Making Caring Common Project: Study finds that students value achievement over caring for others.

Kids Value Achievement Over Caring Because They Think Their Parents Do Too

Kids Value Achievement Over Caring Because They Think Their Parents Do Too

The XX Factor
What Women Really Think
June 25 2014 12:28 PM

Kids Value Achievement Over Caring Because They Think Their Parents Do Too

Of the 10,000 students surveyed, 80 percent chose achievement as their top priority.

Photo by racorn/Shutterstock

Richard Weissbourd and Stephanie Jones are two of my favorite people to talk with about children and teenagers. They teach at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and they want to shift the frame for kids’ moral development—away from thinking about themselves and toward caring about others.

Emily Bazelon Emily Bazelon




Kids who gave caring low priority tended to score low on a scale for empathy and also were less likely to say they would volunteer in their free time or help tutor a friend. When kids rank their priorities this way—and think their peers do as well—they’re “at greater risk of many forms of harmful behavior, including being cruel, disrespectful, and dishonest,” Weissbourd and Jones write.


What’s to be done? Weissbourd and Jones say that kids need to practice caring for other people, and they need role models. Check and check. One question I try to ask myself: When my kids tell me they’ve been kind to someone or helped someone who seems vulnerable, am I just as full of praise as I am if they ace math tests or English papers?

Weissbourd and Jones make this good point:

Children and youth need to learn to zoom in, listening closely and attending to those in their immediate circle, and to zoom out, taking in the big picture and considering multiple perspectives. It is by zooming out and taking multiple perspectives, including the perspectives of those who are too often invisible (such as the new kid in class, someone who doesn’t speak their language, or the school custodian), that young people expand their circle of concern and become able to consider the justice of their communities and society.

We parents need to help our kids zoom both ways. The full report is here—it’s very much worth a read.