28. WHO ARE THESE CHARACTERS? - Questioning Using Teachers to Teach Our Children “Character”.
Recently a very old discussion has arisen in education circles: the importance of character education. Put simply, the argument goes that schooling should not just be about equipping students with the knowledge base of different academic disciplines, but also about facilitating the development of who they are to be as people: their character.
As I said, the idea is an old one, with roots at least in Aristotle and his virtues, nor is it something particularly alien to modern teaching. PSHE (personal, social, health and economic education) has long been a part of British schooling, as has a focus on the spiritual and moral development of students. Due to the traditionally Christian character of the country, Religious Education has been a core component of the modern UK curriculum since before even I was at school. But in recent years, as part of the rise in “evidence-based” educational theory, a re-emergence of character education as an intentional and systematised agenda has occurred. Schools are well placed, it is argued, for this role of shaping the character of the citizens of tomorrow, as schools bring together young people from all walks of life, take them out of the bubble of their individual home situation, and allow for a shared space in which certain values and ideas can be easily and repeatedly socialised into the malleable young minds. We can teach children not merely how to read, write and do arithmetic, but how to be good citizens, how to make big decisions about their lives, how to interact with people different from themselves, how to help those in need of help, how to be decent, etc.
This “hidden curriculum” fascinated me in my own school days. As a student in a UK school but with an American background, school uniform has always bothered me, especially the strange obsessions teachers had with minor things such as the tucking in of shirts. I just couldn’t see any academic rationale for why my shirt being tucked or untucked would make me a better learner, especially when the places doing the really serious learning - universities - had no such uniform requirements. I got into a lot of trouble once asking a teacher who, for the hundredth time, asked me to tuck my shirt in, what the educational reason was for doing so. I was sent to the Deputy Head and put into isolation for my question, where it was explained to me that it is not so much about tucking in ones shirt, but about learning compliance. The educational purpose of the rule was to teach us to follow rules. In other words: character education. If I didn’t comply with school uniform when asked to as a child, I may find it difficult to find a job when I’m older if I disobeyed similar uniform rules in the workplace or didn’t understand the difference between professional and unprofessional dress. It was for my own good.
This never sat well with me, because I always further wondered why jobs had similarly stupid uniform policies when it didn’t really matter if a person was wearing a suit or jeans so long as they were competent at what they were supposed to be doing. And lately, in my role as a teacher, as discussion continues to move towards this idea of character and what schools can do to teach it, a new question has been kicking about in my head: are those of us in society who chose to be teachers within the current education system actually demonstrating good enough character to be suitable character “role models” for the next generation? In other words, before we teach young people about what character ought to be, shouldn’t we look in the mirror at ourselves?
On the one hand, there is a lot about the character of teaching professionals to be admired. On the whole, teachers:
Have chosen a fairly selfless profession. Low paid and long hours work aimed at helping hundreds of others year after year. They embody the virtue of public service and selflessness, giving up weekends and evenings to ensure the next generation have the best possible start in life.
have to be empathetic and patient to work with young people and help them through the long-term and complicated process of navigating new bodies of knowledge and different examination demands. They have to show compassion, understanding, and be able to respond to the different individual needs of hundreds of very different people each year going through not only intellectual, but physical changes and growth.
are people. Normal, everyday people, with their own unique stories and struggles, backgrounds and ambitions. If we want young people to be socialised into the world, a staffroom of teachers is a staffroom of fellow humans all with something unique to offer them.
are adaptive and quick thinking. The classroom is a largely improvised performance in which a teacher has to respond to completely different circumstances each lesson to teach the exact same thing and ensure that, whatever happens in that period, everyone gets the same chance at learning.
are educated. To be able to teach others, you have to have your own knowledge base and understand it in sufficient detail to break it down and explain it to others.
have perseverance. Teachers can’t just give up. Their worst students and worst classes still must be given the same opportunities as their best.
