How to Forge Good Character: Training

By CHARLES DEBELAK
Founder-in-Residence

This is the fourth installment of Mr. Debelak's Character Education series. This academic year, through essays and videos, Mr. Debelak will discuss Birchwood School of Hawken’s character education program, explaining what we mean by good character, why we place importance on character education, and how we carry out an effective program that gets results. A companion video to this essay is linked below.

In deriving the principles of an effective character education, we answer three questions: What do we mean by good character? Why is it imperative that the school constructs a meaningful character education program? And finally, based upon the “what” and the “why,” we deduce the “how” and construct a realistic and effective plan toward realizing our hopes.

The “how” includes three aspects – teaching, training, and culture. In last month’s essay, I discussed teaching. Here, I discuss training.

The Training Aspect
 
Remembering that good character is the aggregate of habituated virtues, our first step identifies those particular virtues we wish to foster. Given the role that Aristotelian virtue education played in Western culture, we drew upon these insights and settled on seven specific virtues – courage, self-control, compassion, justice, humility, gratitude, and wisdom. 

There are many more virtues, but we decided that these seven were inclusive and provided us with a framework for training children.

Next, as we studied the meaning of each virtue, we knew it was important to define each virtue in a way that could be practiced by children. Practice is essential since it is through practice that virtues are habituated. This was a very important step because, although good character is a popular topic in educational discussions, the question of how to make character education concrete, practical, and effective is not often answered. Explaining the necessity of practice was important.

Finally, we have come to realize that there are two kinds of training. The first occurs by default. It is unplanned. It occurs due to the circumstances of life. At a young age, children mimic their parents and siblings. Later in life, they copy behaviors of friends and others in their social world.

In these associations, children observe and then model behaviors they see. In modeling, behaviors become habits. Sometimes they are productive and sometimes not. In either case, they are unplanned.

The second kind of training is purposeful and planned. Most often instigated by adults, its goal is deliberate and aspires to lead children toward a more virtuous life, a life on a higher plane. This higher plane can be intellectual or physical. Perhaps the training leads children to become a better student or a better musician or a better athlete.

In addition, this purposeful training is also aimed at uplifting a child’s sense of social responsibility among family, friends, or society. Children can be trained to support their friends, share with others, respect their elders, or serve the less advantaged.

This type of planned, purposeful training usually requires three components. 

First, it calls for a crafted environment, a “playing field” which supports and even compels the desired behaviors. For example, if a child wishes to become a better student, she first needs to take challenging courses.

Then she must develop a schedule to study and learn how to manage her time. She should prepare her study materials and set aside a special place to work. This “field” might even require mom or dad to sit next to her in order to help and support studies. 

In another example, imagine parents who recognize the importance of reading and decide that they want their child to become an avid reader. If so, they must create an environment which reinforces practice. These parents might decide to read to their child each evening, or they may establish a nightly, family routine of sustained, quiet reading in the living room. Parents may also choose to attend plays or movies and afterwards discuss plot, theme or character development. 

But if parents or teachers merely admonish children, “You need to read more,” there is seldom an effect. Planned practice for habit formation requires a structured environment.

The second feature of planned character building is the understanding of a child’s willpower. Every child has a natural instinct to grow and thrive. I’ve covered this in previous essays. 

Nevertheless, a child also has a natural instinct to avoid growth. Given a choice between practicing behaviors to become a more productive or better person versus an opportunity to play video games, hang out with friends, or waste time in front of a screen … there is no contest. The results are predictable.

Most often, children will choose short term pleasures almost every time. There might be exceptions, but I have been at this for more than 50 years and it is fair to say that children will most often choose the path of least resistance.

This fact drives the third feature of training. That is the willingness of an adult to become the energy for the training process. When training children to develop good character, there must be an adult – let’s call him or her a coach – who provides the strength, the energy, and the willpower to do the work when the child does not want to practice. Kids are kids. A mature adult must understand this and then assume the responsibility to support a child’s effort.

Practicing any virtue is hard work. It is hard for adults. It is even harder for children. In my experience, we cannot expect children to embrace challenging environments just because we say they should. They need help. They need understanding. They need support and they need our time and energy.

Despite the expectations here, I can also tell you from my 50-plus years of experience, this pathway toward good character works and parents or teachers should commit themselves to this worthwhile endeavor. 

View the companion video: "2024-25 Character Series – How: Through Training"

Charles Debelak is Founder-in-Residence, along with his wife, Helene. Together, the Debelaks founded Birchwood in 1984. Mr. Debelak’s writing provides parents with information about sound educational principles and child development issues gleaned from history, contemporary research, and his 50-plus years of educating, coaching, and counseling children, young adults, and parents. This article appeared in the Winter Break 2024-25 edition of the school's monthly newsletter, "The Clipboard." 
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