essay on character is more important than education

Role of Education and its importance in building a character

tooba yousufi

“Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil” ~ C.S. Lewis.

Education is a way that improves our lives and pushes us to be better people. It gives us an understanding of the world around us. It offers opportunities allowing us to use our experiences and knowledge to gain respect and lead a better life in the future. 

What is Education? It is one of the simplest questions that have different answers — each with its own unique perspective. Some say that education is essential to gain knowledge about the past and the present that leads to a better future. It just doesn’t include readable information present in the books used in schools and colleges such as the best books on weather for kids or the scientific knowledge delivered to the young students—although it plays an important part in setting our mind — it is more complicated than just being disciplined to acquire values and skills that serve society and generations of humanity. 

The goal of true education is more than the cerebral aspect of understanding the various modes of critical, abstract, visual, and creative thought processes. It is rather about addressing the corporeal aspect of a person making a holistic individual. 

Simply put, it can be said that Education is a platform that can break all barriers allowing us to discover and explore our limits. 

Character and personality: the soul of Education

The personality and character of a person is something that makes an individual different from others. Some associated character to be the moral values and ethics of a person. However, it is an optimistic approach to life and a process of continuous learning which can be acquired at any time, no matter the time and age. 

In order to understand the relation between the character and Education in character building, imagine a situation where a human has knowledge but no character or personality that can differentiate his character from others. Such a person is indeed knowledgeable, but it is merely a robot that does work and carries out tasks without having moral and ethical values. 

Role of Education in the development of character

The key to knowledge — lack of knowledge can have an effect on the pleasing quality of politeness and involvement in discussions with educated people. Knowledge lets you indulge with learned people giving a boost to your personality and character. Besides providing you with an opportunity to be better at every task, it can enhance your decisions and set a better perception of your personality, among others.

Makes you choose between right and wrong — blind faith and superstitions are something in which people get trapped very easily. Bad faith and false perceptions can harm society more than doing good for it. Being an educated person helps in eliminating false beliefs enabling us to pick out right from wrong. This is not just true in a religious way but also provides better opportunities to the people rather than limiting their mindset. 

The teacher of ethics — failing provides a path to success which has hurdles and difficulties. Education provides light and knowledge to successfully cross those hurdles. The quality of an educated person is that they learn to be better by working out a way that is both fair and successful. 

A confidence booster — a confident personality and character are important to thrive in this world. Establishing healthy communication while clearing doubts on any subject or topic. Education gives you the confidence to put forward the facts which can create a perfect impression in the eyes of the audience. 

A foundation for lifelong learning — education gives humility. Humility, by definition, is the act of being modest. By that, it is meant, an educated person is willing to learn new things and aspects of life. Education provides a person with experiences opening gates to better opportunities and chances to enhance life.

Teach healthy habits — healthy habits here means mannerisms which include the way a person eats, drinks, sits, stand, talk, and many other related characteristics. These are the first things that a person is taught as a part of character building, and it becomes that first thing that you are judged upon as an individual. Healthy habits also come around behavior and cleanliness, which determines your character as a healthy person who can affect your personality as a person. 

Increase memory and thinking skills — thinking skills and a good memory can impress anyone leading to healthy discussions. A healthy brain remembers the facts and facets of a particular discussion and allows you to put your point in front of the audience with clarifications. Having better conversation leaves a positive mark on the audience, and your personality is praised for its charm as a keen thinker and true speaker.

Enhances the decision-making capabilities — being educated means being able to turn your weakness into a strength. Education empowers an individual to make decisions based on past experiences and present situations. It enables the individual against wrongs and taking charge of their lives without being dependent on others. 

The importance of character education  

As said above, character education and the development of personality are merely the promotion of ethical values and understanding of the world that is necessary for the development of a human mind. Simply put, it is the act of nurturing of those values that differentiate us from being humanized robots and computer intelligence. 

Character building in simple words is the relationship between two different types of knowledge—one, the knowledge that encompasses a wide range of subjects obtained through reading and training in a particular field of studies and two, the beliefs and moral codes of an individual which influences the understanding between the right and the wrong gained through past experiences and life lessons.

Character education has become a necessary part of today’s society. One of the major reasons for that is the continuous degrading of moral values; our society has fallen into “moral crises”. Individuals are struggling to cope with the disturbing trends such as violence, racism, and xenophobia, to name a few. Character education, on the other hand, can build a better personality leading to the development of a better society. 

The role of character education in academics 

Character building and Education has a major role to play in academic studies. One of the traits that character education teaches the students is the sense of responsibility and persistence which encourages the students to learn and maintain their focus on what’s important. This drives their will to learn better and do well in their academics. 

Other than that, building characters also helps in developing a moral code for interactions with the teachers and classmates, developing a positive environment, and influencing discipline among the students. 

The psychological factors determining the character of a person

It is true to say that every individual has different perceptions and beliefs that affect the development of the personality of the person. The character development of an individual depends mainly on one’s personal motives, interests, attitudes, and intellectual capacity, i.e., one’s perception, observation, the capability to reason and imagine. 

These factors are some of the major psychological aspects that determine the reactions and perceptions of a situation and thus affect the growth and development of one’s personality and character.

Conclusion 

The character of an individual is similar to a seed that has the potential to grow into a fully grown fruitful tree with proper nurturing and support. Education is something that supports the human mind and nourishes it, developing a better personality and character, allowing us to break barriers and explore limitations.  

Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

Three Things That Influence Our Character

My regrettable “mean girl” moment happened when I was in seventh grade.

I was living in a new town and struggling to fit in. As Halloween approached, I felt hopeful when a shy yet kind girl asked me if I would trick-or-treat with her. I jumped at the invitation, until another more “popular” girl invited me to walk around with her group. I made the selfish and unkind decision to tell the first girl that my parents said I needed to stay home and pass out candy.

I remember that gnawing feeling of shame that began to form in my gut as I delivered this dishonest excuse. That little voice of conscience was quickly stifled by an internal dialogue of justification and a false sense of security as I began to prepare my costume and plans for the evening.

While we were trick-or-treating, the “cool” girls were less than kind to me, but I convinced myself I had made the right decision. Then, I experienced a moment of pure embarrassment and shame when I found myself face to face with the sweet girl I had lied to. I’ll always remember the look of hurt and disgust on her face when she saw me with another group of girls.

I never took direct responsibility for my dishonest behavior. In the years that followed, we didn’t interact at school. We just ignored each other and every time I saw her, I heard a little voice that reminded me what an awful person I was. I also was never welcomed into the group of girls that I so desperately wanted to accept me. In fact, I became their target for aggressive behavior for the next few years.

Later, in my late 30s, I formed an interest in character education when I found myself at a personal and professional crossroads. With the guidance of a mentor, I began to consider the trajectory of my own character development and how relationships with family, friends, and educators, as well as experiences, such as my Halloween debacle, had affected my values, beliefs, and decisions. This exploration uncovered a new sense of purpose that eventually led me to the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University (ASU).

We began asking big questions around the type of impact we might have on educators, learners, families, and society if we were to integrate a focus on character development and decision making in the systems of teacher and leader preparation. Could cultivating a capacity for these dispositions in educators contribute to individual, systemic, and societal flourishing?

I now realize that it could have made a difference for me. Looking back on that Halloween through the lens of my research and experience, I would like to tell my 12-year-old self that the decisions I make can have long-term effects on others. I’d share that I’ve learned that character assets such as honesty and integrity are more desirable qualities than prestige and power, and that the way I show up for other people is more important than what others can do for me.

These choices might have led to stronger connections and authentic friendships instead of hurt feelings, negative self-perception, and relational aggression. While I cannot change the past, I can learn about character traits such as honesty, compassion, humility, and integrity through reflection on my experiences, engaging with others who demonstrate these traits, and being intentional about how I nurture these qualities in myself to ensure that I respond differently when faced with future decisions and actions.

My colleagues and I have come to believe that character is something that can be developed in future educators and in educational contexts. We needed to begin with collaboratively creating a shared language and understanding of character and character development, and looking at how it relates to decision making and systems change in education. We landed at a framework that we call Principled Innovation .

How character forms

Character development is complex. It’s an evolutionary journey of becoming that begins in our youngest years and evolves as we cultivate our values and beliefs through relationships, lived experiences, and our engagement in various systems. The places where we exist and the people who exist alongside us throughout our lives impact who we are and what we become.

Our character will form without a map or a guidebook, and typically without our knowledge until we are faced with a situation, dilemma, or adversity that requires our intentional deliberation of thought and action. These experiences can be a catalyst to positive growth, and if approached with a sense of practical wisdom , might also result in purposeful action that leads to both individual and collective flourishing.

Character development is fluid and it continues throughout a person’s lifetime. Individuals have the capacity to learn, regress, change, and develop new aspects of their character, even into adulthood, as they engage in experiences, relationships, contexts, and exemplars. When approached with intention, we can become self-aware enough to guide our development of character through reflective practices, or affect the development of others through intentional strategies designed to cultivate virtue .

The Principled Innovation framework defines character for our context as a large public college of education. It recognizes the links between our own individual character and the impact we might have on individuals, organizations, and systems. The framework and the accompanying tools and resources provide concrete guidance and practices designed to both develop and demonstrate character through the process of innovation.

The Principled Innovation approach, language, and resources have been integrated into culture, curriculum, and practice at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. We started with faculty and staff development, as we found it to be imperative to focus on our own understanding and practice of Principled Innovation if we were to model and teach it through pedagogy and curriculum.

Three paths to character

In the six years we have been engaging in this work with Principled Innovation, we have found three big takeaways that help us to be intentional about how we are both developing and demonstrating character for our future educators.

1. Character is personal. Individual character development will happen whether or not we are intentional about how it occurs. As humans develop , their cognitive and emotional capacities expand. They develop reasoning skills, problem-solving abilities, self-awareness, and emotional regulation. These developments play a significant role in shaping character and influencing moral reasoning , decision making, and how individuals perceive and interact with the world.

Personal experiences, including successes, failures, challenges, and significant life events , contribute to character development. These experiences provide opportunities for individuals to develop character assets such as honesty, humility, civility, and resilience.

The key to intentionality is cultivating a willingness to grow and develop as a human , which includes being honest with ourselves and engaging the humility to be open-minded to new perspectives. This takes a tremendous amount of self-awareness that can occur through reflection on our own decisions and actions and the results of both. Engaging in self-reflection and introspection allows us to evaluate our thoughts, actions, values , and beliefs. By examining individual beliefs and behaviors, we can consciously work on personal growth , self-improvement, and the development of our character .

Clearly acknowledging and understanding your core values is one place to begin the process. Habituating reflective practices such as meditation, journaling, and reflective questioning can help you become more self-aware and intentional about cultivating the character assets and dispositions that align with and demonstrate your core values.

