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.  

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The Role Of Education In Shaping Character And Personality

Educating individuals is a vital aspect of society that goes beyond acquiring knowledge and skills. Education has the power to shape character and influence personality, playing a crucial role in our development. Through exposing individuals to a variety of experiences, ideas, and values, education has the potential to mold individuals into responsible, ethical, and well-rounded citizens. In this article, we will explore how education shapes character, the role it plays in shaping personality, and how it influences behavior.

How does education shape character?

Education serves as the foundation on which character is built. It provides individuals with the tools and knowledge necessary to navigate the complexities of life. Through education, individuals are exposed to diverse perspectives, fostering empathy, understanding, and tolerance towards others. Education cultivates essential values such as integrity, honesty, and respect, which are foundational to positive character development.

Real-world example: A study conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison revealed that students engaged in character education programs showed significant improvements in their behavior, demonstrating decreased aggression, better conflict resolution skills, and increased prosocial behavior.

What role does education play in shaping personality?

Personality encompasses the unique combination of traits, behaviors, and patterns of thought that define an individual. Education plays a crucial role in shaping personality by providing individuals with opportunities for self-discovery, personal growth, and the development of social skills. Through education, individuals gain exposure to various subjects, enabling them to explore areas of interest and discover their passions. This exploration contributes to the development of a well-rounded personality.

Consider a student interested in art . Through exposure to art classes and education, they may develop creativity, observational skills, and a keen eye for detail. These qualities, shaped by their educational experiences, become integral parts of their personality, shaping their future endeavors and career choices.

How does education influence behavior?

Education has a profound influence on behavior, as it equips individuals with the knowledge and skills necessary for making informed decisions. It provides individuals with a moral compass, aiding in ethical decision-making and responsible behavior. Education fosters critical thinking and enables individuals to assess consequences and make choices that align with societal norms and values.

Insight: A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology revealed that individuals with a higher level of education were more likely to engage in charitable behaviors and show greater empathy towards others. This suggests that education fosters prosocial behavior and contributes to building a compassionate society.

The power of education in character development

Educational institutions have a valuable opportunity to instill positive character traits that can shape individuals’ lives. By incorporating character education programs and focusing on values such as empathy, integrity, and resilience, schools can shape students’ character in meaningful ways. These programs not only enhance academic performance but also contribute to the holistic development of individuals.

The KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) public charter schools, known for their rigorous academic standards, also place great emphasis on character development. Their character education program focuses on fostering traits such as grit, self-control, and optimism, aiming to prepare students not only for academic success but also for the challenges of life beyond the classroom.

The Impact of Education on Character

Evidence suggests that education has a significant impact on character development. In an article published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, researchers found that individuals exposed to additional schooling demonstrated improvements in their non-cognitive skills, including perseverance, self-esteem, and self-confidence. This demonstrates the long-term impact of education on character formation.

Education provides individuals with the knowledge and tools to understand and engage with the world around them. Through exposure to differing perspectives and experiences, students develop a sense of social responsibility, empathy, and respect for others. These qualities greatly contribute to the formation of positive character traits such as fairness, honesty, and compassion.

A Holistic Approach to Education

While academic excellence is undoubtedly important, a holistic approach to education, focusing on character development, is equally vital. Schools and educational institutions should aim to create environments that foster positive character traits alongside academic achievement. By incorporating character education into the curriculum, schools can create opportunities for students to develop values, ethics, and social skills that are crucial for their personal growth and success in life.

One effective approach is integrating character education into various subjects, allowing students to explore values and ethics within a complex and diverse world. For example, literature classes can focus on discussing characters’ moral dilemmas, promoting critical thinking and fostering moral development. Similarly, science classes can explore the ethical considerations behind scientific discoveries and technological advancements, encouraging students to reflect on the impact of their actions on society and the environment.

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela

This quote by Nelson Mandela conveys the transformative power of education. It emphasizes that education not only shapes individuals, but also has the potential to bring about positive change in society. As education influences character and personality, it equips individuals with the tools to contribute meaningfully to their communities, fostering social progress and collective well-being.

Therefore, it is crucial for educational systems to prioritize character development alongside academic achievement. By nurturing empathetic, responsible, and ethically-conscious individuals, education plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of society.

For a deeper exploration of the complexities of human development and the impact of education, you can read the thought-provoking article From Chaos To Order: Egyptian Creation .

Christophe Garon

August 30, 2023

Mind , Psychology

character , education

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Is character the key to success, an interview with paul tough reveals that there's more to academic success than just, well...academics..

Is a child’s character the key to their success?

In his new book, How Children Succeed , journalist Paul Tough argues that it is.

Drawing on research from neuroscience, economics, and psychology, Tough makes the case that character traits such as grit, curiosity, conscientiousness, and optimism are more vital to success than IQ. What’s more, he suggests that these traits can be taught to children not only by their parents but by their teachers, coaches, and other mentors.

To support his argument, Tough describes how the private Riverdale Country School and KIPP Public Charter School—two New York schools at opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum—developed this new approach to character development and are now integrating into their school cultures. Working in collaboration with positive psychology experts Martin Seligman and Chris Peterson, the leaders of both schools created a list of character strengths they thought were crucial to academic success, including grit, self-control , zest, social intelligence , gratitude , optimism , and curiosity .

Tough, a former editor at The New York Times Magazine and the author of Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America (2008), believes that students from schools like KIPP may have “character advantages” over their wealthier counterparts because of the hard work it takes for them to succeed. “When a Kipp student graduates from college,” writes Tough, “he will have not only a B.A. but also something more valuable: the knowledge that he climbed a mountain to get it.”

I recently had the opportunity to talk with Tough about his book and its implications for schools, teachers, and administrators. Below is a condensed version of our conversation.

Vicki Zakrzewski : How does your book fit into the ongoing controversy about teaching character education in U.S. public schools?

Paul Tough: I believe there’s this new generation of character education coming along that is different than the last generation. There is always an anxiety when people talk about character education in the public school context. We all think it’s good to teach values and ethics and morals, but we disagree about which values and morals to teach.

The tendency has been to bog down in fights between the Right and the Left, where conservatives were worried that character education programs were all about teaching mushy diversity and general sort of tolerance, and liberals were worried that character education was about teaching religion and more conservative values.

To me, what’s different about this new era in character education, in particular the experiment I wrote about that KIPP and Riverdale are doing in New York, is that it is pushing for what some people in character education call “performance character”—character strengths that are not necessarily about being a good person, but about living a good life, that are about making kids more effective in all kinds of ways. So I think part of the hope behind this new movement is it will be less controversial.

I’ve heard some interesting critiques from people who say that, especially for well-off kids, the last thing they need is more effectiveness lessons, and what they really need is better values and more integrity.  And I’m sympathetic to that argument. But I think there is something very effective about framing character as not about values—I’m not saying that values don’t matter—but instead that what schools are good at teaching, and what they’re designed to teach, is the skills kids need to do well in life. The premise behind this kind of character teaching is not that we should be teaching a whole different dimension of human existence, but that we’ve been leaving out some very important skills in terms of what makes kids happy and productive and fulfilled. And so we need to start teaching those.

