In the sylvan setting of the land of Ethos runs the sinuous Alligator River (1), named for the reptiles who populate its water and banks and who dine upon any local denizens unfortunate enough to fall into their gaping maws. On one side of the river lives Sylvia: sensitive, demure, and chaste: across the river lives Hector, Sylvia's love: proud and strong, in spirit and mind. No wall of stone or statute more effectively separated this Thisbe from her Pyramis than did the Alligator River. No Hero pined more for her Leander, no Juliet longed more for her Romeo, than did Sylvia for her Hector.

Independent and resourceful, Sylvia determined to discover a means of transporting herself safely across the Alligator River to join her lover. Hector, Sylvia's first encounter in her quest was with Sinbad, the Sailor, Sylvia explained to Sinbad her plight, testified to him aloud her great love for Hector, and implored Sinbad to lend her his boat, the only means of transport across the river, Sinbad, opportunistic and wanton, agreed to the loan of his boat upon the condition that Sylvia first spend the night with him.

Sylvia's indignation at Sinbad's promiscuous proposition and its challenging of her chastity and of the fidelity to Hector provoked her to tears, and she turned from Sinbad in anger to pursue other alternatives for crossing the river.

Still distraught, Sylvia next encountered Ivan, the Uninvolved, to whom she related her predicament and Sinbad the Sailor's coarse recommendation to her. Ivan listened impatiently, and a slight frown of disdain crossed his face as he issued forth his reaction: "Don't bother me with your problems, Sylvia; I've enough to worry about myself without carrying the burden of your petty hardships."

Separation from Hector was hardly a "petty" consideration for Sylvia, however, and she departed Ivan more hurt and distressed than ever. Confused, lovesick, and dispirited. Sylvia decided reluctantly to return to Sinbad to accept his bargain, rationalizing that the end, being with her lover Hector, justified the means, compromising her fidelity and chastity. Sinbad the Sailor, true to his bargain, accepted Sylvia into his cabin for the night and lent her his boat the following day so that Sylvia soon crossed the Alligator River for a joyful reunion with Hector. Hector welcomed Sylvia into his arms, for he loved and admired her deeply. For one full day Hector and Sylvia enjoyed the blissful peace of their warm and tender regard for one another. Yet soon Sylvia, nagged by her conscience for the expedient she had adopted for realizing her purpose, admitted to Hector the tough bargain Sinbad had insisted upon.

Hector was not sympathetic. In fact, his rage at Sylvia's betrayal of him culminated in his casting aside of Sylvia; Hector dismissed Sylvia from his presence, vowing never again to look at her for her infidelity. Sylvia's remorse, shame, and dejection at Hector's reaction soon festered into rage at his harsh lack of understanding. As Sylvia wandered about, she happened upon Atlas, who listened to her story and completely empathized with Sylvia's ire at Hector: in fact, Atlas suggested that Sylvia retaliate against Hector. She agreed, and Atlas assumed upon his shoulders the task of becoming the agent of Hector's punishment. Sylvia led Atlas back to Hector, and Atlas brutally beat Hector, a spectacle that was accompanied by Sylvia's scornful laughter, for now she had bruised Hector physically as he had bruised her emotionally.

When the King of Ethos, Solomon the Wise and Just, heard of the Alligator River incident, he proclaimed that all five of his subjects, Sylvia, Hector, Sinbad, Ivan and Atlas, were morally culpable, that all five had made immoral value choices and judgments, and that all five should suffer some consequence for their sin. Solomon, wise enough to avoid confusing principle with practice or confusing the proclaiming of judgment with the executing of justice, delegated responsibility to his nine high magistrates to make the punishments fit the crimes. Their first task was to declare who of the five was guilty of the most heinous crime, who was guilty of the next most odious sin, and so forth until they had listed all five subjects in order of most morally reprehensible to least morally reprehensible. The high magistrates, after much painful deliberation, presented to King Solomon the following list:

1.____
2.____
3.____
4.____
5.____

Young people and adults all too frequently face "Alligator Rivers," which they must cross or turn back from: the treacherous waters of moral and social problems that confront us all. One justification for sending one's child to a private school is the conviction held by many that independent schools in general are more effective in sustaining in their students the absolute moral values imbued in the home, church, and community, the very values that provide footholds on the slippery banks of the Alligator River.

The reasons for the relative effectiveness of private schools in the shoals and waters of values training are manifold. First, the constituency of a private school is generally far more homogeneous than the constituency of public schools or other institutions with which children identify. Private schools while pluralistic in terms of the racial. ethnic, religious, and political heritages of its students' backgrounds serve a public relatively single-minded about the goals, expectations, aspirations, and values it cherishes. Thus, while institutions of the State must serve catholic interests and broad general needs, the private school is far more likely chartered to serve narrow, focused needs.