One example of how we’ve supported our faculty and staff to cultivate these practices is through our Building a Foundation for Principled Innovation course , which is designed to explore moral , civic , intellectual , and performance character assets and to engage in reflective practices to apply these character assets in the context of decision making.

Faculty and staff have engaged with the content both individually and collectively in communities of practice. We have also developed a card deck of generative and reflective questions that are designed to engage these character assets as we make decisions in various contexts. Every staff and faculty member have received these cards with ideas on how to use them as a reflection tool, both individually and collectively.

Courage in Education

A new online course to help educators cultivate courage in schools and classrooms.

2. Character is contextual. Environmental factors, including family, culture, and socioeconomic background, significantly shape character development. Early experiences, such as attachment to caregivers, parenting styles, and exposure to different social and cultural norms, can have long-lasting effects on both personality and character.

The contextual influence on character does not end with childhood. Our experiences in the environments in which we live and work throughout our lives will have an impact on our character development and the types of decisions we make in various contexts. While you might be more transparent or honest in a situation that involves secure relationships with family and friends, other virtues such as discernment might outweigh honesty in a situation in a professional setting where you feel less secure or unsupported by the conditions created by leadership and colleagues within an organization.

With this in mind, we carefully examined the culture of our college and identified guiding principles that we were striving toward as an organization. We embraced Principled Innovation as a core value that symbolized an organizational commitment to the development of character. Using Principled Innovation as our approach to systems change has helped us to shape the types of conditions and experiences we provide for our faculty, staff, and students that nurture individual and organizational character.

That’s illustrated through changes to structures and systems within the organization, such as a move toward collaborative and team-based teaching, engagement in communities of practice, demonstrations of Principled Innovation by leadership through communications and actions, and changes to policies and practices that support the development of character. 

Through those innovations, we’ve created conditions within our context that allow space for the vulnerability and psychological safety that is necessary for individuals to take risks, fail forward, and lean into the experiences and practices that contribute to the cultivation of practical wisdom and continued growth.

3. Character is relational. Interactions with family members, peers, and broader social networks strongly influence character development. Through social interactions, individuals learn social norms, develop empathy and communication skills, and acquire values and beliefs. Positive and supportive relationships can foster healthy character development, while unhealthy relationships may hinder it. It’s essential to have exemplars in our lives who model the individual practices that contribute to the development of character and who also demonstrate the type of honesty and humility that authentic self-reflection requires.

At a college of education, where we’re striving to prepare educators and leaders who engage character in their decision making, we also need to ensure we are creating the conditions that nurture the authentic relationships that support intentional character development. Creating spaces where we feel we have the permission to be human and bring our whole selves into our environments supports the development of character relationships.

We’ve found that marrying the practices of Principled Innovation with the structure of a community of practice provides the kinds of spaces where intentional connections through a shared purpose can support the development of authentic relationships. We’ve also found small and intentional changes—such as creating space at the beginning of meetings for people to share what’s on their hearts and minds, incorporating Principled Innovation reflective questions into coaching and performance development, and planning activities during the work day where faculty and staff can gather, be creative, and have fun—has helped us to build connection and compassion in an environment where we have often felt humanity and personal lives needed to be left at institution’s door.

Like character development itself, our efforts at ASU are a continual process of becoming. We are still in the nascent stages of learning how our focus on character development in teacher and leader preparation will impact long-term outcomes for individuals, organizations, and systems in education.

Our early observations have been positive to the extent that ASU leadership has identified Practice Principled Innovation as a design aspiration that prompts our entire university community to place character and values at the center of decisions and actions. I have hope for the future of humanity when considering the impact this commitment from a university of ASU’s size and scale could have on the way we innovate and advance emerging technologies, as well as the political and societal climate of our country, and how we communicate and interact as a pluralistic and global community.

It’s idealistic to believe that all individuals will embrace the practice of Principled Innovation and apply it to their decision making, but it’s a lovely thought to consider how doing so in our educational contexts might lead to equitable systems, individual and collective well-being, and positive change for humanity. At the very least, it might encourage the next generation to pause when making even the smallest decisions and consider how that action might affect the well-being of others.

About the Author

Cristy guleserian.

Cristy Guleserian, M.A. , is the executive director of principled innovation at Arizona State University, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College.

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Building Character Instead Of Being A Character

In the final analysis, when everything is said and done, your character will prove to be more important than your career.

A while ago, James Henderson (names changed to protect the innocent) was on a business trip driving through the city where his son attended college. He decided to drop in to see how his son’s educational career was going … and quickly learned that surprise visits may not be the best idea.

When Mr. Henderson arrived at the fraternity house where his son lived and rang the door bell, someone from inside the house yelled, “Yeah?” Mr. Henderson asked, “Does Jason Henderson live here?”

“Yup,” the voice answered. “Leave him on the front porch. We’ll drag him in later.”

We can all laugh at that story … which really happened … and we can be thankful it didn’t happen to us and one of our own kids. But there’s also an important lesson in that story. Even though Jason was going to school to get an EDUCATION, he was also in the process of developing his CHARACTER. And in the end, character always trumps education.

Put another way, your character is more important than your talent. You see it all the time. People with talent often make it into the limelight, but without a strong character, they rarely stay there very long. Their absence of a strong character eventually topples them.

Leadership expert John Maxwell noted:

“Talented people are sometimes tempted to take shortcuts. Character prevents that.

“Talented people may feel superior and expect special privileges. Character helps

them know better.

“Talented people are praised for what others see them build. Character builds what’s

inside them.

“Talented people have the potential to be difference makers. Character makes the

difference in them.

“Talented people are a gift to the world. Character protects that gift.”

That being the case, you need to know the answer to two questions.

=> 1. What is character?

It’s quite different than being a “character.” Will Rogers, the great comedian of the Great Depression, commented on that. He told to people to “live in such a way that you wouldn’t be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip!”

And character is not something that comes ABOUT as a result of crisis; it merely comes OUT in a crisis. As Robert Freeman puts it, “Character is not made in a crisis; it is only exhibited.”

In reality, character is composed of three things.

**HAVING the right values.

As columnist Bob Talbert writes, “Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best.”

Unfortunately, our world and our organizations are having some major problems in this area of values. Just look at the research. When you ask Westerners what they want out of life, their number one answer is “I want to be happy.” When you ask Easterners what they want out of life, their number one answer is “I want to be successful.” I think our whole world would be in much better shape if the number one universal answer was “I want to be good.”

Of course, HAVING the right values is not enough. As values expert Dr. Sidney Simon has written extensively, you’ve got to walk your talk. You’ve got to know what you value, and you’ve got to live by what you value. So the second ingredient of character is…

**DOING the right thing.

People of character know there is no right way to do the wrong thing. And conversely, people of character know there is never a wrong time to do the right thing.

I speak a great deal to builders and contractors, and they know a great deal about building on a strong foundation. As William Bady, Jr., a builder and developer tells his people, “Living a life is like constructing a building: If you start wrong, you’ll end wrong.” You’ve got to do the right thing.

But there’s one more element in character. We all know people who “technically” HAVE the right values and “typically” DO the right things, but they’re still unpleasant. They’re not the type of people you want to be around. So character has a third element, and that is…

**BEING the right kind of person.

Gordon H. Taggart struggled with the whole concept of character, wishing he had more of it. As he wrote about what he lacked in character, he did a fantastic job of describing what it meant to BE the right kind of person. He described 11 characteristics.

Taggart wrote:

“I wish I were…

honest enough to admit my shortcomings;

brilliant enough to accept flattery without it making me arrogant;

tall enough to tower above deceit;

strong enough to treasure love;

brave enough to welcome criticism;

compassionate enough to understand human frailties;

wise enough to recognize my mistakes;

humble enough to appreciate greatness;

staunch enough to stand by my friends;

human enough to be thoughtful of my neighbor, and

righteous enough to be devoted to the love of God.”

It may be worth a few minutes of your time to see how you stack up against those 11 characteristics. I know it opened my eyes as to where I needed to grow my character.

However, if that seems too difficult, you might try Marcelene Cox’s test. As a 20th century author, she proclaimed, “No man knows his true character until he has run out of gas, purchased something on the installment plan, and raised an adolescent.” Simply take a look at how you behaved in those situations to see if you were or if you are a person of character.

Once you know the meaning of character, the second question is…

=> 2. How do you build a strong character?

If you were lucky, you were raised in a family that modeled good character all the time, and you soaked it up unconsciously. And if you were very lucky, you were also educated by teachers who modeled good character, and you chose friends whose lives were filled with character. You learned from their examples. Good character became an almost automatic, natural part of who you are.

The truth is … very few people are that lucky. Almost everyone has some work to do when it comes to improving his/her character. And the good news you can change and grow your character if you will practice the following behaviors.

**DECIDE to be self-supporting.

No one owes you a living. Not your parents, not your employer, and not the government. Unless you are totally disabled by some unfortunate event, you are in charge of you. And the quicker you decide that, the better you will feel and the better person you will be.

In fact, there is no way you can have any sense of self-esteem if you think it’s somebody else’s job to take care of you. The great orator, Robert G. Ingersoll spoke of that in the 1800’s when he said, “Every human being should be taught that his first duty is to take care of himself, and that to be self-respecting he must be self-supporting. To live on the labor of others, either by force which enslaves, or by cunning which robs, or by borrowing or begging, is wholly dishonorable.”

**SEEK continual education.

No one is perfect. Everyone has room for improvement. And improvement can only come through education, whether formal or informal.

Indeed, what you learn from your job may be more important than the money you earn. As business leader Harold Geneen noted, “In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later.”

**SPREAD kindness.

It may be one of the best ways to build your character. As T. Rubin notes, “Kindness is more important than wisdom. And the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.”

When you’re kind to others, you grow your character. It’s a total win-win-win.

And your acts of kindness should have nothing to do with how you feel or the struggles you face. Charlie “Tremendous” Jones often said, “Many times the Lord will take you through experiences that have nothing to do with you but are meant to help you understand what others are going through.” That being the case, Charlie would say we need to move away from being thin-skinned and hard-hearted. We need to become thick-skinned and soft-hearted. In other words, spread kindness simply because it’s the right thing to … and your character will grow.

**WORK on yourself.

Follow the advice of legendary author and speaker Jim Rohn. “Work harder on yourself than you do your job.”

And a part of that work is listening to yourself. When I was at the North Pole a couple of weeks ago, there was a sign that read, “When your heart speaks, take good notes.” Good advice.

**PURSUE excellence.

I learned that from my parents and the way they ran their small business of raising and selling Christmas trees. They always told me that people will never know how long it takes to do something. They will only know how well it is done.