VZ: Research has found that positive relationships are also a key to leading happy, productive, and fulfilling lives. However, cultivating these kinds of relationships results more from what you term in your book “moral character”—or things like fairness , generosity , and integrity —rather than “performance character”— effort , diligence, and perseverance. Do you believe that schools also have a responsibility to teach students how to develop positive relationships? If so, how does that impact the teaching of performance character vs. moral character?

PT: That’s a great question. My sense is that these schools are going to continue to experiment with those things. I’ve talked to two Bay Area KIPP groups that are planning to introduce some version of the character report card—but, unlike the New York KIPP group that I wrote about, the Bay Area groups are going to include love in their list of character strengths, which Dave Levin, the co-founder of KIPP, said that he felt wasn’t quite right for a school to teach.

KIPP’s original list of seven strengths includes social intelligence, which is certainly a very different phrase than love. But I think there’s something valuable in a school context that the message for kids is not just, “You should be a nicer person,” but instead, “Having this kind of ability to get along with people is going to make your life better.” Potentially, it could help them think about the life they want to end up leading rather than feeling like, “My parents or my teachers want me to do this.”

VZ: What is one thing you would like teachers to take away from your book?

PT:   The idea that they can have an effect on their students in a broader way than I think they often believe they can. Their job doesn’t have to be just getting cognitive skills and information into these kids’ heads. The help they can give their students that will have as much of an effect, if not more, on how well they do is with developing their character, their non-cognitive skills.

I think teachers are in a system where that’s not valued—where all of their incentives are pushing them toward focusing on a certain range of skills with achievement tests. The more we tie merit pay to those scores, the less incentive we give teachers to push them in these other directions.

With that said, I do feel like most teachers instinctively know there’s more going on. I don’t think it’s a normal human response to go into a classroom and think what these kids need more than anything else is math. I think right now teachers don’t feel empowered to deal with these other issues, though. They see those problems as an obstacle that’s just a pain in the neck, that it makes their job harder, that they can’t really do anything about it. But I think the more we can give them the tools to think about this in another way and eventually to deal with it, they’re going to take that very naturally.

VZ: What would you like administrators to take away from your book?

PT: In lots of ways, I feel like the realm of discipline—which in lots of schools is a very large part of an administrator’s job—is an area that is very ripe for change. Those are the moments when kids are particularly susceptible to new interventions and new ways of thinking—they’re really character development moments.

That’s something that really struck me about what the dean of students at KIPP Infinity was talking about. He said it’s those moments where what you’re basically giving kids is cognitive behavioral therapy. You’re changing the way they think. That may be language that a lot of principals are uncomfortable with because they see their job more as a police officer or a judge or a prosecutor.

But I think to bring in some of that language of psychology and therapy—it doesn’t mean we put kids on the couch and make them talk about their parents, but we give them the tools to rethink the way they are behaving, not just in a “you’re good” or “you’re bad” way, but more a push toward a “character” kind of behavior. That, I think, can be really positive for any administrator.

About the Author

Vicki Zakrzewski

Vicki Zakrzewski, Ph.D. , is the education director of the Greater Good Science Center.

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I’m not entirely convinced one can discount the effect of privilege and am uncomfortable with such individualistic essentialist ideas of the person. The interactive nature of teaching suggests A much more dynamic relationship is taking place to produce transformative effects. Carol Dweck’s work for example is more illustrative of how a teacher-pupil dynamic works to produce transformation in “character” (if you feel the need for that particular construct).

Rayya | 11:03 pm, September 26, 2012 | Link

I can’t see how any of the character traits highlighted in this book, “grit, self-control, zest, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism, and curiosity” could be disputed by the right or the left. 

The focus of schools should be to teach kids skills rather than values.

Kaylee's Education Studio | 12:29 pm, October 6, 2012 | Link

Hi Kaylee, Thanks for your comment. Research has actually shown that it is impossible for teachers not to transmit values to students. For example, when a student says something controversial, the rest of the students will look at the teacher for his/her reaction. The teacher’s reaction—spoken or not— will communicate to the students the teacher’s value-laden opinion. Another example: what the teacher chooses to emphasize in the curriculum. Imagine a history teacher who focuses on the economic causes of the Civil War and barely mentions slavery. Again—the teacher, whether he/she is aware of it or not, is transmitting values to the students.

So, while many people in this country believe that it is not the school’s job to directly teach values, e.g., honesty, integrity, kindness, teachers are doing so anyway every minute they’re with the students.

Warm regards, vicki

Vicki Zakrzewski | 9:19 am, October 8, 2012 | Link

I tend to agree with Paul on this one. Although IQ obviously has a role in whether a person CAN succeed or not, the other traits mentioned prove to be much more critical factors. Not every successful person is the ‘smartest’ person in the room, very often it is combination of curiosity, drive, intelligence, and even luck.

Kihei | 1:49 am, October 16, 2012 | Link

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Essay on Importance of Character

A man’s character is what he really is. It is his real moral condition. It has been defined as ‘the distinctive mark of an individual’ . It depends partly upon inborn qualities and partly on training in youth and the circumstances in which a person has been brought up.

It can be cultivated by forming good habits in childhood. “Sow an act and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character” . If we sow good habits, we build up a good character.

If we allow bad habits to develop in us, our character becomes bad. It is therefore of great importance that children should be presented with the best models for imitation. Ideals of courage, truth, simplicity, honesty, and purity should be constantly placed before them to follow and live up to them.

We form good or bad habits not only in childhood but later on too. We all grow a little every day, either better or worse. It is, therefore, needs food that we watch ourselves day by day.

What goes to make up a good character? There are many qualities that go to make up the character. First comes truth. Lorde Averbury says, “But there is one quality it is essential without which a man is not a man without which no really great work was ever achieved-that is truth in the inward parts.”

Next comes justice. A man of good character should love to be out even-handed justice to all. But justice should be tempered with mercy. If it is our duty, to be frank, we ought to be sweet and courteous. Sincerity, honesty, generosity, and purity in speech thought and action- such virtues entitle a person to be called a man of good character.

The character is a very important factor in man’s life. Good character is more important than health wealth or happiness. “When the character, is lost everything is lost”  is hundred per cent true. “Leaving aside the moral good that it does, as a mere question of getting on in the world, the character will do more for a man then cleverness.”

We ought to be however slow to judge others for none of us is wholly good wholly bad.

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The Benefits of Character Education

What I learned from teaching at a "core virtues" school

When I signed on to teach English at a core virtues school, I had no idea what I was in for. I nodded and smiled in my interview when the Headmaster explained the virtues curriculum, and I parried back with everything I thought she wanted to hear; how I could infuse my lessons on To Kill a Mockingbird with discussions about empathy and courage. I may have even quoted Atticus' line about walking around in someone else's skin. I figured I could tack on some of that quaint "virtue" stuff before getting to the real meat of the lesson, the academic stuff.

