Articles
What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.
Character Education Partnership’s Principle 10 sounds so simple. But recent events have made me think that it is much more challenging than we realize.
Most early-childhood classrooms in the United States,” writes Paul Tough in his new book How Children Succeed, “are designed to develop in children a set of pre-academic skills, mostly related to deciphering text and manipulating numbers.” Nevertheless, research conducted in the last few years suggests that stuffing this kind of information into a child’s head is not the most important task in those early years. “What matters, instead, is whether we are able to help her develop a very different set of qualities, a list that includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence.” How Children Succeed describes the new discoveries and reports on the ways innovative educators are developing techniques to help children develop these traits. The interview lasts about 30 minutes.
Gratitude is an ethic that experts now see as equally secular and religious – not to mention a healthy recipe for Thanksgiving all year round.
Kentaro Toyama looks at fostering virtue through education, mentoring, and community.
Learning handwriting may be good for the brain. It may even inspire surprisingly memorable advertising. But does it also prevent crime? That's what the conservative physician and cultural critic Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Daniels) maintains when deploring the state of Indiana's decision to abolish mandatory cursive instruction in the Wall Street Journal.
Two psychologists argue that everyone's mind contains a liar, a cheat, and a sinner. But there is always a saint, too.
The obituaries for James Q. Wilson, the eminent social scientist, generally emphasized his “broken windows” theory on how to reduce crime. That’s natural. This strategy, which contributed to the recent reduction in crime rates, was his most tangible legacy. But broken windows was only a small piece of what Wilson contributed, and he did not consider it the center of his work. The best way to understand the core Wilson is by borrowing the title of one of his essays: “The Rediscovery of Character.”
Now that the craze of winter gift-buying is done, why not think about another (free!) gift we can give our kids? Is there an attribute that you wish your child had in more abundance? We can’t change our children’s fundamental character traits, but we can guide and nurture them in positive directions. For this month, pick out a trait that you have seen a glimmer of in your child’s behavior and help it grow! Use conversation and action to grow your child into an adult you will respect and admire.
Anyone who has ever devoured a triple-chocolate brownie after an intense workout knows how tempting it can be to indulge after behaving virtuously. A new study suggests, however, that we often apply this thought process to inappropriate scenarios, giving ourselves license to act in unhealthy or antisocial ways.
If you've already ditched your New Year's resolution, you are not alone: These days, self-control isn't exactly America's strong suit. Our economy is hobbled because too many of us bought homes we couldn't afford. Obesity is rampant—fueling demand for devices like the "Liftseat 600," a motorized toilet that will raise a 600-pound person to a standing position. Even when failure carries a hefty price, self-restraint is hard: Had Brett Favre only counted to 10 before hitting "send," he might have avoided a $50,000 fine from the NFL—and kept some last shred of dignity.
Every wave of public scandal seems to bring in its wake calls for more ethics classes at our top schools. As a former philosophy professor who has taught “Moral Philosophy 101” to undergraduates, I’m actually rather dismissive about the whole idea. I don’t mean to imply that ethics shouldn’t be a significant part of any professional curriculum (e.g. law, business, medicine, journalism). I just doubt that it can have any genuine transformative effect on people’s behavior.
IT’S easy to look at big names like Warren E. Buffett, and big companies like Ernst and Young, and be judgmental. Of course they overlooked ethical lapses. Why wouldn’t they? That’s business. Regulators, prosecutors and journalists tend to focus on corruption caused by willful actions or ignorance. But in our research, and in the work of other scholars who study the psychology of behavioral ethics, we have found that much unethical conduct that goes on, whether in social life or work life, happens because people are unconsciously fooling themselves. They overlook transgressions — bending a rule to help a colleague, overlooking information that might damage the reputation of a client — because it is in their interest to do so.
"Character is destiny," remarked the Greek philosopher Heraclitus in the 6th Century B.C. This observation applies as much to nations as it does to individuals. And our current economic woes are, in large part, the repercussions of a national crisis of character.
Randy Wedin is a chemist, blogger, science writer and single father of four sons, living in Minneapolis. (He has also been a guest here on Motherlode before.) As Father’s Day approaches, he has adapted an essay he wrote a while back, for Boston University’s Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character, about how to show, not tell, when teaching children about character.
Using technology to enhance our brains sounds terrifying, but using tools to make ourselves smarter may be part of humans' nature.