You see … being a person of character has little or nothing to do with the position you hold or the title you carry. It’s all about the way you do your job. Even Booker T. Washington, the one-time slave and later-on biologist, talked about that. He said, “Any man’s life will be filled with constant and unexpected encouragement if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day.”

**ADD value.

Whatever you do, whomever you meet, add value to that transaction. Leave the situation or the other person a little bit better than you found them.

For example, you could add value to your job by contributing to the organization’s bottom line. Just ask yourself one question on a regular basis: “If this were my money instead of the company’s money, would I spend it this way?” Apply this question to everything from your expense account to buying new office equipment.

**PRACTICE persistence.

People of character are known for their persistence. They don’t bail out when the times get tough. They just keep on keeping on. As Deborah McGriff notes, “We must always go the second mile. When we go the first mile, we simply do what is required of us. It is when we go the second mile that excellence is achieved and minor miracles happen.” And it’s that second mile that distinguishes people of character from plain, ordinary folks.

Of course, it’s easier said than done … to practice persistence. But it will be easier if you keep on repeating Dean Karnazes affirmation: “Run when you can, walk when you have to, crawl if you must; just never give up.”

**DETERMINE to be determined.

People are very rarely overnight successes. And character is seldom achieved in one fall swoop. More often, character is the result of a long process of determined determination. Roscoe Dunjee observed, “Some people succeed because they are destined to, but most people succeed because they are determined to.”

It’s one of the secrets of success … that determination plays a bigger role in your success than almost anything else. Business consultant John Baker has seen that so many times that he now says, “Durability is stronger than talent, better than luck, more real than potential, and more valuable than intellect.”

Some of the time, you will have to stay the course, climbing up the ladder one hard step after another. Other times there won’t be an obvious next step on the ladder. Then you’ll have to do what 20th century singer William Warfield learned to do. He said, “When rungs were missing, I learned to jump.”

The quality of your life, your relationships, and your career is deeply affected by your character or lack of it. So go ahead and put some extra thought into the character you are building.

Action:  Pick one of the points or strategies listed in point 2 above that you want to focus on this month. Decide how you will implement that strategy at home and at work. Be specific.

Development of Good Character Matters More than Passing Exams, By Anthony Seldon

• October 4, 2017

The current focus in our school system is a single-minded drive to improve educational attainment. Yet education is much more than a mechanistic process, which achieves its highest state with the maximisation of academic performance.  Exam success is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for being an educated human being.  As human beings, we are not machines but flesh and blood, with capacious minds, with bodies and emotions.  We are organisms and our current mechanistic model of the purpose of education fails to rise to the heights and wonders of the organic model that young people across the land cry out for, as do their parents.

It is not enough for young people to emerge from school with a string of exam passes and for schools to pat themselves on the back, thinking that the box has been ticked and the ‘job done’.  This is only a part of the whole education journey.  Families have a key role in the development of the finished product.  So too do schools.  Academic attainment and exam success can never be more than part of the story of the profound moral responsibility of schools to children, parents, society and the nation.

I would argue that schools that make children and their parents believe that exams are all-important are cynical and negligent.  Worse, they are ignorant, because school provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  That opportunity is all the more precious when young people come from disadvantaged home backgrounds, which do not provide the same chances for enrichment as those from more affluent backgrounds.

The work of education, as the linguistic root suggests, is to ‘lead out’.  Schools need to lead or draw out of young people all their talents and aptitudes. We cannot and must not define this task purely in terms of academic success.  Not the least because a focus on mere academic success often drains the lifeblood out of academic subjects, creating heavy and dull minds.  As a former headmaster and now the vice-chancellor of The University of Buckingham, I know that what is not ‘led out’ of young people, what is not nurtured by the age of 16 or 18, may remain dormant in those individuals for the rest of their lives.

The lead up to World Values Day on 19 October provides a great opportunity to ask, “Who am I and who do I want to be?” – and if you are in education – to encourage students to establish their own core values that will help them do and be their very best.

Development of good character

Education is about ‘drawing out’ the wealth of different qualities and intelligences from our young citizens.  At the heart of this is the development of good character.  Effective schooling is not just about trying to maximise the exam performance of our students but rather seeking to maximise the chances of our young leading happy, successful and healthy lives.  They want to be prepared for the university of life, for work, for family life and for society, with curious, disciplined and appreciative minds.

A focus merely on exams can all too easily lead to closed minds and leave the heart cold.  A focus on character seeks to open up hearts and minds.  The development of good character is more important than exam success because good character strengths are a greater predictor of success in the university of life than mere exam passes – and it is not at the expense of academic work.  An emphasis on character makes academic learning more profound and also boosts exam success.

Prioritise character

Why then do I say that schools should prioritise character-building above exams?  Because when we prioritise exams in the way that we have been doing, little or nothing will happen with character.  However, if we prioritise character, exam success will follow, and for the right reasons.  Experience tells us that the students will:

• Behave well in class
• Respect their teacher and each other
• Want to learn, rather than being made to learn
• Want to behave rather than being made to behave
• Probe beneath surface learning to the depths of subjects, because they will be more reflective people.

World Values Day provides a global celebration of the empowering effects of values, which, when coupled with the explicit development of character strengths and wellbeing, contribute to a variety of positive life outcomes.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Good character at school: positive classroom behavior mediates the link between character strengths and school achievement.

• 1 Personality and Assessment, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
• 2 Distance Learning University Switzerland, Brig, Switzerland

Character strengths have been found to be substantially related to children’s and adolescents’ well-being. Initial evidence suggests that they also matter for school success (e.g., Weber and Ruch, 2012 ). The present set of two studies aimed at replicating and extending these findings in two different age groups, primary school students ( N = 179; mean age = 11.6 years) and secondary school students ( N = 199; mean age = 14.4 years). The students completed the VIA-Youth (Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Youth), a self-report measure of the 24 character strengths in the VIA classification. Their teachers rated the students’ positive behavior in the classroom. Additionally, school achievement was assessed: For the primary school students (Study 1), teachers rated the students’ overall school achievement and for the secondary school students (Study 2), we used their grades as a measure of school achievement. We found that several character strengths were associated with both positive classroom behavior and school achievement. Across both samples, school achievement was correlated with love of learning, perseverance, zest, gratitude, hope, and perspective. The strongest correlations with positive classroom behavior were found for perseverance, self-regulation, prudence, social intelligence, and hope. For both samples, there were indirect effects of some of the character strengths on school achievement through teacher-rated positive classroom behavior. The converging findings from the two samples support the notion that character strengths contribute to positive classroom behavior, which in turn enhances school achievement. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for future research and for school interventions based on character strengths.

Introduction

School achievement is substantially linked with later life outcomes (for an overview, see e.g., Duckworth and Allred, 2012 ). Behavior in the classroom was found to predict later academic achievement ( Alvidrez and Weinstein, 1999 ) and also important life outcomes in education and the labor market, even beyond the influence of achievement in standardized tests ( Segal, 2013 ). Therefore, studying the influence of non-intellectual aspects on educational outcomes has a long tradition. Also specifically studying good character or positive personality traits had already been addressed by early educational psychologists (e.g., Smith, 1967 ), but had then been neglected for a long period of time. Only with the advent of positive psychology, it has received revived interest.

Within positive psychology, education is seen as an important area of application. Seligman et al. (2009) defined positive education as “education for both traditional skills and for happiness” (p. 263). Inherent in positive education is the idea that good character, positive behaviors at school and academic achievement are not only aims of education, but also closely intertwined. However, little is known empirically about this interplay. The importance of good character in education has recently been emphasized both in scientific and popular literature (e.g., Tough, 2012 ; Linkins et al., 2015 ) and researchers from neighboring disciplines (e.g., Hokanson and Karlson, 2013 ) have also called for studying the role of character strengths in education.

In the present paper, we take a closer look at the link between students’ character strengths and school achievement and investigate the mediating role of positive behavior in the classroom further. More specifically, we examine whether character strengths facilitate positive classroom behaviors, which in turn facilitate attaining higher grades. Character strengths are not only expressed in thoughts and feelings, but importantly, also in behaviors ( Peterson and Seligman, 2004 ). We expected that a number of strengths are very helpful for schoolwork and are thus robustly related to positive behaviors in the classroom, as the teachers can observe it. Such positive classroom behaviors, e.g., actively in class or showing motivation to learn, should ultimately contribute to school achievement. We aim to provide a better insight into which aspects of good character are reliably linked with school achievement and positive classroom behavior and for which of the character strengths the link between them and school achievement is mediated by positive classroom behavior. To achieve this aim, we use two samples representing primary and secondary education, and perform analyses on the level of single character strengths. This detailed level of analysis may be especially interesting when relating the results to programs that emphasize the cultivation of certain character strengths.

Character Strengths in Children and Adolescents

Peterson and Seligman’s (2004) classification allows studying good character and its contribution to positive development in a comprehensive way. The VIA classification describes 24 character strengths, that are organized under six, more abstract, virtues (wisdom and knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence) and are seen as ways to reach these virtues. Character strengths are seen as inherently valuable, but also contribute to positive outcomes ( Peterson and Seligman, 2004 ). Character strengths can be seen as the components of a good character, and are described as the inner determinants of a good life, complemented by external determinants (such as safety, education, and health; cf. Peterson, 2006 ). Since the development of the VIA classification and the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Youth (VIA-Youth; Park and Peterson, 2006 ), which reliably assesses the 24 character strengths in children and adolescents between 10 and 17 years, a number studies in different cultures have revealed substantial links between character strengths and subjective well-being of children and adolescents ( Van Eeden et al., 2008 ; Gillham et al., 2011 ; Weber et al., 2013 ; Ruch et al., 2014b ).

Character Strengths and School Achievement

A large number of studies have examined the links between broad personality traits and academic achievement. Meta-analyses (e.g., Poropat, 2009 , 2014a ) reveal that conscientiousness is the strongest correlate, whereas the links between extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, and openness/intellect with academic achievement have been rather weak and inconsistent. These links are largely independent of intelligence ( Poropat, 2009 ) and personality traits have even been found to be equally strong predictors of academic achievement than intelligence when they were self-rated, and even stronger predictors when they were other-rated ( Poropat, 2014a ). In the available meta-analyses on the relationship between self-rated personality traits and academic achievement, almost all included studies examined students in tertiary education ( Poropat, 2009 ) or they even focused only on postsecondary education (e.g., Richardson et al., 2012 ; McAbee and Oswald, 2013 ). A recent meta-analysis ( Poropat, 2014b ), however, examined the predictive validity of adult-rated personality traits for academic achievement in primary education and found that conscientiousness and openness had the strongest correlations with measures of school achievement. Still, it has to be noted that we know a lot more about how personality, especially when it is self-rated, is related to academic achievement, and about what might be relevant mechanisms behind it, in young adults than we know about these relationships in children and adolescents. And, although authors have speculated that the relationship between personality and academic achievement is attributable to “positive traits that naturally promote academic learning” ( Medford and McGeown, 2012 , p. 787), those studies did not investigate narrower, positively valued personality traits specifically.