And for the first year I taught at Crossroads Academy , that's pretty much what I did. I made some empty gesticulations toward the core virtues bulletin board in my classroom and made some token mentions of fortitude at obvious moments in our reading of The Illiad and The Aeneid . I was teaching literature, but I certainly wasn't doing Aristotle proud.

I mean come on. Character education? Core virtues? I teach English, not Sunday school, and besides, I teach middle school. If I were to walk into my eighth grade English class and wax rhapsodic about prudence and temperance, those kids would eat me alive. It's hard enough to keep the attention of a classroom full of middle school students without coming on like an 18th-century schoolmarm.

Somewhere along the way, someone must have started dosing me with the character education Kool-Aid, because five years in, I have come to understand what real character education looks like and what it can do for children. I can't imagine teaching in a school that does not have a hard-core commitment to character education, because I've seen what that education can mean to a child's emotional, moral, and intellectual development. Schools that teach character education report higher academic performance, improved attendance, reduced violence, fewer disciplinary issues, reduction in substance abuse, and less vandalism. At a time when parents and teachers are concerned about school violence, it is worth noting that students who attend character education schools report feeling safer because they know their fellow students value respect, responsibility, compassion and hard work. From a practical perspective, it's simply easier to teach children who can exercise patience, self-control, and diligence, even when they would rather be playing outside - especially when they would rather be playing outside.

American schools used to focus on character education and civic virtue. The founders of this country, including John and Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin wrote about the importance of character education in maintaining the new republic. Those founders would likely be horrified by the loss of this goal, as they all cite character education as the way to create an educated and virtuous citizenry. As Gallup polls show that over ninety percent of American adults support the teaching of honesty, democracy, acceptance of people of different races and ethnic backgrounds, patriotism, caring for friends and family members, moral courage, and the Golden Rule in public schools, it seems odd that this facet of American education has disappeared from public debate over curriculum and academic content. The core virtues -- prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice -- make it into nearly every lesson we teach at our school and every facet of our daily lives on campus. The curriculum we use, designed by Mary Beth Klee , is a non-sectarian education in intellectual, moral, and civic virtues through literature, and can be used in conjunction with any academic curriculum.

As the core virtues program uses examples to literature in order to illustrate character, I choose my texts accordingly. In my middle school Latin and English classes, we explore the concept of temperance through discussions of Achilles' impulsive rages, King Ozymandias' petulant demand that we "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair," Macbeth's bloody, "vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself and falls on the other."

This week, I gained a fantastic teaching assistant who has raised my character education skills to the next level, a wise teacher who has illustrated the importance of temperance far better than I -- or Achilles or Macbeth -- ever could.

A Mallard duck (Mom Mallard to our students) took up residence on our campus this week. Mallards, or anas platyrhynchos , are also known as "dabbling ducks," and this particular duck has apparently been dabbling in Aristotelian philosophy, because she's presented our students with a real-life lesson in the core virtue of temperance.

Her nest, made from feathers she's plucked off her own breast and filled with ten eggs, lies about eighteen inches from the entryway to our main building, a path our students take in out of school at least six times a day. Mom Mallard doesn't seem too worried about our students' feet...as long as they keep moving. However, the second those feet stop and one of the children pauses to take a good, long, look, she quacks angrily and abandons her nest. Her first day in residence, she spent more time off the eggs than she did on them, and we realized we were going to have to find a way to teach our students some self-control.

It just so happens that this month's virtue is temperance; stopping to think about our actions before we enact them, giving the best of ourselves, and saying "no" to our weaknesses. The middle school students use the term "temperance," and the lower school kids use the term self-control, but tomāto, tomăto, it's all the same idea.

In Stanford's famous experiment on self-control , children were faced with the immediate reality of one marshmallow versus the promise of two marshmallows if they can just wait for fifteen minutes. The children who were able to resist temptation and wait fifteen minutes for that second marshmallow had better life outcomes in the form of lower obesity rates, higher SAT scores, and higher levels of education. Self-control itself does not make a kid smarter, or fitter, or more proficient at test-taking, but it's the essential skill hidden within all of these positive outcomes.

Character education is not old-fashioned, and it's not about bringing religion in to the classroom. Character education teaches children how to make wise decisions and act on them. Character is the "X factor" that experts in parenting and education have deemed integral to success, both in school and in life. Paul Tough , author of How Children Succeed , calls that character-based X factor "grit," while educational consultant Dr. Michele Borba calls it "moral intelligence."

When I asked parenting expert Borba to explain why she thinks character education is so overlooked as a vital part of children's success, she wrote, "That's what parents don't seem to get, the hidden values of character traits for success. They see character education as fluff, because that's often how it's taught -- posters and worksheets. Character education needs to be relevant. It needs to be woven in curriculum, not tacked on. We are such a trophy-, SAT-obsessed society, but if parents would recognize the value beyond the humanness, civility and ethics, they might get it."

Here on our campus, our marshmallow is a duck. Our students must weigh their desire for a quick peek at Mom Mallard with the promise of ten ducklings waddling around our playground in 28 days. If everyone, even the youngest, most impulsive kindergarteners, can learn to exercise self-control, we will all benefit.

Next week, Mom Mallard will catch a bit of a break from our students, because they will be confined to their classrooms for a week of standardized testing. Our character education curriculum may not show up as an increase in this year's test scores -- but then again, it could: self-control, after all, is exactly what's needed to put off a video game or a TV show for another 20 minutes to finish reading or studying. Though temperance isn't easily measured with number two pencils and bubble forms, it has the capacity to foster and reinforce the skills those bubble forms do test.

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Build Your Character Through Lifelong Learning

The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching.  – John Wooden

Character is much more than reputation. Reputation is only what others see and think about you. Your character is the real you! It is who you really are, even when no one is watching. Character comes from the Greek, which means “I engrave” and is built by the experiences we have as we go through life. Whatever your age or experience, building character is a process of lifelong learning that involves a constant dedication to self-awareness and growth.

Some Cornerstones to Building Strong Character

Be self-aware and understand who you are. When it comes to creating a strong character, understanding who you are is essential. This means knowing and acknowledging your strengths, weaknesses, and passions. It is important to think about what motivates you and what you value in life.

Make a commitment to change. Once you have acknowledged the areas in which you need to improve, make a commitment to change. This involves assessing your skills and knowledge, setting some goals for yourself, and then putting forth the effort to achieve them.

Commit to self-improvement.   Building character is an essential part of life-long learning.  If you want to be a person that other people look to for inspiration, someone respected in your community, and spoken of as a person of high character, make an active effort to improve yourself day in and day.

Ways to Commit to your Learning Journey

• Attend courses being offered as part of the C&T Summer Learning Series , which kicks off on June 14! Register today (Workday Learning).
• Utilize the General Skills Self-Assessment form to help you determine what essential skills or duties you need to learn, and what business, systems knowledge, or soft skills you may need to develop or enhance your performance. Then use the Learning Plan and Acquire Skills form to plan out how you will acquire these skills.
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For Success in Life, Character Matters as Much as Academic Skill, Study Says

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Non-cognitive skills and character competencies have as much of an effect on success as academic skill , researchers from the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution conclude in a study released today.