The list is not exhaustive, but it does suggest teachers have something important to offer the young people in their care. However, there is also a negative side to the character of teachers which points to the problem of having any state-appointed system of character education put in place. Teachers are also the sort of people who have decided that the current education system is actually fit for purpose and a worthwhile endeavour in which to use their talents. Thus they are the sort of people:
happy to accept that “education” ought to be centred around examination success and qualifications designed to differentiate in the workplace, rather than any genuine pursuit of, or exploration of, knowledge.
accepting of perpetuating unquestioning authority structures, where young people are trained to do what a teacher says simply because a teacher has said it.
accepting of wielding punitive punishments for minor offences and contributing to the continuation of a culture of fear and reward, where compliance is the ultimate lesson.
happy to police arbitrary and unnecessary uniform policies which remove students’ ability for self-expression and identity, and further enforce blind compliance to conservative social norms.
accepting of perpetuating divisive “us vs them” mentalities through uniform colours, house systems, sports representation and other uses of competition as incentive rather than focusing on the things which bring people together. Teaching school pride, house pride, sports team pride is effectively to teach hostility towards those deemed “other”. Teachers have to be ok with this to work successfully within modern educational institutions. At the very least they have to put their own students against each other in a bid for the highest grades, university places and careers.
accept exploitation and over-work as the natural order of things. While teachers’ decision to work in a low paid public service for the greater good is to be admired, it has also been massively exploited by governments and school leaders squeezing as much teaching out of them, as much marking, as many extra-curricular activities, and as much “accountability” paperwork as possible. All of which means, as suggested in the virtue of selflessness mentioned earlier, teachers give up their free-time as matter of course, losing most weeknights and weekends to their job. However, much of this weekend and evening work is irrelevant to the actual education of a child and is more about providing “evidence” to the hierarchies of accountability that such education is being done. The “normalisation” of such exploitation is then transferred onto students, whose free-time is similarly stolen with equally unnecessary homework tasks, instilling the exploitative message that work should take up the bulk of their free time.
accept many questionable social norms and replicate them in the classroom, from deference to government and monarchy, to policing of language that gives the impression the swearing we all do is somehow problematic, to religious ritual and observance, to casual sexism, racism, colonialism, homophobia, transphobia, to damaging views on drugs and alcohol. Schools, by their nature, are inherently “mainstream” and conservative institutions, where having a haircut which is considered too long or too short could become a major behavioural incident and where asking to go to the toilet at the “wrong” time may be considered insolent. The sort of people who are drawn to working within such institutions long-term, therefore, tend to lean towards the more mainstream and conservative. While there is usually one or two radicals thrown into the mix, trying to change the system from the inside (I would include myself in that), their minority status within the institution, novelty value, and “crackpot” or “crank” marginalisation serves to send the same mainstream and conservative message to students: normal people don’t think like that.
Again, this is not a comprehensive list of the negative virtues of the sort of person drawn towards teaching, but even in its edited form it paints a worrying picture to anyone interested in society progressing. Teachers do hold many admirable virtues, but as a collective group they are not necessarily the paragon from which a better future will bloom. Unless we are convinced that the current social system, as it is, is the best it can possibly be, then we probably should not be basing the character education of our children on a self-selected group of people who are happy to work in institutions inherently convinced that we do. Institutions built on outdated tradition and compliance. Institutions designed to maintain the current social and economic order, rather than better it.
The fundamental flaw with any practical application of a theory of virtue or character is that it presumes we know what these virtues, or character traits, are or should be. And the conclusions we might draw about what they may be will depend entirely on what we already think is right and desirable in our society. So if a generation of polite, compliant workers is the dream, your desired character traits and virtues will differ radically from those seeking a new generation of free-thinking, critical rebels. For the notion of “best for society” is deeply contested. Best for who? And what kind of society? Do we just want to replicate the one we currently have? Or improve it? Do we want those improvements to be small, gradual reforms or a radical overhaul? Does “society” mean nation-states? Towns? Communities? Humanity in general? Is a student who shows good character one who fits in and stays out of trouble, or one who stands out amongst a crowd, holding their own against the grain and demanding change where current practices are flawed?
As long as these broader questions remain unanswered and continue to be contested, the idea that those currently in power should outline a set of desirable virtues and character traits with which education professionals should indoctrinate young people should be seen as deeply troubling, rather than simply accepted as the next great fad in education and built into next year’s strategic planning.
The fact that it has been so roundly embraced, rather than treated with suspicion, speaks once more to the questionable character of teachers.
Author: D. McKee