Some aspects of good character have been studied in relation to school achievement. Duckworth and colleagues ( Duckworth and Seligman, 2005 ; Duckworth et al., 2007 ) demonstrated the relevance of self-regulation and grit for academic achievement beyond measured intelligence. Also other character strengths, such as hope (e.g., Levi et al., 2014 ), have been shown to relate to academic achievement. In contrast to approaches that consider only some aspects of good character, the VIA classification ( Peterson and Seligman, 2004 ) offers a comprehensive catalogue of character strengths. Weber and Ruch (2012) provided an initial investigation of the role of the 24 character strengths in school. In a sample of 12-year old Swiss school children, they studied the relationship between character strengths, positive experiences at school, teacher-rated positive classroom behavior, and school achievement. A factor representing character strengths of the mind (e.g., love of learning, perseverance, prudence) was related to school achievement, which was operationalized by grades in mathematics and German language. Specific character strengths (e.g., perspective, gratitude, hope, self-regulation, perseverance, love of learning) were higher in those students with improved grades during the course of the school year, than in those with decreased grades. Similarly, in a sample of Israeli adolescents at the beginning of middle school, Shoshani and Slone (2013) found intellectual and temperance strengths to be predictors of grade point average (GPA).

Character Strengths and Positive Classroom Behavior

Park and Peterson (2006) found moderate convergence between self- and teacher-reported character strengths and argued that certain strengths may be more readily observable in the classroom than others. Especially phasic strengths, which can only be displayed when the situation demands it (e.g., bravery), may be more difficult to observe than tonic strengths, which can be displayed in any situation (e.g., kindness; cf. Peterson and Seligman, 2004 ). Even though the frequency might vary, character strengths are expressed in overt behavior, so they should also contribute to positive behavior in the classroom. In particular, temperance strengths (e.g., prudence, self-regulation) should be helpful to regulate feelings, thoughts, and behaviors in a way that matches the expectations and norms in the classroom (e.g., showing good conduct). Other strengths, such as social intelligence should be helpful to manage conflict and relationships with classmates successfully, and thus be related to social aspects of positive classroom behavior (e.g., being cooperative). Finally, strengths that were found to be related to school achievement, such as perseverance and love of learning, should also be associated with achievement-related aspects of positive classroom behavior (e.g., working autonomously).

Empirically, Shoshani and Slone (2013) found interpersonal strengths to be related with social functioning at school, which was rated by the teachers, and thus might represent positive social classroom behavior. Weber and Ruch (2012) have studied the relationship with character strengths and positive classroom behavior using their Classroom Behavior Rating Scale (CBRS), assessing both achievement-related and social classroom behavior. In a multiple regression analysis, about 25% of the variance in teacher-rated positive classroom behavior was explained by the 24 character strengths. Perseverance, prudence, and love of learning showed the most substantial correlations with teacher-rated positive classroom behavior.

Positive Classroom Behavior as a Mediator of the Relationship between Character Strengths and School Achievement

High scores in good character do not automatically and directly lead to high levels of school achievement, but they will predispose students to show a set of more proximate behaviors, which in turn predispose for higher grades later on. Thus, if certain character strengths are identified as being related to school achievement, it is of course interesting to examine potential mechanisms involved. One likely candidate for explaining this link is positive behavior in the classroom, since the grading of students is largely depending on the behaviors that teachers can observe in the classroom, and especially such behaviors that they value (e.g., showing a high motivation to learn, adhering to classroom rules). Weber and Ruch (2012) used a latent variable representing classroom-relevant character strengths (love of learning, perseverance, and prudence) showed an indirect effect on school achievement mediated by positive classroom behavior. After adding the mediator to the model, there was no direct effect of character strengths on school achievement, which is in line which a full mediation by positive classroom behavior.

Aims of the Present Study

The presented studies strongly suggest that character strengths are indeed important resources at school, supporting school achievement either directly, or also indirectly via the display of positive behavior in the classroom. There is, however, a need to further investigate these relationships to examine their robustness and also potential moderators. In addition, these initial studies also have several limitations. First, many included only students in rather narrow age ranges and from one level of education. While the study by Weber and Ruch (2012) does include a broader range of level of education, it may be somewhat limited by the fact that teachers only knew their students for about three months when they were rating their positive classroom behavior. Second, in most studies, character strengths were analyzed only on the factor level–four factors in Shoshani and Slone (2013) and two factors in Weber and Ruch (2012) –and it is difficult to draw conclusions on the level of specific strengths based on these results. Doing so may be especially interesting when evaluating the results in light of programs or interventions that build on the cultivation of certain strengths (e.g., grit/perseverance or self-regulation).

The present studies aimed at replicating the findings by Weber and Ruch (2012) and extending them by including students in different school types (Study 1: primary school, Study 2: secondary school) and a broader range of school grades beyond grades in mathematics and German language (Study 2). We will also investigate for each of the character strengths individually whether the potential link with school achievement is mediated by positive classroom behavior. In doing so, the present study will add to the knowledge on the role of positive traits for positive behavior and achievement at school.

While none of the 24 character strengths should be detrimental for positive classroom behavior or school achievement, certain strengths should be more important than others. Based on theoretical assumptions and previous empirical findings, we expect certain character strengths to be related to positive classroom behavior and school achievement most strongly. These nine character strengths are: perseverance, self-regulation, prudence, love of learning, hope, gratitude, perspective, teamwork, and social intelligence.

Firstly, we expect perseverance to be robustly related to the educational outcomes measured. Students high in perseverance are characterized by “voluntary continuation of a goal-directed action in spite of obstacles, difficulties, and discouragements” ( Peterson and Seligman, 2004 , p. 229). Such behaviors are highly advantageous in a school environment, in which challenging goals are presented and sustained efforts despite obstacles are needed to accomplish them. Since perseverant individuals enjoy finishing tasks, the completion of, e.g., an assignment may be particularly rewarding for them. Thus, perseverance can be seen as a helpful resource both for displaying positive behavior in the classroom (e.g., behaving diligently) and for school achievement, because perseverant students will work persistently on tasks and homework, even when it is difficult, and thus might be more successful in consequence. Secondly, self-regulation is expected to be associated with educational outcomes. Self-regulation helps to control own feelings and appetites. Thus, it is helpful to avoid obstacles and reach goals or meet expectations of others (cf. Peterson and Seligman, 2004 ). At school, it is often demanded and expected to control one’s own feelings and to conform to what is expected (cf. Ivcevic and Brackett, 2014 ). Consequently, self-regulation will likely go along with helpful behaviors and strategies at school, such as managing time well, making plans and sticking to them, and adhere to rules. These positive behaviors will be observable in the classroom and may also contribute to higher grades. Thirdly, we expect prudence to be related mostly to positive behavior in the classroom, but also to school achievement. Students high in prudence that are particularly careful in their choices (cf. Peterson and Seligman, 2004 ) are less likely to do things in the classroom that fall outside the teachers’ and classmates’ expectation. Consequently, they are more likely to comply with rules and work toward achieving what is expected of them. Being prudent may also help to avoid interpersonal problems, and thus lead to better relationships with teachers and classmates, which then may be supportive of school achievement. Recently, Ruch et al. (2014a) established that there are different types of class clowns, but each of them was low in prudence. When we assume that class clowns would score quite low on teacher-rated positive classroom behavior and that their characteristics do not fit well with what is required in the classroom, this suggests that being prudent might be crucial for displaying positive behavior in the classroom. Fourthly, we expect love of learning to be relevant for predicting behavior and success at school. Individuals high in love of learning experience positive emotions when learning new things, and enjoy doing so whenever possible (cf. Peterson and Seligman, 2004 ). In any case, attending a school will offer opportunities to learn new things on a daily basis. It is likely that the high intrinsic motivation to learn also leads to better learning outcomes, and that the positive emotions associated with learning additionally foster school achievement (cf. Schutz and Lanehart, 2002 ; Weber et al., 2014 ). In the initial study by Weber and Ruch (2012) , love of learning, perseverance and prudence were among the most important variables in predicting positive classroom behavior and also had an indirect effect on school achievement through positive classroom behavior.

In addition to these four strengths that are assumed to be helpful at school, we also expect hope to be related to behavior and achievement at school. Hopeful individuals are not only characterized by believing that a positive future is likely, but also by acting in ways supposed to make desired outcomes (e.g., achieving a good result in an exam) more likely ( Peterson and Seligman, 2004 ). These desired outcomes can be both in relation to positive behavior in the classroom and to thoughts and behaviors that support achievement, but are not directly observable in the classroom (such as favorable attributions, etc.). Earlier studies have also found that hope predicts future academic achievement (e.g., Marques et al., 2011 ) as well as demonstrated a close link between hope, effort, and school achievement ( Levi et al., 2014 ). Sixthly and seventhly, perspective and gratitude may also be relevant in the classroom. Students high in the character strength perspective have consistent ways of looking at the topics and the world, which are meaningful to them and also make sense to others (cf. Peterson and Seligman, 2004 ). On the one hand, expressing and applying such coherent worldviews at school may help solving problems and integrating different perspectives. On the other hand, perspective is also displayed by giving good and wise advice to others, which may foster positive relationships with classmates, and in turn facilitate learning and achievement. Grateful students are highly aware of the positive things in their lives, and are thankful for these (cf. Peterson and Seligman, 2004 ). One of the mechanisms conceivable is that these students perceive school as a meaningful institution and are more aware than others of the possibilities that good achievement will offer them in the future. In the study by Weber and Ruch (2012) , both perspective and gratitude were higher in those students that improved their grades over the course of the school year than in those that had deteriorated grades. Finally, we expect social intelligence and teamwork to be related to positive classroom behavior. School is an environment characterized by constant interactions with classmates and teachers. Highly social intelligent individuals understand both their own and others’ feelings, and are able to adapt to other’s feelings and expectations (cf. Peterson and Seligman, 2004 ). Similarly, individuals high in teamwork identify with a group of which they are members (e.g., a classroom) and do their share as group members because they fell if is the right thing to do (cf. Peterson and Seligman, 2004 ) Therefore, social intelligence and teamwork should both be linked with few conflicts, good cooperation, and adherence to expectations and rules in the classroom, which is all reflected in the teacher-rated positive classroom behavior.

