Moral injury occurs when an individual “perpetrates, fails to prevent, bears witness to, or learns about acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations” (Litz et al., 2009, p. 700)
This is not a new concept, but according to Syracuse University’s Moral Injury Project, the term “is thought to have originated in the writings of Vietnam War veteran and peace activist Camillo “Mac” Bica (Brock & Lettini, 2012; Bica, 1999, 2014), and Jonathan Shay (Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, 1994) as the aftermath of warzone trauma.” It is frequently used in discussions of combat veterans and PTSD.
I am fully aware that to use the concept of moral injury in the context of teaching may seem to be trivializing. After all, educators have not yet been called to kill in the line of duty (although some gun enthusiasts would certainly like to see that happen). So why, when I recently re-encountered this concept after leaving public schools, did it resonate with me so much?
I am not alone. Professor Erin P. Sugrue PhD, LICSW published an article in the American Education Research Journal titled “Moral Injury Among Professionals in K–12 Education.” Her excellent piece notes that:
…educators are frequently faced with situations in which they ‘‘have the obligation to enact justice, but . . . have to take action under conditions in which no just action is possible’’ (Levinson, 2009, p. 206). This inability to act justly is a type of moral transgression, which results in moral injury (Levinson, 2015; Litz et al., 2009). Keefe-Perry (2016) hypothesizes that moral injury may be widespread among public school teachers in the United States. In the age of high-stakes testing, widening racial and economic achievement gaps, and zero-tolerance discipline policies, teachers are faced with ‘‘a daily struggle between a desire to feel like you are part of a system that produces good in the world and piercing evidence to the contrary’’ (Keefe-Perry, 2016, p. 7).
Sugrue surveyed educators with a modified version of the Moral Injury Events Scale originally developed for military personnel. The adapted questions included items such as ‘‘I am troubled by having acted in ways that violated my own morals or values’’ and feelings of betrayal by “‘administrators in my school and district,’’ ‘‘colleagues,’’ and ‘‘education leaders and policy makers on the state and/or federal level.” She also administered the Trauma-Related Guilt Inventory, Stress of Conscience Questionnaire, The Copenhagen Burnout Inventory, and The Intention to Leave Scale. (Every study of educators nowadays cannot resist assessing intention to leave.) So, what did she find?
A total of 80.2% of participants… scored above 3 on the Transgressions-Other factor, 45.4%… scored above 3 on Transgressions-Self, and 68.4%… scored above 3 on the Betrayal factor, denoting agreement with statements regarding experiencing and being troubled by morally problematic events. Scores on the Transgressions-Other factor skewed slightly high, with 52.7%… of participants scoring a 5 or higher (out of a 6-point scale), suggesting moderate to strong agreement with exposure to others’ morally troubling actions.
Or, in plain language, “The mean scores on the MIES suggest that professionals have witnessed or participated in situations in the context of their work in public education that violate their moral beliefs.” Is it equally true for all schools?
The most significant predictor of MIES scores, across all three factors, was the percent of students of color in the school. As the percent of students of color in the school was highly correlated with the percent of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch, these results can be interpreted as reflecting a similar positive relationship between the percentage of students in poverty in a school and a professional’s endorsement of experiences of moral injury.
Sugrue says it best: “Simply put, educators are expressing that they feel they have acted against their own moral values, witnessed actions that violate their personal sense of ethics, and felt betrayed by school leadership and policymakers, especially as they are forced to face the ways in which school systems specifically harm students of color.”
Christopher Emdin, author of For White Folks who Teach in the Hood… and the Rest of Y’all Too argues persuasively that the current state of urban education “dismisses students’ lives and experiences,” makes “students, their varied experiences, their emotions, and the good in their communities invisible,” “fails to recognize that young people experience trauma regularly in ways that go unnoticed and unrecognized,” and creates alienating and harmful environments for urban youth of color. He is correct, as study after study has shown. (I link some of these studies in another essay, “the young white women teaching in urban school settings.”) Systemic racism is woven into the fabric of American public education, and working directly with the young people most impacted by it means facing the overwhelming reality of structural racism, poverty, and inequality, the complex needs of students and the complete inability of schools to meet them, and the disconnect between classroom environments and students’ realities.
As a public school teacher in such a setting, I had to enforce rules I didn’t agree with and knew had racist histories, such as the prohibition on durags in our dress code. I had to make students sit still and silent and take a standardized test for four hours straight, something I know I would be physically incapable of doing. I participated in a system that, regardless the best intentions of the many caring teachers working within it, was created to maintain white supremacist norms and produce obedient, compliant workers. We are talking about a systemic, not individual, issue. Even a well-intentioned teacher can’t change the fact that they are mandated to teach to poorly-designed standardized tests that regularly and arbitrarily inflate passing scores in order to ensure that the so-called ‘achievement gap’ is maintained. Well-intentioned educators can’t change the fact that their school will funnel students into the school to prison pipeline because they don’t have the funds to hire adjustment counselors and social workers to address student trauma.
I know wonderful, competent, loving teachers who have remained in the system. But I couldn’t do it. I was constantly angry and guilty and hopeless and desperate and grieving the harm I was witnessing and causing every day. Some educators find ways of dealing with it. I didn’t.
Why do teachers leave public schools? Today’s answer: moral injury.