The study focuses on the “performance character strengths” of drive—defined as “the ability to apply oneself to a task and stick with it"— and prudence—defined as “the ability to defer gratification and look to the future.” The study’s authors emphasize that the helpful non-cognitive skills they explored can be nurtured and developed in students.

The research comes as schools and student advocates increasingly work to emphasize character in the classroom and develop new ways to measure, track, and develop non-congnitive strengths in students.

How did researchers measure character skills?

The researchers created a composite score derived from the the Behavior Problems Index hyperactivity scale in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. That survey was first administered to mothers of participant children in 1979, when the children were ages 5 or 6, and again when the children were 10 or 11. Mothers assessed their children’s ability to concentrate, their impulsiveness, restlessness, and other factors.

The researchers found that children whose composite scores showed greater character strengths were more likely to graduate high school with a GPA greater than 2.5, less likely to be arrested as an adolescent, less likely to become pregnant as teens, and more likely to graduate from college.

“So: Character matters. Children who learn and can exhibit character strengths attain more years of education, earn more, and likely outperform other individuals in other areas of life,” they write, adding that research has shown that character strengths can be developed. “Of course, many other factors matter a great deal, too: most obviously cognitive skills, but also a host of cultural, social and education variables.”

And the findings about educational outcomes held true, even after researchers controlled for other factors, such as family income and race.

The correlation between character skills and academic success is comparable in size to the relationship between doing well on math and reading measures—also measured through a composite score derived from the longitudinal study—on educational attainment, researchers write.

How could this change conversations about equity?

Researchers noted that certain life factors, such as having a teen mother, correlated with weaker scores on the character index. There are all kinds of conclusions educators could draw from that. One of them: addressing these non-cognitive gaps early could help disadvantaged children get ahead later in life.

From the study:

If character strengths significantly impact life outcomes, disparities in their development may matter for social mobility and equality. As well as gaps in income, wealth, educational quality, housing, and family stability, are there also gaps in the development of these important character strengths? Relatively little research has been done on the distribution of character strengths or non-cognitive skills across the income distribution or by class. But what evidence that exists suggests there are quite marked gaps. As with cognitive skills, gaps in non-cognitive strengths open up at an early age and persist throughout an individual's life. For example, gaps between poor and non-poor infants in behaviors such as paying attention to tasks, adapting to changes in materials, and displaying social engagement are visible as early as nine months of age and widen by the age of two."

I’m sure this study will raise questions and insights from readers. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

A version of this news article first appeared in the Rules for Engagement blog.

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The Varieties of Character and Some Implications for Character Education

• Empirical Research
• Published: 22 March 2017
• Volume 46 , pages 1153–1161, ( 2017 )

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• Jason Baehr 1  

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The moral and civic dimensions of personal character have been widely recognized and explored. Recent work by philosophers, psychologists, and education theorists has drawn attention to two additional dimensions of character: intellectual character and “performance” character. This article sketches a “four-dimensional” conceptual model of personal character and some of the character strengths or “virtues” proper to each dimension. In addition to exploring how the dimensions of character are related to each other, the article also examines the implications of this account for character education undertaken in a youth or adolescent context. It is argued that “intellectual character education,” which emphasizes the development of intellectual virtues like curiosity, open-mindedness, and intellectual courage, is an underexplored but especially promising approach in this context. The relationship between intellectual character education and traditional character education, which emphasizes the development of moral and civic virtues like kindness, generosity, and tolerance, is also explored.

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As this description suggests, the educational scholarship on performance character draws heavily on work in positive psychology and related areas of research, for example, on work by Peterson and Seligman ( 2004 ) and Angela Duckworth and Patrick Quinn ( 2009 ). It also aligns with work on what philosophers sometimes refer to as “structural virtues” (Adams 2006 ) or “virtues of will power” (Roberts 1984 ).

In fact, this point is trickier than it might seem. For instance, getting clear on what exactly counts as a moral good is a serious challenge, one that may be impossible to settle in a non-stipulative manner. Moreover, some philosophers have conceived of moral virtues as including some self-regarding qualities—e.g., temperance. This complicates thinking about moral virtues as the character strengths of a good neighbor . For more on this, see Baehr 2011 , Appendix.

It bears noting that the “intersection” of intellectual virtues, on the one hand, of moral and civic virtues, on the other, is somewhat different than the intersection of intellectual virtues and performance virtues. Moral and civic virtues cannot function as intellectual virtues in quite the same way that performance virtues can. This is because moral and civic virtues by definition involve a characteristic motivation different from that of intellectual virtues (whereas, with performance virtues, the corresponding motivation is “open”).

Of course, the notion of “performance character” could be given a broad construal, such that it covers any dimension of character that is not moral or civic. Such a construal, however, would seriously dilute the notion of performance character. Further, it would run afoul of the plausible idea that intellectual virtues, arising as they do from a positive orientation toward “epistemic goods,” gain their status as such at least partly on account of an element of virtuous or admirable motivation (whereas, by definition, performance virtues derive their status as virtues on other, non-motivational grounds). For more on this point, see Baehr 2011 , Chs. 6-7.

Thanks to Ben Kotzee for raising this question.

One can, of course, challenge the idea that education should concern itself primarily with academic practices and goals. However, even if the scope of education were broadened so as to incorporate a greater concern with students’ moral or civic formation, say, this would not negate the importance of their epistemic formation, and so would do little to undermine the unique educational significance of intellectual virtues.

David Shields ( 2011 ) briefly discusses this approach, as does Seider ( 2012 , pp. 231–32). For a fairly comprehensive account of what “intellectual character education” looks like in practice, the best works are (Ritchhart 2002 , 2015 ). See (Baehr 2015 ) for a downloadable resource guide that draws from Ritchhart’s work and integrates it with work in virtue epistemology.

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I am grateful to Heather Battaly, Ben Kotzee, and Roger Levesque for helpful feedback on a penultimate draft of this article.

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Baehr, J. The Varieties of Character and Some Implications for Character Education. J Youth Adolescence 46 , 1153–1161 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-017-0654-z

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Character education: as important as academics?

by: The GreatSchools Editorial Team | Updated: January 19, 2023

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For years parents and teachers discussed whether or not to teach values in schools. That debate ended when two boys opened fire at Columbine High School in 1999, killing 15 students, including themselves. In the wake of that tragedy, the worst incidence of school violence in our nation’s history up to that time, discussion shifted to which values to teach and how to effectively implement character education.

“In the long run, I’m not sure that it matters if a student learns algebra, but I know that it matters if a student learns right from wrong,” says George Booz, former principal at South Carroll High School in Sykesville, Maryland, a school nationally recognized for its character education program. “I know that it matters if a person learns that in this world we have to help each other. I don’t see how we get around that.”

