tireless in telling me the things he loved: Spider-Man, cookies, “Lulu” (his nickname for me), and his mom.

However, the reason he improved was neither expert therapeutic child care from the staff nor individualized attention. Rather, this three-year-old boy deserved the credit for his own progress: he possessed the resilience to survive and the marvelous ability to adapt to a better environment. I noticed these two qualities—resilience and an incredible capacity for self-adjustment—in many of my Sallie House kids.

There’s a maxim inscribed on the ivory-white walls in a hall on the Andover campus: “Goodness without knowledge is weak, but knowledge without goodness is dangerous.” The unparalleled education Yale students receive completes only half that equation. Outside the classrooms, labs, and libraries, we are acquiring an education of moral character as well. The AYA’s Community Service Summer Program helped teach me and numerous others not just knowledge, but the goodness that must accompany it.

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