In Study 1, we aim at extending the findings by Weber and Ruch (2012) , that is, that the association between certain character strengths and school achievement is mediated by positive behavior in the classroom. We investigate this relationship in a sample of primary school students and a sample of homeroom teachers, using a self-report measure of character strengths, and teacher ratings to assess positive classroom behavior and school achievement. Further, we extend previous studies by studying the assumed mediation on the level of single strengths. We expect an indirect effect mediated by positive behavior, and that the strength of this indirect effect varies for different character strengths.

Participants

The sample of students consisted of 179 German-speaking primary school students (48.6% females) attending the fifth or sixth grade. Their mean age was 11.56 years ( SD = 0.75; ranging from 10 to 13 years). The majority (86.6%) of participants were Swiss citizens (including dual citizens; data from one participant missing). The sample of teachers consisted of nine homeroom teachers (77.8% men) with a mean age of 36.2 years ( SD = 7.3; ranging from 23 to 45 years). They had been teaching the participating students for an average of 1.4 years ( SD = 1.0).

Instruments

The German adaptation ( Ruch et al., 2014b ) of the VIA-Youth ( Park and Peterson, 2006 ) is a self-report instrument assessing the 24 character strengths uses seven to nine items per scale utilizing a 5-point response format (from 5 = very much like me to 1 = not like me at all ). It consists of 198 items and about one third of the items are reverse coded. A sample item is “Even when my team is losing, I play fair” (fairness). The VIA-Youth proved to be a reliable and valid measure of self-reported character strengths in previous studies (e.g., Park and Peterson, 2006 ; Ruch et al., 2014b ). In this study, most of the 24 VIA-Youth scales yielded satisfactory internal consistencies (i.e., 17 scales had alpha coefficients > 0.70) and only five scales (modesty: α = 0.51, curiosity: α = 0.55, open-mindedness: α = 0.61, fairness: α = 0.62, and prudence: α = 0.63) had alpha coefficients < 0.65. Altogether, the internal consistency coefficients of the 24 VIA-Youth scales yielded a median of α = 0.72. Means for each of the five factors (leadership, temperance, intellectual, transcendence, and other-directed strengths) were computed (cf. Weber et al., 2013 ; Ruch et al., 2014b ).

The CBRS ( Weber and Ruch, 2012 ) assesses teacher ratings of their perceptions of positive behavior in the classroom. The 10 items use a 5-point response scale (from 1 = “not like him/her at all” to 5 = “very much like him/her”) and include both positive achievement-related behavior (e.g., “behaves diligently”) and positive social behavior (e.g., “shows appropriate conflict management”). In the present study, the scale yielded a high internal consistency (α = 0.89).

A teacher rating was also used to assess school achievement . Homeroom teachers were instructed to rate the “overall school achievement” (taking into account performance in all subjects) on a scale ranging from 1 = “unsatisfactory” to 7 = “excellent.”

Data for this study were collected in nine classrooms of three primary schools in German-speaking Switzerland. After obtaining approval by the ethical committee of the philosophical faculty at the University of Zurich, schools were contacted and asked to participate. Participation was voluntary and none of the students or teachers was paid for their participation. All students and a parent or legal guardian gave active consent to participate. A trained psychologist instructed the students and they completed the self-report questionnaires (as part of a larger questionnaire study) in the classroom setting. The teachers completed the rating form. Students received written feedback on their individual rank order of character strengths and were provided with more detailed information on the meaning of the character strengths in the VIA classification. The presented data were collected as a part of a larger project. Whereas Weber et al. (2014) focused on the relationships between character strengths, school-related positive affect, and school achievement in students attending different school types, the present study uses a subset of the sample used by Weber et al. (2014) , i.e., only primary school students, and it investigates the relationships between character strengths, positive classroom behavior, and school achievement.

Data Analysis

The nine character strengths expected to show the most substantial associations were spread out to four of the five higher-order factors (cf. Ruch et al., 2014b ) and five ( Ruch and Proyer, 2015 ) or six ( Peterson and Seligman, 2004 ) of the six ubiquitous virtues, so we decided to analyze the data on the level of single strengths instead of on the level of factors. For an initial examination, we computed descriptive statistics of the self-rated character strengths. Furthermore, internal consistency coefficients (Cronbach’s alpha) and correlations with students’ age and sex were computed. Since we observed some age and sex differences in our variables of interest, we decided to control for the influence of these demographic variables in the further analyses. As a second step, we computed partial correlations between character strengths, positive classroom behavior, and school achievement, while controlling for students’ age and sex. In addition, we computed hierarchical multiple regression analyses (controlling for age and sex in the first step) and tested the incremental effect (change in adjusted R 2 ) of the 24 character strengths entered in the second step. As a final step, we conducted mediation analyses to test the direct and indirect effects of character strengths on school success. The mediation model is displayed in Figure 1 . Mediation analyses were conducted with the help of an SPSS macro using bootstrapping with z = 5,000 resamples to compute 99.6% confidence intervals (corrected for multiple comparisons) for the indirect effects ( Hayes, 2013 ). Standardized values of all variables were used in the mediation analyses.

Figure 1. The mediating role of positive classroom behavior in explaining the relation between 24 character strengths and school achievement; indirect effects tested separately for each of the character strengths .

Preliminary Analyses and Relationships between Character Strengths, Positive Classroom Behavior, and School Achievement

The results of the preliminary analyses are displayed in Table 1 . Means for the VIA-Youth ranged between 3.31 (leadership) and 4.13 (gratitude), and were comparable to the means reported in Ruch et al. (2014b) . Also in line with previous findings ( Park and Peterson, 2006 ; Ruch et al., 2014b ), there were no substantial correlations with age, and scores on kindness and appreciation of beauty and excellence were higher for girls than for boys. School achievement was negatively correlated with age, and girls received higher ratings in positive classroom behavior than boys.

Table 1. Means, standard deviations, internal consistency coefficients, correlations with students’ age and sex of all variables, and correlations with positive classroom behavior and overall school achievement .

As shown in Table 1 , 15 of the 24 character strengths were correlated with positive classroom behavior with the numerically highest coefficients being found for hope, perseverance, zest, love of learning, and prudence. Similarly, 14 of the 24 character strengths were related to teacher-rated school achievement. Perspective, leadership, perseverance, love of learning, hope, and prudence yielded the numerically highest coefficients. The significant correlations were exclusively positive. Multiple hierarchical regression analyses revealed that the 24 character strengths when added in a second step (after controlling for age and sex in the first step) explained 19.7% additional variance (adjusted R 2 ) in positive classroom behavior, F change (24,152) = 2.99, p < 0.001, and 23.9% additional variance in overall school achievement, F change (24,152) = 3.47, p < 0.001.

Table 2 shows the results of the mediation analyses ( Hayes, 2013 ). There were total effects for 14 of the 24 character strengths and for most of these (all except creativity and humor), there were indirect effects ( a × b ), which means that the relationship between the character strengths and school achievement was mediated by positive classroom behavior. For perspective and leadership, there was both an indirect and a direct effect. For the remaining character strengths, the results were consistent with a full mediation—there was only an indirect effect and no significant direct effect. Humor was the only character strength that yielded a significant direct effect, but no indirect effect. Thus, the positive relationship between humor and school achievement was not mediated by positive classroom behavior.

Table 2. Results of mediation analyses for character strengths as predictors of overall school achievement with positive classroom behavior as mediator (controlling for age and sex) .

Summary of Results and Limitations

Study 1 was primarily designed to replicate previous findings by Weber and Ruch (2012) , and to extend these findings by looking at whether positive classroom behavior mediates the link between character strengths and school achievement on the level of single strengths. We found that a large number of character strengths were linked to teacher-reported positive classroom behavior and school achievement, and that many of the relationships with school achievement were fully mediated by positive classroom behavior. Perspective, leadership, and humor (also) showed direct effects on school achievement, independent of positive classroom behavior.

The interpretation of these results is somewhat limited by the fact that the ratings of positive classroom behavior and school achievement were done by only one teacher, and at the same time. In consequence, the two ratings may be somewhat confounded. Also, we only assessed overall school achievement and we do not know how much emphasis the teachers put on academic vs. non-academic subjects, when evaluating the students’ overall school achievement. Even though it can be assumed that these ratings are valid, it would be desirable to obtain the actual grades and ratings of positive classroom behavior that several teachers have agreed on. Especially when studying the relevance of good character in secondary school classrooms, this would be desirable, since students are in touch with a broader group of teachers than they are in primary school. Looking at grades in academic and non-academic subjects separately would also help to better understand what potential mechanisms are involved in the association between character strengths, positive classroom behavior, and school achievement.

Study 2 aims at extending the findings of Study 1 in three ways: (a) by studying students in secondary school, (b) by using a rating system for positive behavior that has been established in schools and reflects the perspective of several teachers, and (c) by studying associations with actual grades in both academic and non-academic subjects. We expect that the results of Study 1 will be replicated in Study 2, although different measures for both positive classroom behavior and school achievement are used.

We expect somewhat lower effect sizes, since previous research has shown that personality traits tend to play a stronger role in predicting achievement on the primary school level than on secondary school level ( Poropat, 2009 ). Similarly, we expect the correlation between positive classroom behavior and school achievement to be somewhat lower, while still substantial. As a consequence, we also expect that there will be fewer character strengths showing an indirect effect on school achievement through positive classroom. More importantly, we expect stronger relationships for grades in academic than for grades in non-academic subjects, since character strengths should support achievement-related behavior especially in those subjects that require sustained effort and that are less dependent of a specific talent, such as musicality.

The sample consisted of 199 German-speaking secondary school students (53.3% females) attending the seventh to ninth grade. 37.2% of the students attended a secondary school with basic requirements (qualifying them to begin an apprenticeship after graduation) and 62.8% attended a secondary school with augmented requirements (qualifying them to attend to higher education like university after graduation). Their mean age was 14.42 years ( SD = 1.19; ranging from 12 to 17 years). The majority (76.4%) of participants were Swiss citizens (including dual citizens).

We used the German version ( Ruch et al., 2014b ) of the VIA-Youth ( Park and Peterson, 2006 ) to assess self-reported character strengths . In Study 2, the internal consistency coefficients of the 24 VIA-Youth scales yielded a median of α = 0.78. Only one scale had an alpha coefficient below 0.65 (modesty: α = 0.64) and 22 of the 24 yielded coefficients > 0.70.

