The Common Core or the common core

I am sixty one years and I am still in the process of understanding who am I and what my role in the world is.  That is a good thing. Those who say that they have it all figured out are fooling themselves or have packed it in.  To be alive means to be learning and learning means finding out about yourself and the world you live in.  Can there be anything more relevant or meaningful?  We are all learning what it means to be human and how to relate to each other.  We should be an endless source of interest, wonder,curiosity to ourselves and others.  The research has borne this out-those who stay engaged mentally, physically and socially live longer and have a better quality of life than people who sit back thinking they have it all figured out.  This doesn't mean that someone should become self absorbed thinking about oneself all the time.  Quite the opposite, we learn about ourselves by interacting with others.  We learn about others when we are able to empathize with them and discover what we have in common and how we differ. 

It is a great experience to discover something in common with someone who initially seemed so different.  Likewise we benefit from the differences we discover in people with whom we share many commonalities.   Our social relationships shape our identity-it is through them that we reveal to ourselves who we are and that process never ends or at least should never end.  We are "works in progress" always incomplete in the process of becoming whole.  As soon as we decide that we are "finished products" we are more likely to think of other people as "finished products" and consequently we make up our minds about ourselves and them. (Our minds were not made to be made up.) 

The reseach of Carol Dweck and David Yeager exploring people's perception of themselves and others has empirically shown how essential this basic perception is to all that we do or say and to all learning.  When we view ourselves as "works in progress" can let ourselves learn without judging ourselves as lacking.  We can admit to being wrong and not condemn ourselves but rather chalk it up as part of the learning process.  When we believe that same thing about other people, it changes how we interact with them and how they in turn interact with us.  "Works in progress" makes it a lot harder to separate people into groups or categories.  It allows us to separate behavior from identity-the person from the act.

If someone like myself is still learning about who I am, what about young people?  They are in the midst of not only discovering who they are but are struggling to get the words right, to get a handle on what exactly is going on with them.  Think of great works of literature like Hamlet or The Great Gatsby and you will find at the core of these stories,  characters in the process of discovering who they are and what their role is in the world.  Works like that endure because they tap into something timeless and universal-the human experience.  We are drawn to these stories because we identify with these characters and we hope that by seeing what they do we might get a better understanding of who we are and what we should do.
 
What does all of this have to do with bullying prevention?  Everything.  Bullying prevention is really about how we treat one another.  It is all about social interactions and people figuring out who they are in relation to others.  When people make up their minds about someone and put a fixed label on the person, it is easier to either bully that person or ignore that person being bullied.  It is easier to distance ourselves from people who in our minds are "finished products" - not capable of changing.  This distancing allows us to cut ourselves off from the process of learning anything new about the person and discovering what we have in common with that person.    Research has shown that the biggest barrier for bystanders to intervene or report bullying is the perception of difference in others. 

I am not an expert on the Common Core standards and I have reservations about them as the solution to our problems of education.  Putting that issue aside, I suggest that perhaps a better approach would be to look at the common core without the capitals.  What is our common core?  What are we about? Who are we? How do we live in the world and relate to each other?  These are not easy questions and the thinking that they prompt makes us go deeper.  Every subject matter ultimately probes these questions albeit in different ways.  The very nature of learning should bring people together in common pursuit of these never ending questions. 

Why not truly connect students to each other in learning about each other and themselves?  Why not have them read the rich and exciting social psychology on why people do what they do?  Why not have them explore issues related to bystander behavior?  Why not learn about mindsets and fixed mindsets versus growth mindsets?  Why not explore what it means to be human?  Would students be bored? Quite the opposite - they are hungry to discover who they are.  They need to understand what is going on inside their hearts and minds and the hearts and minds of others.  Bullying prevention (how we treat each other) is all about the common core of what it means to be human.  By turning it into a program or another issue/problem on a long list, we miss a tremendous opportunity to connect students not just to the core of learning but to the core of what it means to be human.   They want us to educate them meaning to guide them in discovering who they are and what is at their core.

McDonald's For Lunch

Michael Fullan says that effective leaders rely less on a strategy and more on being strategic.  Strategy is  usually a program or a plan that people need to follow in order to achieve the desired change.  There are many reasons why this approach fails:

• It is a one size fits all and every school is unique with a different set of strengths and a different culture.
• It can imply that what happened or is happening is somehow deficient.  It can be veiled criticism implying blame.
• It usually does the thinking for people who like to think of themselves as good thinkers.
• It comes ready made and people like to being involved in the making of things.
• It becomes an easy target for people to block or passively resist.
• It is usually a solution to a problem and not connected to reaching for a goal or principle.