Character education programs have sprouted up around the country, some with astonishing, quantifiable results:

In 1993 the playground at Seattle’s Gatzert Elementary School, a high-poverty school where a third of the children are homeless, resembled a battlefield at lunch recess. The only way to control the first fights and violent behavior was to line up the 40 to 50 troublemakers along the school wall and keep an eye on them. Today only minor problems occur on the playground, and no children are lined up against the wall.

The successful transformation took a lot of hard work on the part of staff and students, according to Judy Ginn, a third grade teacher at the school. New staff, prevention intervention specialists, paying attention to changing the climate and culture at the school, and the Giraffe Heroes Project , a hands-on character education curriculum that she and other teachers at the school have used in their classrooms since 1994, all played a part.

Through the Giraffe Project, children work with adult volunteers and learn to be like giraffes – that is, animals who stick their necks out, have big hearts, are persistent, do no harm and make the world a better place through their actions. The children come up with community-based projects, such as canned food drives or anti-litter campaigns, which they organize themselves. In the process, they learn to work together for the common good and to contribute something positive.

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, at gang-plagued Garfield Middle School, Character Counts, a character education program that highlights six facets of character through a prescribed curriculum, was introduced with great success. In the first year, the number of recorded incidents of school violence declined from 91 to 26, according to Principal Louis Martinez.

After the Round Rocks School District in Austin, Texas, instituted character education as part of the curriculum, Jollyville School, an elementary school in the district with 576 students, reported a 40% percent drop in discipline referrals.

What is character education?

Character education is the teaching of core values. For example, the Character Counts program defines six teachable “pillars of character”: trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship.

In his book, The Educated Child, William J. Bennett writes, “Good character education means cultivating virtues through formation of good habits.” According to Bennett, children need to learn through actions that honesty and compassion are good, and that deceit and cruelty are bad. He believes that adults in schools and parents should strive to be models of good character.

Character education is most effective when it is spread throughout regular school courses. In science, teachers can discuss the value of honesty in data, and in math, students can learn persistence by sticking with a problem until they get the right answer. History holds valuable lessons and heroes of character, such as the honesty of Abraham Lincoln, who walked three miles to return 6 cents.

During the 1960s and early 1970s, many teachers shied away from teaching about values because they did not feel it was their place to impose their own values on their students. But now they are seeing how including character education can transform a school community. In teaching the Giraffe Heroes Project, Ginn notes, “ Values is an emotionally laden term. We avoid that discussion. The way we see it, we are teaching life skills, what you need to know to live in the world. We have to do this because it’s a cultural imperative that kids learn to get along.”

Effective models

Not all character education programs are effective, according to Bennett. Lofty discussions about gun control, abortion and same-sex marriages don’t teach children right from wrong or how to get along with others. Beware of school administrators, he writes, who simply post signs that say “Help others,” or “Thanks for being kind today” and think they have done their job. Effective programs engage children in hands-on activities where good character is emphasized throughout the school environment as well as through the curriculum.

Character education includes having high standards for students’ academic success, too. “When they are challenged to work up a mental sweat, they learn about virtues such as industry and persistence,” writes Bennett. “When students rarely get homework, when they aren’t held accountable for mistakes in spelling or grammar or arithmetic, when they can put forth little effort but still earn high grades, schools foster laziness, carelessness and irresponsibility.”

The parent’s role

Many teachers complain that parents are too lax and don’t provide enough discipline at home. Character education works best when schools and families work together. Here is what you as a parent can do to help:

• Ask your child’s teacher or principal whether the school has a character education program. If the school has a program, find out how well it is working and what you can do at home or as a volunteer at school to support the program. If the school doesn’t have a program, check the resources section below to learn about successful programs that you can help bring to your school. • Ask to see your child’s homework. Encourage your child to establish good work habits. Be firm in your expectations that your child complete his assignments neatly, thoroughly and on time. Set limits, such as “No television until the homework is complete.” Check to see that assignments get returned to your child, and that the teacher makes corrections and sets high standards. • Take action if your child is learning bad habits or shows a lack of discipline. Express your concerns about bad habits to your child’s teacher or bring up the topic at the next parent-teacher conference. • Demonstrate courage, respect and compassion through your actions. Talk to your child about good character, and model the behavior you want your child to have. Talk about other people you know who are examples of good character.

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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.

Reviewed by:

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.

Speeches > Ted E. Brewerton > Character—The Aim of Education

Character—The Aim of Education

Ted e. brewerton.

of the Seventy

June 6, 1982

You are an uplifting, inspiring sight. I consider it a privilege and a blessing to be associated with you. We looked around at many of you this evening as we came in, and we literally felt uplifted because of you. I should like to thank those responsible for allowing me to speak for just a few minutes this evening concerning a subject I consider important. It’s the subject of education—basically, education of character more than curriculum.

Education of Character

President Hugh B. Brown said, “Your aim is not to get ahead of others, but to surpass yourself.”

And President McKay stated,

Character is the aim of true education. . . .

True education seeks to make men and women not only good mathematicians, proficient linguists, profound scientists, or brilliant literary lights, but also honest men with virtue, temperance, and brotherly love. It seeks to make men and women who prize truth, justice, wisdom, benevolence, and self-control as the choicest acquisitions of a successful life. [“Why Education?”  Improvement Era , September 1967, p. 3]

President Brown also said,

We urge all members, young and old, to keep in mind always that the true purpose of life, both here and hereafter, is to seek the joy of eternal progression. As the glory of God is intelligence, man can only share that glory through continuing education of the whole man.  [ CR , April 1968, p. 105]

Elder Bruce R. McConkie of the Council of the Twelve has stated in this regard,

The process of living on earth, of seeking to work out one’s salvation with fear and trembling before God, is in itself a course of education; it is a system of training, study, and discipline whereby the mental and moral powers are schooled and prepared for graduation into the eternal realms . [ MD , p. 213]

Plutarch, who lived in the first century A.D., wrote a great book in which he told of the characteristics of noted Greeks and Romans. He wrote about a man named Phocion, who lived between the years 402 and 318 B.C. What he wrote about Phocion, the Athenian statesman who was elected forty-five times as one of the chief officers of the state, provides a model for today. Said Plutarch,

Appreciation of him was due  not  so much to his eloquence as to the influence of his character, since not only a word, but even a nod from a person who is esteemed, is of more force than a thousand arguments or studied sentences from others . [ Plutarch , vol. 14, Great Books,  Encyclopedia Britannica , p. 604; emphasis added]

To this the  Harmsworth Encyclopedia  adds,

Phocion was neither a great statesman nor a brilliant general; but he was a man of incorruptible honestly and downright common sense.

President Kimball spoke and distinguished Brigham Young University from other institutions of learning in the world. I quote from his discourse given on 12 September 1967. He stated,

The BYU is the greatest institution of learning. Why? The uniqueness of Brigham Young University lies in its special role—education for eternity—which it must carry in addition to the usual tasks of a university. This means concern—curricular and behaviorial—for not only the “whole man” but for the “eternal man.”