The positive classroom behavior teacher ratings is a standard used by schools in Switzerland to describe positive behavior in the classroom. In this study, we used ratings of achievement-related (e.g., “works diligently and reliably”) and social behavior (“is considerate toward other students”). The seven items that were rated on a 4-point response scale (from 1 = “inadequate” to 4 = “very good”) showed a high content overlap with the items of the CBRS ( Weber and Ruch, 2012 ). These ratings were given by the respective students’ teachers collectively and discussed during a teacher meeting. We tested the dimensionality of the teacher ratings using principal component analysis. One eigenvalue exceeded unity (eigenvalues were 3.76, 0.85, 0.66, 0.60, 0.45, 0.35, etc.) and this first factor explained 53.7% of the variance. Parallel analysis ( Horn, 1965 ) suggested unidimensionality as well. Corrected item-total correlations ranged from r = 0.52 to r = 0.71 (mean r = 0.62), and the ratings showed a high internal consistency in the present study (α = 0.85). In the analyses, we consequently used a mean score across all seven items.

School achievement was operationalized by students’ grades that were provided by the schools’ administration offices. Grades were coded on a scale ranging from 1 = “inadequate” to 6 = “very good” (allowing for half points), with all grades of 4 and higher representing an evaluation of satisfactory achievement, and 3.5 and lower describing unsatisfactory achievement. We computed students’ GPAs as an average across all academic subjects (mathematics, German, French, and English language, history, and science; i.e., excluding music, arts, and physical education). We also calculated an average across grades in mathematics and German language (MG), the two grades commonly considered most important, and an average for grades in non-academic subjects (NA; including art, music, and physical education).

Data for this study were collected in 14 classrooms of four secondary schools in German-speaking Switzerland, which represented two different educational levels. After obtaining approval by the ethical committee of the philosophical faculty at the University of Zurich, schools were contacted and asked to participate. Students and, in case of participating students under the age of 14 years, also a parent or legal guardian gave active consent.

Classroom teachers were instructed on how to oversee the completion of the questionnaire and how to respond to questions. They read standardized instructions to the students who completed the self-report questionnaire (as part of a larger study) in the classroom setting. Students received written feedback on their individual rank order of character strengths and were provided with information on the meaning of the character strengths of the VIA classification. The schools’ administrative offices provided students’ grades (including the teacher ratings on positive classroom behavior) at the end of the school term, which was a couple of weeks after the data collection had taken place.

In preliminary analyses, we computed means and standard deviations for all assessed variables. In addition, internal consistencies (Cronbach’s alpha) and correlations with age, sex, and school level (basic vs. augmented requirements). To address our research questions, we computed partial correlations (controlling for age, sex, and school level) of the 24 character strengths with positive classroom behavior, and three different indicators of school achievement: GPA, an average across grades in mathematics and German language (MG), and an average for grades in non-academic subjects (NA; including art, music, physical education). As a second step, we conducted mediation analyses to test the direct and indirect effect of character strengths on school success as a third step (see Study 1).

As shown in Table 3 , means for the VIA-Youth ranged between 3.31 (leadership) and 4.19 (gratitude), and were comparable to the means reported in previous studies as well as in Study 1. There were only a few correlations with age, and scores on bravery, kindness, beauty, and religiousness were higher for girls than for boys. Teamwork, modesty, and hope were higher in students attending schools with augmented requirements, whereas religiousness was higher in students attending schools with basic requirements. Positive classroom behavior was positively correlated with age, and GPA was unrelated to age and sex. Both positive classroom behavior and GPA were higher for students attending schools with augmented requirements than for students attending schools with basic requirements. As some of the variables appeared to be affected by participants’ demographics, we controlled for such influences in subsequent analyses.

Table 3. Means, standard deviations, internal consistency coefficients, correlations with students’ age and sex of all variables, and partial correlations with positive classroom behavior and overall school achievement (controlling for students’ age, sex, and school level) .

Perseverance, social intelligence, prudence, self-regulation, and hope were positively correlated with teacher-rated positive classroom behavior (see Table 3 ). Notably more character strengths were positively associated with school achievement, as operationalized by the grade average across all academic subjects: Love of learning, perspective, perseverance, zest, forgiveness, prudence, gratitude, and hope. Correlations with the average of grades in mathematics and German language were similar (although non-significant for perspective, prudence and gratitude). None of the 24 character strengths correlated with grades in non-academic subjects (art, music, physical education), with zest yielding the numerically highest correlation coefficient ( r = 0.20, p = 0.004).

Multiple hierarchical regression analyses revealed that the 24 character strengths when added in a second step (after controlling for age, sex, and school level in the first step), explained 7.3% additional variance (adjusted R 2 ) in positive classroom behavior, F change (24,170) = 1.92, p < 0.01, 14.8% additional variance in GPA, which was computed across all academic subjects, F change (24,170) = 2.79, p < 0.01, and 13.4% additional variance in Grades in mathematics and German language, F change (24,170) = 2.30, p < 0.01. However, the 24 character strengths explained no significant amount of variance in grades in non-academic subjects beyond the influence of age, sex, and school level, F change (24,170) = 1.45, p = 0.09.

To test the direct and indirect effects of character strengths on school achievement (GPA across academic subjects), mediation analyses were conducted using the bootstrapping procedure suggested by Hayes (2013) . Figure 1 shows an illustration of the tested mediation model and results are displayed in Table 4 .

Table 4. Results of mediation analyses for character strengths as predictors of GPA with positive classroom behavior as mediator (controlling for students’ age, sex, and school level) .

As shown in Table 4 , eight character strengths yielded total effects on school achievement, as operationalized by GPA (across academic subjects). Hope yielded both a direct effect and an indirect effect through positive classroom behavior, which is in line with a partial mediation. Perseverance and prudence yielded indirect effects without direct effects, which is in line with a full mediation of the relationship by positive classroom behavior, and there was an additional indirect effect for social intelligence and self-regulation. Love of learning and forgiveness yielded only a direct effect, thus their relationship with school achievement was not mediated by positive classroom behavior.

General Discussion

The present study extends the knowledge on the role of character strengths for positive behavior and achievement at school. We used two different samples to replicate and extend previous findings on the link between primary and secondary school students’ character strengths, positive classroom behavior, and school achievement. Using a sample of primary school students, results of Study 1 showed that hope, perseverance, zest, love of learning, prudence, perspective and self-regulation were most substantially correlated with teacher-rated positive behavior in the classroom. Perspective, leadership, love of learning, perseverance, social intelligence, hope, and prudence yielded the highest correlations with overall school achievement, as rated by the students’ homeroom teachers. For 12 of the 24 character strengths, mediation analyses revealed an indirect effect through positive classroom behavior on school achievement. Using a sample of secondary school students and actual grades, results of Study 2 showed that hope, self-regulation, prudence, perseverance, and social intelligence were related to positive classroom behavior, that eight character strengths were related to GPA across academic grades, and that none of the character strengths was correlated with grades in non-academic subjects. Mediation analyses revealed that the associations with GPA were (partly) mediated by positive classroom behavior for some of the character strengths, but not for others.

There were some striking similarities in the results of both studies. In both studies, perseverance, social intelligence, prudence, self-regulation, and hope were related to positive classroom behavior, and love of learning, perspective, perseverance, zest, prudence, gratitude, and hope were related to school achievement. Compared to typical effect sizes for the relationship between personality traits and academic achievement, the effect sizes that we found for several character strengths are comparable to or exceed those reported for conscientiousness in meta-analyses (cf. Poropat, 2009 ).

Perseverance, prudence and hope were associated with both positive classroom-behavior and school achievement across the two studies presented here. Social intelligence and self-regulation showed replicable associations across both samples only with positive classroom behavior, but were not related consistently with school achievement. Love of learning, perspective, zest and gratitude showed a replicable association with school achievement, but were not consistently associated with positive classroom behavior. When comparing these results to our expectations, eight of the nine character strengths showed the expected associations with school achievement and/or positive classroom behavior across both studies. The ninth strength, teamwork, only showed associations with both variables in Study 1, but not Study 2. In addition, zest was robustly associated with school achievement. While love of learning is specifically related to positive experience while learning new things, zestful students are generally more vital, alert and energetic (cf. Peterson and Seligman, 2004 ). Zest is highly related to experiencing positive affective states in general (e.g., Van Eeden et al., 2008 ), but also at school ( Weber et al., 2014 ). This suggests that being zestful is a helpful resource also for school achievement, e.g., by maintaining high levels of energy when being faced with schoolwork.

All character strengths that yielded indirect effects on school achievement through positive classroom behavior in Study 2 (perseverance, prudence, self-regulation, hope) had also yielded indirect effects in Study 1. Hope additionally yielded a direct effect on school achievement in Study 2. The effects of perseverance and prudence on school achievement were fully mediated by positive classroom behavior in both studies. Perseverance and prudence thus seem to be related to school achievement mostly through mechanisms that are observed and appreciated by the teachers. This seems plausible as both of these strengths are theoretically linked with adherence to rules and conforming with expectations, while controlling impulses and feelings that are repugnant to those. Hope, on the other hand, seems to affect school achievement also through mechanisms that are not captured by teacher-rated positive classroom behavior.

There were also differences between the results of the two studies. Most strikingly, the number of character strengths associated with positive classroom behavior and (potentially as a consequence) the number of character strengths whose effects on school achievement were mediated by positive classroom behavior was much higher in the sample of primary school students (Study 1) than in the sample of secondary school students (Study 2). This cannot be explained by differences in sample sizes, which were minor anyway. Study 2 also showed that there were no relationships with grades in non-academic subjects. It is possible that specific talents (e.g., musicality, sportiness) play a more important role for achievement in such subjects. This result also suggests that character strengths are (at least not only) related to school achievement because “being the nice student” will make the grade in just any subject. It seems rather that character strengths facilitate achievement-related behavior that then may lead to better school achievement. The fact that Study 1 considered teacher ratings of overall school achievement which also included non-academic subjects might also account for a portion of the differences in the results between the two studies.

Limitations and Future Research

In the two studies, we used slightly different measures of positive classroom behavior and school achievement. While this can be seen as supporting the robustness of the findings, one could also argue that this makes the results less comparable. Indeed, it is difficult to disentangle which of the differences between the results are accounted for by sample characteristics (age, school type) or by differences in the measures. However, especially the measures of positive school behavior showed a high content overlap and teacher ratings of school achievement at primary school level have been shown to be highly related with actual grades (e.g., r = 0.88 in Spinath and Spinath, 2005 ).

The interpretation of our findings is of course also limited by the cross-sectional nature of the study, which does not allow drawing causal conclusions. While in many cases it seems likely that the character strength contributes to school achievement, in other cases also an opposite influence seems plausible (e.g., gratitude). In order to test such hypotheses, multiple-wave longitudinal studies are needed. It would also be informative to include measures of intelligence in future studies. Although it seems that variance in school achievement explained by personality is largely independent of the variance explained by intelligence, intelligence does play an important role in predicting school achievement, and should not be neglected. It might be especially interesting to study interactions of character strengths and intelligence in predicting academic outcomes.