Being strategic means taking into the account the change process and recognizing why people are often resistant to change.  It means looking at what is already working in a school and the strengths that are unique to that school and then finding a way to build on the positive.  It means tying all proposed changes to the core mission of the school, tapping into the original moral purpose of people.  It means letting the people involved with the change be active in determining the plan of action.  

One of the hardest things a leader has to do is leading without controlling.  Too often people in leadership positions think that because they are the leaders  they are in charge and that they know more than the people they lead.  Leaders don't know more but they have the responsibility to tap into and mobilize the collected knowledge and skills of the people they lead.  To do this they need to be strategic: knowing what will connect with the hearts and minds of the people they lead and creating the right conditions for people to work together to shape the type of school they want and need to have.  

Here is an example of being strategic: proposing McDonald's for lunch.  This might sound strange but my son shared an article he read about change and it mentioned this phenomenon.  Imagine a group of people sitting around trying to determine where they should go for lunch.  No one wants to step forward and make a suggestion for fear of being shot down, criticized or thought of as being too assertive.  Someone throws out the idea of going to McDonald's.  Suddenly the silent group become united in saying that McDonald's wasn't the greatest idea.  People go from being out on a limb (vulnerable) to being in a one up position of coming up with an idea that might not be the greatest but at least it is greater than the McDonald's idea.  After a while several people throw out ideas and finally the best one emerges very often without one person being able to claim credit.  The group just needed to get kick started and once the process got going the best solution emerged from the discussion.

Whoever threw out the McDonald's idea needed to be pretty secure.  The person who threw out that idea was being strategic.  The person knew the group probably had some good ideas but were reluctant to go first and risk criticism.  A good leader is not concerned with getting credit. I doubt people would point to the person who suggested McDonald's as being the one who ultimately was responsible to going to a good place for lunch.  That person was a leader who sacrificed his/her ego for the greater good.

A good leader knows what conditions are needed for people to become leaders themselves.  A good leader has a great deal of trust in the people in the organization.  A good leader gets the ball rolling in the right direction and believes that ultimately change must be owned by the people who need to change. 

 

Don't forget that the people there already were hungry and lunch was a common goal for all of them.  If a leader suggested McDonald's for lunch and it wasn't lunch time and no one was hungry the whole idea wouldn't work.  A leader has to "read" the group and determine what they are ready to hear and know what their needs are.  Trying to convince people to eat when they aren't hungry just doesn't work-never has and never will.  I wish our policy makers at least knew that little piece of common sense when it came to getting people to change.

Suspending Suspensions

I just read a news article about the LA School District ending its policy for suspending defiant students. I don't know how far this policy extended or if teachers and principals were previously told that suspension was required if a student was defiant.  Did this mean that if  students refused to do anything that they risked being suspended?

This reminded me of one of the saddest moments I had as a principal.  There was this first grade student  who had transferred to our school having spent the previous year in kindergarten in a different school. His family was pretty transient and he ended up only spending one year at our school.  When we reviewed his records from kindergarten, it turned out that he was suspended 5-6 times during that previous school year.  If this boy had any problem, it was that he was rambunctious.  I didn't consider rambunctious a problem-it was sort came with the territory of being a young boy.  I considered it our job as educators to make schools work for all students especially kids who were just learning how to "go to school".  If you stop and think about it (a lot of adults don't do this) it is not easy to walk into a new environment with a lot of other kids of all different backgrounds, temperaments, personalities along with all the adults that you have to figure out and expect kids to adjust to all the expectations and demands placed on them.  It is amazing that most kids make this adjustment so easily.  Just think of how long it takes us adults to adjust to new situations.

The kids who have trouble adjusting often have backgrounds where there have been issues related to trusting adults.  Many kids from these backgrounds might lack stable father figures if they have them at all.  Many kids might have had a series of adults and learned to not to depend on them.  In fact I learned early on as an educator, that many kids had to learn how to function at too early an age on their own without having to depend on undependable adults.  These were survival skills for many of kids.  In addition to being rambunctious (I enjoy kids who are rambunctious) this particular boy had learned not to automatically do what he was told.  It wasn't because he wanted to defy adults it was more that he always didn't see the reason why he should drop what interested him just because some adult decided he should stop doing what he was doing.