He further stated,

We should be knowledgeable. When we talk of Godhead and creatorship and eternal increase, we have already soared far out beyond the comprehension of most men. To attain these great accomplishments, one would need to know all about astronomy, biology, physiology, psychology, and all of the arts and sciences. The obtaining of all this knowledge will come largely after our earth life. A doctrine-teaching, character-building university, the Brigham Young University is dedicated to the building of character and faith, for character is higher than intellect. . . . We are men of God first, men of letters second, men of science third, and noted men fourth, men of rectitude rather than academic competence. . . . Our academic training must be as impeccable as our lives.  [“Education for Eternity,”  BYU Speeches of the Year,  1967–68, pp. 2–3]

Understanding

We have spoken of several different qualities we should embrace in developing our character. One of the major qualities we could have is understanding. I’ve chosen a small selection from the Teacher Development Program to give one tiny example of understanding:

A man was putting up a sign “Puppies for Sale,” and before he had driven the last nail, there was a small boy standing by his side. That kind of sign seems to attract small boys. The youngster wanted to know how much the puppies were going to cost. The man told him that they were very good dogs, and he did not expect to let any of them go for less than $35 or $40. There was a look of disappointment and then a question:

“I’ve got $2.37. Could I look at them?”

The man whistled and called, “Lady.” And out of the kennel and down the runway came Lady followed by four or five little balls of fur with one lagging considerably behind.

The boy spotted the laggard and, pointing, asked, “What’s wrong with him?” The reply was that the veterinarian had said that there was no hip socket in the right hip, and that dog would always be lame.

The boy’s immediate rejoinder was, “That’s the one I want to buy. I’ll give you $2.37 down, and fifty cents a month until I get him paid for.”

The man smiled and shook his head. “That’s not the dog you want. That dog will never be able to run and jump and play with you.”

The boy very matter-of-factly pulled up his trouser leg and revealed a brace running up both sides of his badly twisted right leg and over the foot, with a leather cap over the knee. “I don’t run so well myself,” he said, “and he’ll need someone that understands him.”

Supremacy of Character

An industrialist, Joseph Rosenblatt, spoke at the April 1978 Commencement exercises here at the Y, and he said that the most important quality the graduates could carry in their life’s baggage was character.

“Often we think that knowledge is power,” said Dr. Rosenblatt, the son of a Russian emigrant who settled in the Salt Lake Valley. “But I wonder if it is not more correct in this vigorous, hard, complex age to say that it is character that is power, for mind without heart, intelligence without conduct, cleverness without goodness—all of these have worrisome, dangerous flaws.”

President Dallin Oaks said,

Along with John Ruskin we affirm that education does not mean teaching people what they do not know, it means teaching to behave as they do not behave. . . . Character is more important than learning.

There is a story told, and I do not have the author of it, of a professor of trigonometry. In giving an examination one day, the trigonometry teacher said,

Today I am going to give you two examinations: one in trigonometry and one in honesty. I hope you will pass them both. But if you must fail one, let it be trigonometry. For there are many good men in the world today who cannot pass an examination in trigonometry, but there are no good men in the world today who cannot pass an examination in honesty.

Honesty is one of the characteristics of our character that we must perfect.

Do you not believe that you can be nigh perfect in many things as far as your character is concerned? Do you not believe you can be a perfect tithepayer? Do you not believe you can be perfectly honest even in small things? Do you not believe you can perfect your character in many of those salient, important characteristics we carry with us after this life?

Born of the Spirit

President Romney on 14 February 1962, to the BYU student body said the following:

Scientists come to their view that there is a God by a process of reasoning from the things they observe through their five sensory faculties. . . . Knowledge of the true and living God is revealed only by the Spirit. . . .

Brigham Young University keeps abreast of other fine universities in the arts, sciences, and other fields which concern themselves with knowledge “born of the flesh.” This university is distinguished from all other universities, however, by the fact that its main objective and, indeed, the justification for its existence is to teach and lead students to learn the things “born of the Spirit.” . . .

. . . The knowledge “born of the Spirit” is knowledge of the highest order and the greatest value. . . .

We must go further. We must each obtain for ourselves a personal witness that the testimonies of the prophets are true. . . . It can be received through the Spirit by the . . . pattern laid down by Moroni  [with which we’re all well acquainted and which may be found in Moroni 10:4]. [“That Which Is Born of the Flesh Is Flesh: and That Which Is Born of the Spirit is Spirit.” (John 3:6),  BYU Speeches of the Year,  1961–62, pp. 3, 6, 7]

Being born of the Spirit is of far greater value than being born of the world.

The Upward Reach

Paul J. Mayer, the president of Success Motivation Institute, gives us this little story which illustrates a point. He titled it “Circus Elephants and Limitations.”

An elephant with its trunk can easily pick up a one-ton load, but have you ever visited a circus and watched those huge creatures standing quietly while tied to a small wooden stake? While still young and weak, an elephant is tied by a heavy chain to an immovable iron stake. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot break the chain or move the stake. Then, no matter how large and strong the elephant becomes, he continues to believe he cannot move as long as he can see the stake in the ground beside him. Many intelligent adult humans are like circus elephants. They are restrained in thoughts, actions, and results. They never move out any further than the extent of their own self-imposed limitations.

We are goal-oriented people and must not limit ourselves. You all will recall the famous words of President Kimball wherein he stated,

Do not make small goals because they do not have the magic to stir men’s souls.

And President Benson said,

The Lord himself has a goal; To bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. We have the same goal: to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. We must have the same goal.

He further said,

But when we set goals, we are in command. Clearly understood goals bring our lives into focus just as a magnifying glass focuses a beam of light onto or into a burning point. Without goals our efforts may be scattered and unproductive.

President Kimball stated in this regard,

Unless we set goals, we move no place. I want to stir your ambition to do better. Not for statistics’ sake, but for the good it will do people.

He also says,

We must have goals to make progress, and it’s encouraged by keeping records. Progress is easier when it is timed, checked, and measured. Goals should always be made to a point that will make us reach and strain. The key goals we could have are goals to become perfect in certain elements in the perfection of our character, the things we carry with us after this life.

Not all Education in Schools

With regard to education, I’d like to give you a little quiz. I’m going to give you the names of twelve very prominent lawyers in the world, and then I’d like you to tell me which one, and only one, was a law school dropout. In other words, here are the names of twelve of the nation’s most prominent lawyers. Only one of them was a law school dropout. Can you guess his name?

Patrick Henry, a member of the Continental Congress; John Jay, First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; John Marshall, a Supreme Court Chief Justice; William Wirt, a United States attorney general; Roger Taney, very famous in the practice of law in 1799; Daniel Webster, who had a phenomenal legal reputation; Salmon Chase, a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president, an occupation greatly enhanced by his former experience as a lawyer; Stephen Douglas, admitted to the bar in 1834; Clarence Darrow, a lawyer of world renown; Robert Storey, president of the American Bar Association; Strom Thurmond, a well-known lawyer in South Carolina.

Now those are the twelve. I’ll repeat their names again. Only one of them abandoned law school after one year, never to return. Which one was it? Patrick Henry, John Jay, John Marshall, William Wirt, Roger Taney, Daniel Webster, Salmon Chase, Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Douglas, Clarence Darrow, Robert Storey, Strom Thurmond?

