Two Books on Developing Character in Students

Boston educator Michael Goldstein reviews two recent books on character in CommonWealth magazine: How Children Succeed by Paul Tough (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and Character Compass by Scott Seider (Harvard Education Press). Goldstein quotes Tough on how researching the book changed his priorities raising a three-year-old son: “I want him to be able to get over disappointments, to calm himself down, to keep working at a puzzle even when it’s frustrating, to be good at sharing, to feel loved and confident and full of a sense of belonging. Most important, I want him to be able to deal with failure.” Goldstein likes the quote, but says middle-class parents have the luxury of worrying less about whether their children will acquire content knowledge. “[A] parent of a kid whose family background does not confer knowledge,” he says, “absolutely needs to worry about how her kid will acquire it, quite apart from any focus on building character.”

Is character innate or can it be taught in schools? In Character Compass, Seider cites the conclusion of a major Education Sciences study of seven “research-based” character-education programs: not one of them got results. Seider believes this may be because all the programs were developed outside the schools that used them. His book reports on home-grown character-education programs in three Boston charter schools, each with a different focus:

• Roxbury Preparatory emphasizes performance character, including perseverance and optimism.
• Academy of the Pacific Rim emphasizes civic character – striving to continuously improve the community.
• Boston Preparatory emphasizes moral character, including integrity, compassion, and resistance. 

All three schools have made measurable gains in their particular brand of character education, and all three have impressive student achievement on Massachusetts state tests. But it’s too early to tell how lasting these gains will be in terms of college and life success. And Goldstein raises another question: can teachers take on one more agenda item on top of everything else they’re asked to do?

“Content of Their Character: Two New Books Say Character, Not Just Book Smarts, Is a Key to Student Success” by Michael Goldstein in CommonWealth, Winter 2013 (Vol. 18, #1, p. 81-83), www.commonwealthmagazine.org 

From the Marshall Memo #469