He had a terrific first grade teacher and  I worked with her very closely on making sure this boy would experience school as a place where he belonged and could succeed.  We decided that we both needed to invest a little more time one to one with this boy to develop  a positive relationship with him.  We both realized that he needed this extra one to one time to trust the key adults in his life-he couldn't just get it from being one kid in a class of twenty.  This extra investment worked.  The teacher maybe gave up one or two of her lunchtimes to invite him to eat with her in the classroom just to talk together.  I invited him to eat lunch with me.  She had him help her put up some bulletin boards.  We also coached him to ask for breaks if he had trouble attending for too long.  All in all we made adjustments and he responded positively.  Did he become a student who immediately did what he was told the first time every time? No.  We realized it would take some time and he continually improved not just his behavior but his academic skills.  We discovered that one of the reasons why he didn't always respond to teacher directions was because we was very afraid of failing especially at reading.  He made sure he got special support in language arts and our main intervention was helping his feel safe to try out new skills.

All in all school became a safe place he could trust and his growth in one year was significant.  His mother saw his success and did what she could to stay in our school area for the whole year, but come the end of the year, she had to move away to a new area.  On the last day of school, this boy knew that he was moving and leaving this place where he didn't get suspended 6 times.  Our school was a place where he succeeded and people helped him learn-a school where there was no doubt he belonged.  His previous experience in kindergarten had taught him that if he didn't what he was told that he couldn't stay in the school (that was how he understood suspension-I am sure.)

On the last day of school, his last day with us, on the way out the door, he bolted from his class and ran into my office as I was getting ready to say goodbye to the kids for the summer.  He caught me and locked his arms around me as tears were falling down his face and said to me, "I am going to miss this place." That was all he could say but he knew that he would be going to another school where he probably wouldn't belong, where he had to do what he was told or else. I worried a lot about him and   don't know to  this day what happened to him.  I wished that he could have stayed with us for the rest of his time.

 I don't think it is too hard or too much to ask of our schools to make them place where kids belong, feel accepted no matter what they do and get the help and support they need to succeed.  I have never met a kid who didn't want to belong or succeed,  but they  are not able to articulate those thoughts and feelings.  Too many educators forget that and only see compliance or defiance.  Those two responses are such a very small piece of their stories.

I am glad LA is suspending their suspensions but I hope that they replace that approach with one that helps kids belong, feel safe and accepted for who they are as people.

Everywhere?

I was sitting in a Starbucks yesterday and happened to have my book, No Place for Bullying, lying on the table.  While I was in a conversation with someone, a woman stopped and  stared intently at the title.  Forgetting she didn't know that I was the author, I asked her why she was interested in it.  She said she was a retired teacher but now volunteered in an assisted living home for seniors.  I remembered that I probably should tell her that I happened to be the author of the book, so I did.  Since I became an expert now in her eyes, she asked me if I thought bullying was more of an American thing or was it multi-cultural.  She also informed that me that bullying was an issue with the seniors she worked with.  She also shared that as a teacher she worked in an inner city school with students from lower socio-economic backgrounds and she thought there was a minimal amount of bullying, while later in her career she taught a more middle class group of students and definitely there was definitely more.  I told her that those were good questions and observations that I would have to think about.  She said that she would look up my book on Amazon and that it was an easy title to remember.

Her questions about the cultural dimensions of bullying reminded me of an insight I heard James Garbarino make about the difference between suburban schools and inner city schools.  He said that there was less bullying in inner city schools because the social world and stratification was not of primary importance to kids, what was important was where you stood on the street not the school.  This was why gangs were prominent-they offered people a group to belong to and protection.  There was no need to bully for social status, the gang culture provided the means for gaining status.  In suburban schools, the social world of the school extends outside of the school so that what happens in school socially is of upmost importance.  In both cases however you have instances of kids having  to establish their own social structure without adults playing a role.  Perhaps a better way to say it is that adults in either case haven't figured out a way to connect with kids in way that doesn't try to control them.

