One of the recurrent themes in the GoodWork® Project has been the demise of trustees:
individuals within a profession who are well known, widely respected, and seen as being
disinterested and nonpartisan. Veteran professionals mentioned trustees (like Edward
R Murrow in journalism, or Edward Levi in the law), while younger professionals lamented
the loss of mentoring and, more generally, of admired senior members of the profession.
This finding has stimulated a set of studies of trust and trustworthiness. The Trust &
Trustworthiness Project is exploring how young people think of issues of trust in a media-
drenched world,
and how that might compare to earlier times or earlier generations on
whom findings exist.
We seek to ascertain the role, if any, that trust plays when young
people
consider
their goals, carry out their schoolwork, participate in different communities,
and eventually take on new roles and responsibilities—particularly civic ones—in the broader
society. The ultimate goal of this project is to develop interventions to help young citizens
understand
issues involved in determining the trustworthiness of their fellow citizens, key
institutions, and sources of information. We aim as well to nurture trustworthy individuals—
literally, individuals worthy of trust—who can help to establish or re-establish powerful
models of trust in their communities and on the national scene.
