Moral drive: Can young people be taught character building? David Brooks shares tips from educators  

A few years ago, Angela Duckworth, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania in the US, wrote that character formation means building up three types of strengths — strengths of the heart (being kind, considerate, generous); strengths of the mind (being curious, open-minded, having good judgement) and strengths of the will (self-control, determination, courage).

I’m one of those people who think character is destiny and that moral formation is at the centre of any healthy society. But if you’re a teacher in front of a classroom with 25 or more distracted students in front of you, how exactly can you pull this off? Moral formation isn’t just downloading content into a bunch of brains; it involves an inner transformation of the heart. It involves helping students change their motivations so that they want to lead the kind of honourable and purposeful lives that are truly worth wanting. It’s more about inspiration than information.

And yet every day, there are schools that are doing it. On just about every campus I visit, there are professors who teach with the idea that they can help their students become better people. It may be a literature professor teaching empathy or a physics professor who doesn’t teach only physics but also the scientific way of life — how to lead a life devoted to wonder, curiosity, intellectual rigour and exploration.

I was at a convening on moral development hosted by the Making Caring Common project at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, US. The room was filled mainly with educators and as they described their work, it was like being offered a tool kit of concrete practices that together constitute an outstanding moral education.

Here are some of the ideas the conversation stirred in me. I suspect that they could be helpful for parents as well as teachers or anybody who wants to build a society in which it is easier to be good.

People’s characters are primarily formed when they live within coherent moral ecologies. They are formed within an institution — whether it’s a school, a biker gang, a company or the Marine Corps — that has a distinct ethos, that holds up certain standards. In this way, habits and temperament are slowly engraved upon the people in the group.

Richard Weissbourd, the faculty director of Making Caring Common, notes that over the past many years, schools and the broader culture have embraced the idea that the purpose of childhood is to prepare for individual achievement and happiness, rather than, say, caring for others or the common good.

Treating people well involves practising certain skills, which can be taught just as the skills of carpentry and tennis can be taught. First, there are the skills of understanding — being good at listening and conversation and eliciting life stories so that you can
accurately see the people around you and make them feel seen.

French writer Simone Weil wrote that attention “is the rarest and purest form of generosity”. How you see people determines how you show up in the world. If you see with eyes of judgement, you’ll find flaws, but if you see with generous eyes, you’ll see people doing the best they can.

Then there are the skills of consideration — how to treat people well in the complex circumstances of life.

Admiration is one of the most powerful moral emotions. When you look at the great historical figures, there’s often some other historical figure they admired. Nelson Mandela had Mahatma Gandhi; Abraham Lincoln had George Washington. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had each other. “Tell me who your heroes are, and I’ll tell you how you’re going to turn out,” Warren Buffett once said.

Then there are moral traditions. It’s hard to make good judgements unless you have clear moral beliefs. Fortunately, we are the lucky inheritors of many rich and varied moral traditions. Schools can teach these traditions and students can decide which seem true to them. People become their best selves as they begin to embody the values of a specific moral tradition.

Students learn about these traditions by studying the great texts of each. It’s noteworthy that most great moral traditions ask people to passionately study difficult texts. The charge is not just to read certain books but to devour them, to enter into them and struggle within them until the deeper meanings enter the blood. Franz Kafka famously said that “a book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us”.

But people don’t become better versions of themselves as they acquire intellectual information; they get better as they acquire emotional knowledge. That kind of knowledge comes through direct contact with problems. Some schools have even offered to pay students to perform service, because not everyone can afford to do it otherwise.

Community service gives the server a glimpse of what the moral motivations feel like — the challenges and rewards of caring for others. Community service often expands the servers’ social range, bringing them into contact with people from different classes, political groups and generations. It teaches people that noble ideas are of little use if the people holding them don’t know how to cooperate.

New York Times News Service