If we want to look for situations where bullying isn't as prominent we should look to positive deviance examples-situations where something worked well.  I think that if you examine those cases where adults connect well with kids, you don't have to look any further than extra curriculum activities.  I recall a great documentary called Bad Times at Frederick Douglas High.  In the documentary recorded over a year's time at a high school in Baltimore you could witness firsthand examples of positive deviance in the midst of dysfunction.  While what happened in the classroom bordered  disaster, what happened in extra curriculum activities was inspiring.  They had a broadcast studio and a drama club that worked together to make various productions and they had an amazing debate team.  Their marching band was great.  In each of these extra's there were no motivation issues, no attendance issues and a great sense of community.  I wondered after watching it, why they wouldn't suspend normal operations and just have the entire school become a menu of extra curriculum activities.

What did the extra's have that the regular school didn't have?  The clubs and after school  activities were meaningful and purposeful and kids chose to be there.  The adults had high standards and demanded a lot from the students but the kids didn't feel controlled or manipulated-they felt supported and coached.  Most of all they all belonged, they all felt needed and important.  I highly doubt that there was any bullying in those clubs and activities.  There was conflict, struggle and many other emotions but the power structure that existed wasn't compatible with bullying.

We can't equate bullying with all human difficulty and struggle.  Bullying doest happen but it usually happens when there is a leadership vacuum or where the leadership dominates and almost forces people to create they own ways of meeting their need for autonomy, belonging and competence.   The answer to the problem of bullying isn't a secret-it rests in the experiences we all have had-times when we felt in control of our lives but had some structure organizing us to help, but not to control; when we felt connected and belonged regardless of how we performed and when we felt we were improving without being penalized for the mistakes we made in the process of getting better.  Is bullying everywhere? I still don't know.  I do know that we don't have to look very far to find situations where people don't have the need to bully-and they are everywhere.

Consider the Source

I recently wrote a letter to a 19 year old girl I know who has gotten herself into a quite a bit of trouble.  She has made a lot of mistakes and has suffered some significant consequences as a result of her actions.  I didn't say much in my letter.  I shared with her what I was doing and some of the writing I had done.  When she was younger before her teenage years, she had shown an interest in writing and I had given her a book on keeping a writer's notebook.  She also used to write very imaginative stories that I enjoyed.  Needless to say, writing has not been a recent activity of hers and school in general was not a positive experience especially in her last few years in high school. 

The other day I received some feedback on my letter.  I didn't speak to her but her mother commented that her daughter had referred to my letter as fabulous.  I didn't really understand how she could describe a rather simple relatively short letter as "fabulous" until she added that her daughter had said that it was the first letter she had received that "didn't tell her what to do."  Ironically, there was a lot I wanted to tell her to do and not do, but figured she had heard it all before.  Instead I tried to ignore her troubled situation and simply shared what I was doing and connected it to something she used to do.  I wanted her to start to see herself differently and figured that at some point she could turn her current circumstances into a lot of good material to write about.  I felt she needed to see beyond her current situation and see herself not someone who messed up but as someone who still had great things to do.  I was appealing to her Superman not her Clark Kent.  By doing that I was trying to open up some lifelines into her world and to do I had to be someone who wasn't judging her, criticizing her and most of all not someone trying to control her.  (I might add that I am not criticizing those who did tell her what to do.  If she were my daughter I doubt I could restrain myself from doing the same. In my case I could maintain some emotional perspective and translate my concern a different way.  It is not easy to do and harder the closer you are to the person.)

This the great paradox we face especially with adolescents: the more we try to help or steer them on the right path, the less influence or credibility we have with them.  The need to be independent and define oneself apart from adult authority can drive some kids into doing the exact opposite what most adults would consider good sense.  Deci in Why We Do What We Do said that whenever we try to control or manipulate anyone (instead of influence) two things happen they either conform or defy, but that even the immediate conformity only plants the seeds of later defiance.  What is the dividing line of control and influence-it can be a fine line, but still a line: the motive for the person in the one-up person.  Does that person want the other person to be their authentic self and support them in the process of discovering who they are or do they want that person to do want they want them to do?  If adults don't stop and ask themselves that question and then adjust how they interact, it is doubtful that kids will see a distinction.

All our efforts to help will be seen as efforts to control or worse as efforts to define the person we have authority over.  Deci has done empirical research demonstrating how sensitive a person is to this basic perception and how it colors the content of the help being offered.  If the help offered is seen as a a disguised attempt to control and manipulate another it is likely to be rejected or accepted as a way to gain approval or advantage with the person in authority.  If the help is offered in a non controlling, non manipulating way, meaning freely and genuinely offered,  respecting the recepient, than it is more likely to be considered on its merits.  Kids truly consider the source and the motivation behind the help.  They are in many ways very dependent upon us to carefully consider the most effective way to open up a life line with them- a line of communication where they can listen to what we have to offer.  If there are strings attached to our message no matter how great it might be, it will be rejected because of where it is coming from-its source.  If our kids are so sensitive is considering the source of whatever message they hear, we need to stop and look inwardly to consider what our source really is and what our motives are when we send out our messages.  This is not easy thing to do but that doesn't mean it isn't essential for getting through to some kids who need life lines from us.  Sometimes we can do something "fabulous" by just sharing rather than telling.