Both types of teacher ratings that we used to measure positive classroom behavior encompass aspects of positive achievement-related behavior (e.g., behaving diligently) as well as positive social behavior (e.g., showing appropriate conflict management). These two aspects are not clearly separable in the ratings that were used here, and factor analyses clearly suggested a one-factor-solution. This may also be due to the fact that the majority of the items covered achievement-related behavior. However, it might be informative to further develop those ratings to measure the two aspects separately and better understand whether positive classroom behavior is indeed unidimensional or whether it can also be conceptualized in a multidimensional way. With a multidimensional assessment of positive classroom behavior, perhaps additional strengths could emerge as predictors or as stronger predictors of positive classroom behavior.

Similarly, other types of academic outcomes besides grades might be investigated in future studies. For instance, results by Kappe and van der Flier (2010) revealed that the predictive validity of the Big Five personality factors on academic performance varied to some extent with the type of academic outcome (i.e., grade, exam result, essay, team project, or thesis) considered. We would expect certain character strengths to be more strongly related with specific types of academic outcomes than others (e.g., other-directed strengths such as teamwork or fairness should be more strongly related to performance in team projects than in exams).

We also believe that studying the relationship of character strengths with other desired and important outcomes in the classroom, such as positive relationships with teachers and with peers, deserves more empirical attention (cf. Quinlan et al., 2015 ). For a number of character strengths, we speculated that positive relationships in the classroom might be mechanisms by which they might influence behavior and success at school. A promising direction for further research might be to contrast different potential mediators to understand the effects of different character strengths in and outside the classroom better. Our results underline the importance of positive behavior in the classroom as a mediator, but for many of character strengths the effect on school achievement was not completely or at all attributable to differences in positive classroom behavior (e.g., perspective, leadership, and humor in Study 1, and love of learning, perspective, zest, forgiveness, gratitude, and hope in Study 2). Weber et al. (2014) suggested school-related positive affect as a mediator between certain affect-favoring character strengths (zest, perseverance, love of learning, social intelligence), positive school functioning, and school achievement. Including such dimensions of positive experiences, together with variables on the relationships in the classroom, variables assessing cognitive and motivational processes (e.g., achievement goals), and positive classroom behavior, could help determine which are the most relevant mechanisms of each of the character strengths associated with school achievement.

Taken together, results of the two studies reported here and in previous studies ( Weber and Ruch, 2012 ) suggest a rather distinct set of strengths that seem to be most relevant in school. We found it interesting that these are not part of the same factor nor belong to the same virtue. In fact, strengths from four of the five factors reported in Ruch et al. (2014b) were among those consistently correlated with school achievement, positive classroom behavior, or both. However, the present findings hint at the existence of differences in the composition of this set of strengths, depending on the age, the school type, and also the type of outcome studied. Those moderators are not well understood yet. Additionally, an interesting direction for future research would be investigating the application of different character strengths in the classroom. Especially since many interventions build on the application of signature strengths, it would be interesting to see whether findings on the application of character strengths in the workplace (cf. Harzer and Ruch, 2013 ) would generalize to the classroom. A first question would be whether those strengths that yield relationships with desired classroom outcomes such as school achievement are also perceived to be most desirable at school by both students and teachers. Second, it would be interesting to study whether the number of signature strengths a student applies in school is also associated with satisfaction and achievement at school. It is an ongoing debate whether interventions should rather target specific strengths that are seen as most relevant in the school context, or whether they should encourage the identification and application of the individual student’s set of signature strengths (cf. Linkins et al., 2015 ), and potentially also encourage schools to provide opportunities to apply strengths that are not usually seen as relevant for school. In any case, this would have important implications for strength-based interventions.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

The authors like to thank Isabelle Homberger, Sophie Faschinger, Romina Rodriguez, and Silva Ziegler for collecting and entering parts of the data.

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Keywords: character strengths, virtues, VIA classification, positive education, adolescents, positive psychology, school achievement, character

Citation: Wagner L and Ruch W (2015) Good character at school: positive classroom behavior mediates the link between character strengths and school achievement. Front. Psychol. 6:610. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00610

Received: 09 March 2015; Accepted: 23 April 2015; Published: 15 May 2015.

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Copyright © 2015 Wagner and Ruch. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Lisa Wagner, Personality and Assessment, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Binzmuehlestrasse 14, Box 7, CH-8050 Zurich, Switzerland, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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From Virtue to Grit: Changes in Character Education Narratives in the U.S. from 1985 to 2016

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How did narratives about character education in the United States change between 1985 and 2016 and what does this reveal about the changing meaning of character over this time period? Policymakers and pundits have frequently invoked ideas of “good” versus “bad” character as they attempt to blame individuals for their own circumstances. It makes sense to trace these narratives in their various forms, beginning with the discourse around character and children. Character education programs are a natural object to study in order to capture these narratives. Despite this, sociologists have largely ignored character education, which leaves a significant gap in the scholarly knowledge about both character education and the social construction of designations of “good” versus “bad” character more generally. In this paper, I address this gap by examining the narratives around character education between 1985 and 2016. After analyzing 600 articles from Education Week and the New York Times mentioning character education, I find that there is a significant expansion of the ways in which advocates argue for character education in the schools. Whereas earlier narratives encouraged character education as a means to teach students how to be good, moral people starting in the early 2000s, these narratives expanded to include teaching character as a means to improve academic performance. This finding is significant as we continue to see both education reformers pushing for character education as a tactic to improve achievements and policymakers and pundits invoking character flaws as a means to blame individuals for structural inequality.

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Character education is defined here as any curriculum designed with the primary goal of teaching a desired set of values or attributes meant to support students’ social, emotional, or ethical development. It is related to but different from civics education, which is curriculum designed to teach about political participation; social justice education programs, which are designed to advocate for specific political issues like environmentalism; or anti-drug programs, which are designed to explicitly teach about the dangers of drug and alcohol use.

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Despite the difference in name, “noncognitive skills” still denote the same approximate set of nonacademic traits or attributes that fall under the banner of character education earlier on (Heckman et al. 2006 ).

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Wendy Griswold, Simone Ispa Landa, and Hannah Wohl for their guidance and support as I developed and revised this project, as well as to Anna Michelson, Mallory Fallin, Niamba Baskerville, Jun Fang, Veda Kumarjiguda, and the Northwestern University Culture and Society Workshop members for their feedback on various iterations of these ideas. Finally, I would like to thank the reviewers and editors for their comments, ideas, and time, all of which substantially improved this paper.

This research was supported by the US Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, Multidisciplinary Program in Education Sciences, Grant Award #R305B140042.

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Handsman, E. From Virtue to Grit: Changes in Character Education Narratives in the U.S. from 1985 to 2016. Qual Sociol 44 , 271–291 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-021-09475-2

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Character Education Seen as Student-Achievement Tool

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Many school administrators are realizing character education, once thought of as an intrusion on the school day, can actually help students perform better.

A growing body of research supports its effectiveness, and educators say they’ve seen a difference in students when positive value lessons become part of the school’s culture.

“Good character education is good education,” said Marvin Berkowitz, a professor of character education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

“If kids come to schools where they feel valued, safe, and feel teachers have their best interests at heart, … they commit themselves,” said Mr. Berkowitz. “They work harder, there are fewer distractions, and kids are more motivated. Of course they learn more.”

Character education often entails a school embracing a set of values that are taught in regular advisory sessions or integrated into classroom lessons or both. Supporters say character education is simply about how people treat each other, and the ideas are fairly universal. The primary traits that schools promote, according to Mr. Berkowitz, are respect, responsibility, caring, fairness, and honesty. It is seen more in elementary schools, sometimes getting squeezed out at the secondary level to make room for more intense academics. But experts say resistance is lessening in some places.

Yet some challenge the notion of the public schools, rather than families, being charged with teaching values. They are concerned about whose values will be taught. Others, however, maintain that schools and families should share the job of nurturing character.

Signs of a Renaissance

While many think of character education as a curriculum, the values permeate all interactions in schools where it is effective.

“It’s hard to call it a program because it’s really embedded in everything we do,” Julie Williams, the principal of Russell Middle School in Colorado Springs, Colo., says of her school’s emphasis on what it calls the rocks values—respect, ownership, choices, knowledge, and safety. “We don’t stop the day to talk about character education. We do it in every day, in every class. It’s how our family works.”

Since implementing character education at Russell eight years ago, discipline referrals have fallen, test scores have increased, and the school has been recognized nationally.

The popularity of character education ebbs and flows in reaction to issues of accountability, bullying, and school violence. Some say it is gaining momentum as part of the comprehensive whole school reform movement.

Concern over sexting, bullying, and the need to get students college-ready are also factors for the increased interest, according to Scott Seider, an assistant professor of education at Boston University and the author of last year’s Character Compass: How Powerful School Culture Can Point Students Toward Success .

Russ Sojourner, the director of leadership development for the Character Education Partnership , a Washington-based advocacy organization, and a former principal, senses the pendulum is swinging back in favor of character education, fueled in part by the recent killings of 26 students and adults in Newtown, Conn.

In the wake of that massacre, the U.S. Department of Education is considering ways to improve school culture and invest more in character education, according to Mark Hyatt, the president and chief executive officer of the partnership.

“I do believe there is a renaissance of late,” Mr. Sojourner said. “School life can be so much better than it is. Teachers and kids can be happier,” he said. “Disrespectful behavior can be reduced, and all the disastrous things from chronic bullying can be so reduced.”

Some advocates also point to the Common Core State Standards as a selling point for character education because the standards will require students to be more diligent in their studies.

“We do have data that show attendance goes up, discipline problems go down, achievement rises,” said Mr. Hyatt.

Research on the topic is mounting. Mr. Berkowitz and Melinda Bier, also a University of Missouri research scientist, identified 69 studies of 33 different character education programs that had scientific evidence supporting their effectiveness in enhancing the academic goals of schools. A 2011 meta-analysis of school-based social and emotional learning programs published in Child Development found significant improvements in academic achievement, behavior, and attitudes compared with control groups.

Results of a 2010 study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education, however, did not find social- and character-development programs improved student outcomes or teachers’ perceptions of school climate. Mr. Berkowitz, among others, cites weaknesses in that research.

Building on Values

Independent and charter schools tended to be the early adopters of character education, largely because they have a nimbleness to experiment with new initiatives that regular public schools often lack.

The Democracy Prep public schools in New York City are among them. Lessons in character begin in kindergarten and evolve through 12th grade.