Now, if you remember your history, you will know that the only one who was a law school dropout was Clarence Darrow, but the interesting part of the story is the other eleven most distinguished American lawyers could not have dropped out of law school because they never went to law school. They were self-educated. They understood the need to have continuous education. (Adapted from P.H. Aurandt , Paul Harvey—The Rest of the Story , p. 132). Do you know of any university in the world which offers more continuing education than BYU offers? It’s the Lord’s desire that we educate ourselves, keeping in mind that the greatest education of all is not the education of the mind, but the education of the character that we carry with us, an education of the spirit, an education into learning how to be self-sustaining, how to be in full self-control and be master of self.

Knowledge “Born of the Spirit”

There are two highly important qualities of character—I should say, two important truths—which we must possess and share. I now quote from T he Charted Course of the Church in Education , by President J. Reuben Clark. He said,

In all this there are for the Church and for each and all of its members, two prime things which may not be overlooked, forgotten, shaded, or discarded:

First: That Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Only Begotten of the Father in the flesh, . . . the Atoner. . . . He was crucified . . .  [and]  reunited with His body.  [That is first and foremost.]

[Secondly,]  the Father and the Son actually and in truth and very deed appeared to the Prophet Joseph.  [He heard their voices; he saw the two. The holy priesthood was restored.]  The Book of Mormon is just what it professes to be. . . . The Prophet’s successors, likewise  [are]  called of God. . . . Without these two great beliefs the Church would cease to be the Church.

Any individual who does not accept the fulness of these doctrines as to Jesus of Nazareth or as to the restoration of the Gospel and Holy Priesthood, is not a Latter-day Saint.  [8 August 1938, pp. 2–3]

I read now from the book of Acts, chapter 12, parts of verses 4–15. You may recall the circumstances. Herod the king had just martyred James. It seemed to please the people, and so Herod put Peter in prison. We read from verse 4,

And when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him  [that means he was surrounded by sixteen soldiers; King Herod did not want him to escape]. . . .

. . .  Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains.

. . . The angel of the Lord came upon him, and a light shined in the prison: and he  [touched]  Peter on the side, and raised him up saying, Arise up quickly. And his chains fell off from his hands. . . .

And he went out, and followed. . . .

When they were past the first and the second ward, they came unto the iron gate that leadeth unto the city; which opened to them of his own accord. . . .

. . . He came to the house of Mary . . . where many  [of the brethren]  were gathered together praying.

And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a damsel came to hearken, named Rhoda.

And when she knew Peter’s voice, she opened not the gate for gladness, but ran in, and told how Peter stood before the gate.

They knew he was in prison; they knew he was surrounded by soldiers and chains so they said to her,

. . . Thou art mad. But she constantly affirmed that it was even so. Then said they, It is his angel.

But Peter continued knocking: and when they had opened the door, and saw him, they were astonished.  [Acts 12:4, 6–7, 9–10, 12–16]

What did Rhoda do that was so important? Rhoda constantly affirmed that it was indeed the prophet of God knocking at the gate. Likewise we constantly affirm that we are in the presence of sixteen prophets, seers, and revelators, one of whom by divine right can have all of the keys and powers that God would have us have.

One year ago last month on the 31 of May I was at one of my stake conferences in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It so happened that on that very day President Kimball was arriving in order to set apart some sealers in the temple. I knew President Kimball wasn’t well. He had just received his pacemaker about two or three weeks previous to this date. His physician and security were with him. After he finished his work in the temple, I hurried back from my stake conference and met him at the temple at noon. As I met him, I said, “President, are you feeling well enough to greet 27 new missionaries here at the MTC?”

He said, “Yes, of course,” in his kind way.

We had 27  Bolivianos  and  Peruanos . They never thought in all their life they would ever see the prophet of God. They did not know he was there. When we sent word to them that he would like to greet them, they were speechless. They came into the temple one by one. I stood by him to translate the few words they could utter. These are some of the few things they said: “I know you are a prophet of God,” “This is the happiest day of my life,” or they said, “I love thee.” And then with his strong arms he embraced and kissed each one. Do you think those 27 left the same way they came in? They were different people. They felt of his influence. They knew he was the Prophet of God. They went out with a certain and strong testimony that he is.

I bear that same witness. I know, as I see you this evening, that he is a prophet of God, and that he and his counselors in the First Presidency are those men inspired with the most accurate decisions this world can have. I bear witness that all sixteen of those men are prophets, seers, and revelators, and that the Lord himself directs this his kingdom through those Brethren in order to give salvation and saving principles to all mankind. I testify this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen.

© Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved.

Ted E. Brewerton was a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when this fireside address was given at Brigham Young University on 6 June 1982.

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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.

About The Author

Useful Websites

• Global character movement:  http://www.character.org
• International Positive Education Network (IPEN):  http://www.ipositive-education.net/
• Schools and Students Health Education Unit (SHEU):  http://www.sheu.org.uk/
• The University of Buckingham: https://www.buckingham.ac.uk/

Video –  The Science of Character

Further Resources

• See the previous blog in the series, by Rosemary Dewan of the Human Values Foundation 
• See the next blog in the series, by Priscilla Akoto-Bamfo of Little BeginningsTF
• See the full list of blogs at www.worldvaluesday.com/blogs
• Participate in the Values Challenge this year! Follow these links for organisations , for community groups , for schools , or for individuals .
• For more inspiration, follow us on social media: LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

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Why Character Is More Important Than Intelligence

As the world surges forward, educators around the world struggle to match their own skills with the increasing pace at which children are embracing technology. Parents and schools realise that this new generation of children will have to be smarter, sharper and quicker than generations before them. As social media and web communities continue to connect people in an unprecedented manner, highly intelligent people become even more highly sought after.

What Can Parents And Educators Do?

What does this mean for educators and parents? How can we prepare our students and children for life in this new world?  Educators and parents recognise that it is critical for children to have a strong foundation in their studies. However, not everyone is convinced that a child’s character is equally if not more important.

Why Character Is More Relevant Than Ever

Why then is a person’s character more important than intelligence when intelligence is so highly valued and made more ‘visible’ in this digital age? The answer to this question may be surprisingly simple. Unless artificial intelligence takes over the world completely, the human race thrives because people need to cooperate and live in harmony. Families thrive because of the relationships that have developed over time. Business organisations rise when people come together to get things done.  As Simon Sinek, a high profile TED Talk speaker argues in his best seller ‘Start With The Why’ , people are inspired to work together when they understand why they are doing what they do. Sharing common values and goals motivate people to work together to achieve their dreams. It is these same positive values that gives a person ‘good’ character.

Why Cool Companies Look For Character

Young people crave to join Facebook, Alibaba and Google not merely because of the financial benefits. They crave to join companies that are perceived to be brave and inspirational. Young people join organisations that reflect their own aspirations. Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence, outstanding and innovative companies, big and small, look for people who share the same positive values.