Pick a Metaphor: Change the World

In a classic book entitled, Metaphors We Live By, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson,the authors state that metaphor is the fundamental mechanism of our mind, that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experiences to provide an understanding of countless other subjects and other experiences. The authors claim that metaphors shape our perceptions and actions without us noticing them.  Another important concept in social psychology, the fundamental attribution error, the inclination to attribute a problem to a person rather than the situation for circumstance, creates two major metaphors for how we approach all of our social problems. When we make the fundamental error  people  are viewed as finished products and if we avoid making this error  people are viewed as works in progress.  This is a vital and essential distinction that all educators must reflect upon and then ourthemselves: which metaphor shapes my view of world.  Our traditional educational practices follow the finished product metaphor. 

Think about it.  A finished product is done and is designed to be judged against other finished products.  When an artist or craftsperson determines that the product is complete, it is ready to go into the world and then critics or consumers judge it, rate it and place on value on it.  The great works last; the not so great fall by the wayside.  If a finished product has a flaw or defect it may not even make to the public-it is thrown out.  When we look at finished products we don't see all of the drafts, prototypes, the start-overs, the mistakes along the way that lead to the finished products.  It is like the consummate professional or artist who is ready to perform in front of the public and be judged.   A pianist, a great athletic determines when he/she is ready to step out into the world and make themselves vulnerable to criticism and judgment.  Here again we don't see the 10000 hours rule (Gladwell talks about in the book, Outliers)-we don't hear the missed notes, the missed foul shots the mistake after mistake that happens along the way preparing the skills demonstrated in a performance.

In the past few years I spent writing,  I have discovered the endless process of rewriting is really what writing is all about.  I cannot write a polished piece right off the bat-no one can or should.  Thankfully there are no penalties or punishments for mistakes.  Mistake is not even a good word for what the process really is.  Mistake are still considered wrong or has a shouldn't attached to it.  In writing, there are no mistakes just attempts and refinements.  Once the connotations of mistakes are removed from the equation, the whole process is challenging yet is it an enjoyable and engaging challenge. 

The works in progress metaphor goes hand in hand with creativity-something new and different emerges from the process of improving what you started with.  The creative process is hard and demanding but it is one that people who experience it keep going back for because there is something there that provides meaning and fulfillment.

Teaching and learning should always be about works in progress and not finished products.  Human beings are works in progress and never finished products.  The great thing I liked about teaching was how much I learned from doing it and then getting the chance to go back the next day and try again.  Nothing felt better than when I took a mistake (not the best word to use ) and then figured out how it missed the mark, made some adjustments and then got a little closer to hitting the mark I set out to hit.  This is almost blasphemous to admit in our culture of accountability and data but teaching was actually a lot of fun and I always felt that the more fun I had and the more creative I was the better the teaching was.  Now with APPR and data, teaching seems a lot more like a root canal process-a painful experience designed to make someone better who had a problem in their mouth.  You have to do it the right way and fix the problem.

Since this piece is filled with metaphors here is another: teaching and learning in schools are a lot more like recitals than they are karaoke.  Sadly, if music only existed in the form of recitals with everyone sitting in the audience hoping and praying for a minimum number or zero mistakes, music might likely die a slow death at least for the people who had to perform.  Compare a recital to karaoke:  karaoke at least gives people a chance to experience performing in a warm and friendly environment, mistakes are part of the fun, it is easy to do with another and it makes everyone feel good.  Schools should at least allow some time for karaoke experiences-this may help people discover that learning is not a lifeless task that  exists for performance and judgment.  Sometimes I think that schools are giving a bad name to learning and I hope that it doesn't cause it to die a slow death.  Dare I say it-learning can be fun-but it depends upon your metaphor, I guess.