“Before you get to academics, college-going, and rigorous courses, you have to build a school culture,” said Seth Andrew, the network’s founder and schools superintendent. Children start with learning to dream (discipline, responsibility, enthusiasm, accountability and maturity.) By high school, it becomes dream big, with bravery, integrity, and grit added.

The first two weeks of school every fall are dedicated entirely to values and development. Then small, weekly homeroom sessions help build long-term relationships with teachers and students around school values.

For each value, students learn concrete skills with the hope that, over time, they will develop the disposition to demonstrate them when no one is looking or rewarding them. The emphasis switches from extrinsic rewards to more intrinsic ones as the students mature, Mr. Andrew said.

Democracy Prep also requires that students demonstrate mastery of 13 civic values, including publishing a piece of work, fundraising for a cause, and canvassing the neighborhood before an election.

Great Hearts Academies , made up of 15 nonprofit charter schools in Arizona, is all about a classical liberal arts education where virtue is the aim, said Daniel Scroggin, the founder and chief executive officer. Character education is woven into all aspects of the schools, from hiring teachers who embrace its charter network’s values to asking students to set their own consequences for discipline.

Honesty, kindness, friendship, perseverance, justice, and citizenship are pillars in the K-5 schools, while truth, beauty, and goodness are the focus at the 6-12 level.

Mr. Scroggin said the pillars lay a solid moral foundation. “If just grit and perseverance are key moral attributes that you see, the question is grit and perseverance for what—to make money, to rule the world?” he said. “Ultimately, it’s about seeking how we can be truthful and good. … We want students to have a deep and enduring sense of care for others.”

He points to college-admission test scores as one example of how the moral order leads to high achievement. The average SAT score is 1840, out of 2400, and the average ACT score is 27.3, out of 35. In 2012, the mean national scores on the SAT and the ACT were 1498 and 21.1, respectively.

‘Don’t Rush’

Character education is more effective when a designated portion of the day is devoted to character education, according to Mr. Seider. On top of that, the language of character education can be infused into classroom lessons and other school activities, he said.

It is also most effective when a school focuses on a specific set of traits, according to Mr. Seider’s research. In his book, he looks at three Boston public schools that stress different aspects of character education. One chooses moral characteristics that are centered on integrity and compassion. Another values a civic approach, similar to that of Democracy Prep. The third selects performance characteristics of resilience and problem-solving because they are closely linked with academic achievement.

“Different types of schools are contending with different kinds of challenges,” said Mr. Seider, noting that some need to boost academic performance for first-generation, college-going students while others in more affluent areas may have issues with cheating and could benefit from moral lessons. He advises schools to reflect, host focus groups, or administer surveys to get feedback from students, parents, and teachers about what is important to the community. Then using the data, the school can develop character education that best fits its needs.

In St. Charles, Mo., Amy Johnston, who recently retired as the principal of Frances Howell Middle School, said she spent a year back in 2001 with her staff figuring out the direction they wanted to take with character education. The teachers read books, discussed them together, and developed a plan. Her advice: “Don’t rush this.”

Respect, responsibility, honesty, and compassion became the focus of the school’s character-connection classes, made up of a mix of 15 students from 6th to 8th grades. At first, they met for about 20 minutes weekly to discuss issues related to character through news stories, quotes of the day, and service learning. But as teachers and students became more comfortable with the concept, relationships grew (the same group stayed together for three years), and the class began to meet daily.

“I saw changes in the kids,” said Ms. Johnston, whose school was recognized by the Character Education Partnership for its model efforts. “There was more time to teach because we were not disciplining as much and not sending kids out of the classroom.” Detention numbers dropped from 1,200 to just 250 after the new approach was implemented.

She said the term “character education” has gotten stale and should be rebranded. “You are just creating better people to send out into the world. It is part of being a good educator,” she said. “Once you get that in place, they are going to get good grades and want to come to school.”

Coverage of school climate and student behavior and engagement is supported in part by grants from the Atlantic Philanthropies, the NoVo Foundation, the Raikes Foundation, and the California Endowment. A version of this article appeared in the February 27, 2013 edition of Education Week as Character Education Seen as Student-Achievement Tool

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Money or Education, Which is More Important/Better? (Debate)

• Post author: Edeh Samuel Chukwuemeka ACMC
• Post published: March 3, 2024
• Post category: Scholarly Articles

Money or Education, Which is more Important? (Debate): So, which is more valuable: education or money? Which one should we concentrate on? This appears to be a simple question, but when we think about it, the answer is not that straightforward. Money and education are inextricably linked in our daily lives. On the one hand, money is what drives the majority of our lives.

We have to think about money in practically every decision we make. Education, on the other hand, cannot be overlooked since it provides us with the fundamental tools we require to live. Let’s weigh in on their relative importance and see if we can finally settle this age-old argument.

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Table of Contents

Why Money is Important

Money is commonly said to be “ not the most important thing in the world.” However, for many individuals, it is right up there with oxygen in terms of significance. These aren’t necessarily materialistic individuals. They just recognize the genuine worth of money.

Money isn’t exciting on its own. What matters is what money can accomplish for you. You have more flexibility and options when you have money. When you have a strong salary or financial resources, you have the freedom to choose where and how you wish to live. When you don’t have much money, on the other hand, making choices may be something you can’t afford. In actuality, the choices available to you may not be choices at all.

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Undoubtedly, you’ll require money to meet your fundamental needs, which include food, clothes, and shelter. Because of a lack of funds, a poor individual is frequently forced to make compromises even on essential basic requirements. Moreover, medical expenditures nowadays consume a person’s whole life savings. Furthermore, one must have money to obtain an education, as the cost of school is quite expensive these days and is not likely to decrease anytime soon.

While money cannot purchase happiness, it may give you independence, stability, and the ability to follow your aspirations. As a result, money is unquestionably necessary for every excellent thing that provides us financial satisfaction.

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Why Education is Important

Today, education is more vital than ever before, and it has reached new heights as people have a better knowledge of what it comprises. If you ask yourself, “Why is education important?” your response will almost certainly not be the same as everyone else’s. While having a college degree is tremendously important for a successful profession and is socially acceptable in today’s culture, it is not the sole source of education. In everything we do, education is all around us.

Education may help you become the greatest, most complete version of yourself by allowing you to learn about what interests you, what you’re excellent at, and how to become self-aware and aware of the world around you. It can assist you in finding your position in the world and making you feel whole. Basic life skills and street smarts are built on the foundation of education. While education may appear to be a technical phrase, it refers to all we learn in life on how to live our lives to the fullest. When it comes to being creative in any manner, shape, or form, the mind can only achieve its full potential if it’s given the tools to think outside the box.

Education gives you a sense of stability in life, which no one can ever take away. You boost your prospects of greater professional options and create new doors for yourself by being well-educated. Education gives financial security in addition to stability, which is very important in today’s culture. An excellent education is more likely to lead to a higher-paying career and provide you with the necessary skills. It might provide you with the freedom to make your own decisions as well as be financially independent. Education has the potential to be the most liberating and empowering thing in the world.

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Money vs Education, Which is More Important

Money is required for basic expenses, but that is not the only requirement. Money helps us reach our objectives and support the things we care about most, such as family, education, health care, charity, adventure, enjoyment, and so on. It assists us in obtaining some of life’s intangibles, such as freedom or independence, as well as the opportunity to maximize our abilities and talents. It allows us to chart our path in life. It ensures financial safety. Much good may be accomplished with money, and unnecessary suffering can be prevented or eliminated.

Education, on the other hand, is essential for survival. Everyone needs education at some point in their lives to improve their knowledge, manner of life, and social and financial standing. Although it may not provide you with financial standing in society, a literate mind will undoubtedly set you apart. Education is amazing in that it is not restricted by age.

While money gives us the ability to make a difference in our own lives and the lives of others, it is impossible to obtain an education without it. The cost of education is quite expensive these days, and it will continue to rise in the near future. Education may be too expensive, particularly at private institutions and universities. While you don’t have to pay back your student loans until after you graduate, the payment will ultimately come due. Without funding, education would come to a halt.

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In a different light, money may be able to buy what you “ desire ,” but education helps you to realize what you “need” to live a better life. This is demonstrated by the numerous non-monetary advantages that may be obtained via education. Money may allow us to have more control over our lives, but it is education that allows us to contribute to society.  Although money is useful, an educated individual understands how to make money in the first place. Education has the potential to open up job opportunities.

With an education, you have the potential to earn more money than others who do not. Obtaining a degree might expand your options in some professions, allowing you to make more money. Many employers provide educational incentives to their workers. Anyone who stays up with current trends will always be able to make more money. If you are well educated, your chances of living in poverty are lower.

Furthermore, you cannot lose or be stripped of your education. Whatever happens, the lessons you’ve learned will be with you. Even if you lose a wonderful job, your degree and experience will assist you in finding work in the future. When a financial catastrophe strikes, you can’t lose what you’ve learned. Even if you become indebted due to unforeseen circumstances, your education will not be taken away from you.

Nevertheless, much of the narrative about the benefits of going to college and having a degree is centred around the concept that if you have a degree, you’ll be able to make more money. For many people, education is only a means to an end, which is monetary gain.

Some believe, however, that if generating money is your primary incentive for pursuing a profession, you might explore trade schools and other qualifications that may help you earn a fair living. After all, while many people dismiss trade skills such as plumbing and electrical labour, these individuals may amass money more quickly than their more educated counterparts. We frequently read about people who have amassed enormous wealth while having had very little formal education. In fact, having a degree does not ensure that you will earn more since many people without a degree make more money than graduates.

Regardless, education will assist you in developing a decent character, a noble personality, and, above all, will help you become a better person. You will not only be able to make money with education, but you will also be able to efficiently use the money you have made to benefit yourself and others. Money is a slippery slope, but those who figure out what they genuinely value and match their money with those beliefs have the most financial and personal well-being. Education is necessary to become such a person. Never forget that knowledge is power.

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Money vs Education is a perennial debate. The common view of money and education in our lives has been emphasized in this article. Everyone, after all, has their unique point of view.

Edeh Samuel Chukwuemeka, ACMC, is a lawyer and a certified mediator/conciliator in Nigeria. He is also a developer with knowledge in various programming languages. Samuel is determined to leverage his skills in technology, SEO, and legal practice to revolutionize the legal profession worldwide by creating web and mobile applications that simplify legal research. Sam is also passionate about educating and providing valuable information to people.

This Post Has 4 Comments

Money is important but education is far more important cuz money is the root to all evil while education is power

Money or education which is more important?

Education is the best, only to those who value it and know how to make use of it Education can bring money, but money at the other side can never bring education Even, a renown people in this world are educated.

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