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| Exploring Character |
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Discussion Membership
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Ethics and a Character SummitDo not despair. Answers do exist. There are processes in ethics that kids understand, admire, and wish to emulate in a deeper way. Before we discuss what they are, Socrates used to ask questions to engage people in the problems at hand. Here are some Socratic questions:
Despite a sense of urgency to teach character, earnest people squander energy teaching ineffectively. Remember that Socrates says ethics was neither simply teachable, like geometry, nor not teachable at all, but teachable in a way.1 If character is "teachable in a way", people need to go beyond rules, vocabulary, and simple knowledge to unleash powerful logic. When you master logic, it masters you. Robert Heilbronner explains, once it becomes clear that two plus two equals four, no power in the universe can remove it. Two plus two can never equal five.2 Strength and courage come from understanding. Master the process, and ethical decisionˆmaking masters you. Morality becomes binding on your conscience when it is understood. The difference between virtues and virtueTraditional character education teaches virtues--"Be this way." or "Be that way." Virtues are laudable. Teaching them by rote is easy. However, success depends on students making the leap from knowing what is honorable to feeling compelled to behave honorably. It is as if, in teaching arithmetic, teachers taught, „Three is a good number to know‰, and „Five is a worthwhile number‰ with the hope students would stumble on the value of the process of addition/subtraction.The temptation is to be half-hearted. Teaching virtues is immediate and easy. Supporting material is available. Other cities and schools teach virtues. The "Virtue of the month" meets the expectation of education authorities. But there is a problem. Teaching only virtues is ineffective: "Obedience" is important, until it comes into conflict with other virtues. Blind obedience is not a virtue. How do you determine when to obey? Virtue, not virtues, helps people decide. What are ethics?What are ethics? Ethics are our sailing orders and we are a fleet of ships. As C. S. Lewis describes it, sailing orders tell us three things:
Look around. Everyone agrees we urgently need ethics. While a vocabulary of virtues is easy to promote, it doesn't help people answer the questions ethics asks of us:
Where are we?People seem adrift, infected by moral relativism. What appears as lack of morality is the hollow framework of earlier philosophers crumbling under the criticism of more recent ones like Friedrich Nietzsche ("God is dead") to Jean Paul Sartre (who was nauseated at discovering a universe "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing").Where to turn? Will people prefer to beat the same drum louder and harder, with no greater expectation of success; to hand out binders full of papers that miss the mark, or trundle out experts whose lofty and traditional words mask their limited success? Or will they extract guidelines from what they see, label what they find, respond from options they project, and learn to do better next time. This process represents the genius of democracy--not that majority rules, but that in every new cycle, one small voice has a chance to convince others that there may be a better way of doing things. A process approach to teaching characterAs the kids connect language and thought, they are empowered and motivated by simple wisdoms extracted from their own experience:
From the simple wisdoms garnered from experience, people deduce that their longˆterm interests are served by a character-centered life. Because it comes from personal experience, these observations are accessible to everyone across cultural and religious boundaries. They foster virtues, a compelling framework for civilization, and a path to honorable decision-making. If virtues result of thinking about yourself, society, life, and your place in it, the task is to seed the path with a handful of process concepts that people easily turn to that help themselves and that lead to virtue:
Even at a very early age we can empower kids to reach for a larger understanding. Listen to this conversation with a class of second graders:
And the spark of self-regulated learning ignites. Just this easily, Socrates' torch gets passed to the next generation. You decide...The problem of character education is very old. Socrates died for it in 399 B.C. In the 1700s, Immanuel Kant wonders, why is it that moral instruction accomplishes so little?5 Yet, he observes, even little children understand that you should do a thing just because it is right. Our challenge is to go beyond rewarding good behavior, to do that which is not "teachable, like geometry," but "teachable in a way"-- to produce not docile sheep but responsible, growing, inquiring citizens. A Character Summit deserves nothing less.
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