Independent schools as a rule are more confident about the values they proselytize. Many independent schools have long heritages and strong traditions that serve as breakwaters against the currents of trendy mores and fashionable but suspect lifestyle ripples. A simple illustration involves the matter of church and State. In public schools, of course, the State forbids the recitation of the Lord's Prayer or even the mandatory participation in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. No one would argue that a half-hearted rendition of the Lord's Prayer or a disinterested recitation of the Pledge to the flag in a private school classroom would inculcate the values of spirituality and patriotism in a child. On the other hand, it is quite possible that parents send their children to private school, among other reasons, because parents wish to involve their children with institutions that do actively engage in such social rituals that traditionally have complemented the training and the values established in the home. Similarly, because private schools are distinct from the State whereas public schools are agents of the State, private schools may generally incorporate into their curriculum or omit from their curriculum any learning experience, secular or non-secular, or any subject that the institution sees fit to include or exclude. Thus, just as a person patronizes a church, a service organization, or a club because he or she believes in the values that the particular institution has manifested over the years, so too a private school patron supports the school with some confidence that the values he or she believes in will be supported, for if they are not, the patron may simply remove support.

A third reason for the effectiveness of the private school as it navigates the waters of ethics and values is that there are frequently close ties between the school and its community: the parents, the church, the town. Most private schools are quite small and consequently offer and enjoy the benefits of close working relationships with parents and other friends of the school. The private schools reflect in general mainstream, traditional values because they draw their resources from a constituency of such values, a constituency that monitors in a sense the direction of the schools by the amount of enthusiasm and support it lends the school. One need only note that in an era of radically changing demographics, private school support has grown substantially. That growth is due in part to disenchantment with the academic and social record of public schools in recent years, due in part to a growing sense in the public that it is the private school where values of home and community are likely to be reinforced and not dissipated.

A final consideration about private schools and their sailings through narrow values straits is the fact that the private school is likely to act as an institution in an exemplary fashion, to live the life of traditional values that it espouses to its students. Thus, through its commitment to serving others, through its insistence on academic thoroughness and scholarly integrity, through its nurturing of an honor code that condemns and punishes dishonesty in any form, and through its discipline system that obligates students to face and accept the consequences of their actions, the private school equips the student with the gear necessary to sail the most troubled seas . . .

...or the most alligator-infested rivers. "The Alligator River Story" and its implications exemplify perfectly the crises of morals and values that all schools and institutions are struggling to address. This particular story has been widely publicized and utilized in some public school programs that have introduced and packaged sex-education, drug-education, and values-clarification type courses. The rationale for "Alligator River" exercise is to illustrate the relativity of values: any group of students or adults judging the five characters of the story would arrive at conflicting assessments of the moral culpability of each character. Discussion, of the rationale for each individual's ordering of the characters would require that individual to consider his own value system and morals and to see that it is likely to be in conflict with that of some others. The goals of the use of the exercise in the classroom would be to ask students to contemplate their values and to be tolerant of those with alternative value systems. Herein lies the problem with such courses and strategies: adolescents do not need to hear or to consider that they have "values choices," that "depend upon the situation," or that "morals are relative." Students are children who need to have clear channel charts, bold buoys, and a vigorous wind before they set their sail in untraveled waters. Students need absolute values not relative ones by which to steer themselves.

Drug education and sex education are two areas in particular in which too many schools are confusing issues rather than clarifying them. Most educators agree that students should be taught the pharmacological and physiological effects of drugs. Then, should not moral suasion follow education? What if after a series of values-clarification exercises such as "The Alligator River Story," a student decides that one value he holds dearly, one that he has tested, one confirmed by acceptance by others he respects, and one he would prefer not to live without (all "values-clarification" criteria for "testing values"), is that being euphoric, that taking drugs daily is more important than anything else? Who tells the student that. as an absolute value, the use of and abuse of drugs are not only harmful but also wrong?

In sex-education class, the health teacher confronts adolescents who already possess the heavy equipment for sexual experimentation. The sex-education course provides the blueprint for sexuality and even identifies the sources for purchasing the necessary materials. Then, who tells the children not to build the boat?

Our society suffers now because we indulge ourselves with moral, political, and social equivocations, equivocations perhaps as much due to philosophical legacies of existential amorality as to the velocity of social and technological change of our times. In this storm of values conflicts and moral confusion, one clear beacon is the school that teaches, lives, and confirms absolute values. That school may have a chapel program because such a program affirms the importance of human faith and spirituality and condemns apostasy as wrong. That school may teach the facts and incidents of World War II or of the Vietnam War, but the school would also confront the moral dilemmas those wars and all wars present to man. Even here there is an absolute moral value that should be affirmed: killing another human is an immoral act, a wrong. We must of course understand that the soldier defending himself or herself and his or her country (just as the parent protecting the family from an assailant) may be called upon by the necessities of the moment to kill or harm another human being, Cain's sin. That soldier should return from war with two wounds however: the physical wounds, which heal, and the moral wounds, which don't. That school may as well teach "The Alligator River Story" as a woeful exercise in moral considerations, but the thrust of the exercise should not be that values are relative but that values are absolute. All five characters of the story are culpable and deserving of reprobation: Sylvia for her infidelity and sadism, Sinbad for his opportunism. Ivan for his moral aloofness, Hector for his unforgivingness, and Atlas for his violence.

The school that helps its students traverse the "Alligator Rivers" of the world will likely be the private school whose tradition, whose charter, and whose purpose solidify into a firm commitment to the absolute values that no Alligator River need erode.

(1) "Alligator River Story" adapted from Joseph Fletcher's Situation Ethics, 1966.

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Author: Patrick F. Bassett, Vincent-Curtis Educational Register, 1980/81. Reprinted with permission.