Not in our stars but in ourselves

I have been reading quite a bit about change and how to influence change.  Just about every book on it mentions the fundamental attribution error-the inclination we have to attribute problems to the person and not the situation or context.  Successful leaders avoid this error.  They assume the best in people even when people are not showing their best.  Somehow they sense what is keeping people from being their best (their Superman identity) and remove those circumstance and allow the best to come out.  By believing that everyone has something inside that wants to do great and good things, people are much more likely to come around and start to act that way.  A positive aspirational message is much more effective than one that assumes that people are one step away from doing something bad or unwanted.  The fundamental attribution error however has been institutionalized in most of our laws and policies.

Individuals are held accountable for their actions.  Law enforcement doesn't care about why someone did something or the circumstances behind their actions.  Law enforcement is there to make sure the negative or the transgression doesn't happen-it is not concerned with helping people learn not to do the bad thing.  Laws are there to draw limits around what can and can't happen and are designed for the exceptional situation. Good laws are ones that most people already follow and reflect the actions most people would do even if there were no laws prohibiting those actions.

An activity I put into my book is designed to get educators to think a little more about laws, policies and their role in facilitating change.  Here it is: ask yourself what law would you break if there was no law prohibiting that action.  Would you steal? Would you murder? Would you drive drunk? Most people not all but most people wouldn't break those laws because of their own moral code.  Think about the laws and limits that most people do break-traffic violations.  These violations are usually because of thoughtlessness -"I forgot to stop at the stop sign."  Going over the speed limit is something people do regularly because they don't see it doing any harm.  Most people exceed it on the highways that are distant from residential neighborhoods.  Law enforcement even cuts people slack and don't stop people who are only going a few miles over the limit. Speed limits are more like a guidelines rather than a strict laws.  Laws are useful but limited in influencing behavior-they are better at containing or restraining it.  In a way it is ok if they are designed without avoiding the fundamental attribution error as long as they stay in a limited role.

When laws and policies are depended upon to dramatically change behavior especially when they try to stop things that most people already do, they usually fail.  Ultimately even something like seat belt use is more dependent upon people seeing its benefits and developing the habit of using them automatically without thinking.  Most people don't snap their seat belts into place consciously thinking,"I better do this because I don't want to get a ticket."

When you really look at how people change it is usually because of the circumstances, environment, the people around them,and the situation that they are in.  People adapt their behavior to their environment almost without thinking.  Most people behave differently in a fast food restaurant than they would in place of fine dining.  People litter at ball parks but not at another person's house.  These changes occur without rules or signs being posted in those places.  Signs can help if it is an environment where the cues are not so clear.

In spite of all the research on human behavior and change, schools continue to make the fundamental attribution error in how they manage students.  Rewards and consequences convey that kids make conscious choices about how they act.  Most kids who get rewards in school for behaving would act that way even without getting the reward.  The kids who don't get the reward and break the rule are probably doing so more because they are lacking some social skill or are acting impulsively -it has more to do with their developmental needs than their will.

Read a book like Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow by Daniel Kahnman you will read about research findings that show how suggestible people are by things in their environment that they are not even consciously aware of.  It seems when you read this research it is pretty clear that we are all somehow interconnected to each other and our environment.  In spite of all of this research "proving" our interconnectivity we cling to the idea of individual decisions people made as being the real source of human behavior.

These reflections reminded me of my college Shakespeare teacher who had a very different interpretation of him than most scholars and the general public.  He viewed Shakespeare as someone who believed in the spiritual nature of life and saw the growing trend to very everything materialistically as misguided.  My teacher thought that this was a constant theme in all of Shakespeare's work.  Famous lines  like to "thine own self be true" that most people today interpret positively, he would claim were statements for characters who represented the material rather than the spiritual.  "To thine own self be true" was something Shakespeare disagreed with.  Shakespeare thought people should to be truthful to others and hiding the truth was just a clever strategy to get ahead in the world.  Likewise the line the "fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves" was not something Shakespeare agreed with.  Shakespeare believed in the spiritual world and how everything included the alignment of the stars really affected how people acted.  Those who were in tune with the spirit and connected to others did the moral thing while those who just focused on their own individual self often made immoral decisions-what would be best for themselves not others.

After reading about the scientific research showing how interconnected we are and how our thoughts and actions are so influenced by so many things we can see or hear, maybe if you interpret stars to meant circumstance, environment, the interconnectivity of people with their environment, I think my college Shakespeare teacher was right and that Shakespeare discovered the fundamental attribution error a long long time ago-there is a lot to be said for looking to the wisdom of the ages for the truth.