Dynamic companies look for more than  a person’s intelligence. What they look for is character . Cutting edge companies in every industry headhunt for people who have lots of initiative, drive and the desire to excel. They look for team players who put the organisation’s interest before their own self interest. They look for people who work hard and who thrive on contributing and making a difference. They headhunt for people who set high standards for themselves. Typically, such people have a positive value system that gives them ‘good’ character.

Character Enhances Connections

The importance of a person’s character is constantly revealed in so many instances. Elitist and famous schools attract parents because of the potential ‘good connection’ factor. In reality, what kind of people continue their relationships long after they have left school? How do school friendships develop into business deals? These deeper connections happen because of authentic friendships and such friendships are rarely forged with people who have bad character.

Adults Have To Be Role Models

What can educators and parents do to help our students and children develop good character? Firstly, we have to be of good character ourselves. There is no alternative. The actions and words of adults should reflect certain values. Some of these values include the following :-

• Honesty – being honest with others and with ourselves
• Integrity – believing in a core set of moral values and living your life according to those values
• Humility – staying humble despite achieving great success and recognition
• Compassion – having deep empathy for others
• Generosity of spirit – to have the desire to share and to help others
• Loyalty – being faithful and dedicated to people with whom we have a relationship with
• Responsibility – to be accountable to others and more importantly to ourselves when we take on commitments
• Reliability – to be dependable and to practise what we preach
• Self-discipline – to have the will power to complete whatever task that we have set out to do

Last but not least, parents and educators nurture children best when they do what they feel is best for the child and not so much for themselves. That would then be a true test of character.

Written by The Schooling Society (TSS)

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The Importance of Character Education in Schools

Character education refers to the intentional teaching of values, ethics, and morals in schools. Its purpose is to develop well-rounded individuals with strong moral character and to create safe, respectful, and inclusive school environments. The need for character education in schools has become increasingly important in response to increasing incidents of bullying, disrespect, and violence. Additionally, the negative effects of social media and technology on moral values also underscore the importance of character education in schools. The goal of character education is to develop responsible, ethical, and caring individuals who contribute positively to their communities. By teaching students the core values of honesty, respect, responsibility, fairness, compassion, courage, perseverance, and cooperation, character education helps lay the foundation for a more just and caring society.

The Character Traits Taught in Character Education

Character traits in schools can be taught through various methods, such as classroom lessons, role modelling by teachers and staff, service learning opportunities, and positive reinforcement through classroom management. The benefits of character education in schools include an improved school climate, improved academic performance, the development of strong moral character, and preparation for future success. Some of the very basic character traits that every student should learn along with his basic schooling are as follows:

Honesty is one of the most important character traits taught in character education. It involves telling the truth, being trustworthy, and having a strong sense of integrity. Students are taught the importance of being honest in their words and actions and the consequences of lying or being deceitful.

Respect is another important character trait taught in character education. This includes showing respect for others, their property, and their opinions, even when they may differ from one's own. Students are taught to understand and appreciate the value of diversity and to treat others with dignity and kindness.

 Responsibility

Responsibility is a crucial character trait taught in character education. It involves being accountable for one's actions and taking ownership of one's mistakes. Students are taught to take responsibility for their own learning and behaviour and to understand the consequences of their actions.

Fairness is a fundamental value taught in character education. It involves treating others equally and justly and avoiding discrimination and prejudice. Students are taught to understand the importance of fairness in their interactions with others and to apply this value in their daily lives.

Compassion is a crucial character trait taught in character education. It involves understanding the feelings and needs of others and responding with kindness and empathy. Students are taught to practise empathy and compassion in their interactions with others and to consider the impact of their actions on those around them.

 Courage

Courage is a vital character trait taught in character education. It involves standing up for what is right and being brave in the face of adversity. Students are taught to be courageous in the face of challenges and to have the courage to do what is right, even when it is difficult.

Perseverance

Perseverance is a critical character trait taught in character education. It involves persistence and determination in the face of obstacles and setbacks. Students are taught to be persistent in their efforts and to never give up, even in the face of adversity.

Cooperation

Cooperation is a fundamental character trait taught in character education. It involves working together with others towards a common goal. Students are taught to understand the value of cooperation and to work collaboratively with their peers to achieve shared goals.

Methods of Character Education in Schools

By integrating character education into the curriculum and daily life of the school, schools can help students develop strong moral character and prepare them for success. Some valuable methods are as follows

Classroom lessons

Character education is often taught through formal classroom lessons that are incorporated into the curriculum. These lessons may include discussions, role-plays, storytelling, or interactive activities designed to help students understand and internalise the character traits being taught.

 Role modelling by teachers and staff

Teachers and staff serve as important role models for students, demonstrating the character traits they are trying to instill. They model positive behaviour and reinforce the values being taught through their own actions and interactions with students.

Service learning opportunities

Service learning opportunities provide students with real-life experiences that help them understand the importance of the character traits being taught. For example, a student might participate in a service project that helps the community, allowing them to apply the values of responsibility, compassion, and cooperation in a tangible way.

Positive reinforcement through classroom management

Positive reinforcement through classroom management is another important method of character education. Teachers can encourage positive behaviour by recognising and rewarding students for exhibiting the character traits being taught. This helps students internalise the values and encourages them to continue practising these traits in their daily lives.

 Parent and community involvement

Involving parents and the community in character education can enhance its effectiveness. Parents and community members can reinforce the character traits being taught at home and in the community, providing students with multiple opportunities to practise and internalise these traits.

The Benefits of Character Education in Schools

Character education plays a critical role in the development of young people. By teaching students important values and character traits, schools can help students become responsible, caring, and successful adults who are well-equipped to navigate the challenges of life. Some of the benefits are described as follows:

Develops moral character

Character education helps students develop strong moral character by teaching them important values such as responsibility, honesty, compassion, and respect.

Promotes pro-social behaviour

By teaching students to understand and internalise positive character traits, character education promotes pro-social behaviour, encouraging students to make positive choices and treat others with kindness and respect.

 Improves academic performance

Studies have shown that character education can have a positive impact on academic performance. Students who are taught important values and character traits are more likely to be motivated, engaged in their learning, and less likely to engage in disruptive behaviour.

Prepares students for success in life

By teaching students important character traits, character education prepares students for success in life. These traits will serve students well in all aspects of their lives, including their personal, academic, and professional endeavours.

Strengthens school community

Character education helps create a positive and supportive school community by promoting cooperation, respect, and understanding among students and staff. When students feel valued and respected, they are more likely to be engaged and invested in their learning.

In summary, character education is an essential component of a well-rounded education. It helps students develop strong moral character and promotes pro-social behaviour, improving academic performance and preparing students for success in life. With a combination of classroom lessons, positive reinforcement, role modelling, and community involvement, schools can provide students with the tools they need to make positive choices and lead fulfilling lives. The benefits of character education extend far beyond the classroom, making it a crucial investment in the future of our society. By instilling important values and character traits in our young people, we are setting them on a path to success and helping to create a brighter, more compassionate future for all.

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