The Character of A Life
I’m going to start with five words which when uttered in combination can strike fear into the heart of even the best-intentioned audience when an old man is about to talk:
“When I was a boy …”
Maybe I should translate that phrase from my Australian dialect into the native tongue of the north of England where I’ve been doing a lot of work recently?
“When I were a lad …”
When I were a lad, whenever something would go wrong or was difficult or didn’t turn out as I expected (which was much more frequent than I’d like), my Dad, a big man of Irish and Yorkshire born parents who’d grown up in London and Southern England during the Great Depression and the Blitz, would say to me:
“That’ll give you character.”
The fact that Dad was right didn’t make what he had to say any more palatable. By the time I was 14, I felt as though I had enough character already, although I was probably twice that age and a new father myself before I told him that out loud. His reply? “You’ll see. Life is hard. You’ll have bad days, bad weeks, bad months, bad years …” By the time he got to “bad decades”, I told him I’d had enough and didn’t want to hear any more. He laughed and didn’t finish what he was going to say other than to say “You’ll see”.
He was right. Unlike my Dad, I tend to look on the bright side of life. But like him, I now recognise that life’s not easy. No matter how much we’d like our children to be “happy”, we know deep down that “happy” is an infrequent passing mood at best. In a cruel irony of life, it’s probably easier to be “sad” than it is to be “happy”. If we’re looking for a balanced outcome, “satisfied and content” are probably more durably attainable. “Bored and restless” are annoyingly common. “Engaged and excited” do feature sometimes, although perhaps never enough. “Delighted and fulfilled” pair up with “cross and impatient”. “Buoyant and jubilant” are perhaps equally matched by “gloomy and miserable”, while for many “anxious and desperate” are way too common and inescapably so. I rather like “pleasantly surprised and relieved”, although “disappointed and resigned” also have their fair share of experience. And many more things as well from happy to sad and back again.
"Character is who we are, who we are becoming and the way we live; it’s comes from the wrestling and is best grown intentionally with a deep appreciation of the reflexive influence of time and place."
What seems to sustain us through good times and bad, from happy to sad, is our character, the thing to which many people around the world commonly refer as “who we are when no one else is around”.
Being tested really seems to matter with character. There’s a particular value we give to how we respond to the presence of challenge, a time of trial when no-one is there to scrutinise us and remind us to do the right thing. It’s up to us to dig deep to draw on our values to yield something of value to ourselves and (more importantly) others.
In this respect, my Dad was right. He lived a good life, I think – one in which (to use the words of my Mum, who’s still alive and inspiring our family at nearly 93) “he did his best”. I think his example rubbed off on me, a little bit like the way you can rub a pencil on tracing paper over a fossil or a plaque or a sarcophagus. That’s an analogy that only a history teacher would choose to use. I think the combination of time and relationship leave their impression on you. You try to measure up to others just as much as you try, to use the words of my Dad’s graduate and postgraduate theses “to make a mark” of your own.
I grew up in Sydney in an immigrant family that greatly valued education. My grandparents on both sides came from poor families and educated their children well. Words matter to us. My earliest memories involve pulling down history books from my Dad’s library shelves and immersing myself in them. As I grew up, I was a shy and very bright boy with parents who owed everything they had to a combination of their own education, their response to their family backgrounds and the character they formed over lives of hard work and service based on decency and a mostly delayed self-gratification.
My dad, Dr Brian Patrick Cummins, was both an accomplished architect and artist as well as (eventually) a reasonably successful investor. A shy and awkward man, he taught me three big lessons:
“Whatever happens in life, you have to sleep at night.” That’s the deep thinker and complicated but visionary moralist speaking.
“Everyone must be able to feed their family.” That’s the public servant and family man talking.
The third lesson is from the world of cricket – his great love: “You have to get in behind the line of the ball.”
I’m still trying to prove myself to him even though he died of cancer in 2008
From my mum, Dr Rohma Newman Cummins, a fierce and trail-blazing pathologist, scientist, orchestra manager, gardener and educator, has come lessons about the primacy of the value of education in propelling a life – anyone’s life – forward, the importance of striving for both excellence and truth, and the finding of them in the details, and, most of all, the enduring need to hang on in hope, no matter what the circumstances. For Mum, giving up is no valid option. You better do what you say you’re going do to and you’d better bloody keep going till it’s done!
I have a brother whose life has been quite different to my own. He’s been plagued by terrible mental health and substance abuse issues. Growing up with him in the room next to me was pretty difficult, if I’m honest. By the time I was 15, I knew that whatever I was going to be needed to carry a responsibility for my family and its ongoing fortunes, as much in response to the challenges posed by my brother as it was a product of my own drive to work, to succeed and to make a worthwhile contribution.
"I’ve learned from young people and those who teach, care for, lead and love them across the world that the more we feel as though we belong, the more likely we are to fulfil our potential. The more we feel as though we belong and fulfil our potential, the more likely we are to do good and right in the world."
As I said, I was a very shy boy who had to overcome ferocious bullying at my first school and learn to establish a public presence which would enable me to be the leader I felt I had to be. I pushed myself into different situations as a young man to try to grow and develop my own character. Service as an army officer was part of this process, as has been my vocation of teaching. Teaching and leading in Australian schools was the first manifestation of this. Establishing my own global company to do the work of educational research and consulting on the intersection of excellence and character has certainly pushed me further.
I owe a lot of all of this to my parents. A lot of what I learned from my parents has been matched what I’ve also learned from my own children and friends, and professionally from young people, their families and teachers all over the world. People are people wherever I go; although each person has their own story, all of us are all woven into the warp and weft of a common and interdependent humanity by means of our character.
One way or another, I’ve been teaching, leading and working in and with schools for over 35 years now. I love telling a story and finding the structure behind the narrative. I love working out where the voice, agency and advocacy lie in human affairs (as well as those that lie beyond) and, of course, I love thinking about the reasons why. I’m an optimist, so I believe that stories should end well, although there’s always more than a fair amount of wrestling with challenge and disappointment to be experienced. I believe that a positive attitude, an inclination to see the best in others, a willingness to work very hard, and the playfulness and wit to adapt what’s at hand to deal with what life throws up are essential.
“Good times have given me hope, a strong desire to give to others and a love of fun. Bit by painful bit... tough times have eventually drawn out of me a resilience in the face of adversity.”
My character is what it is now, and it’s still growing. What that means is for others to judge. Good times have given me hope, a strong desire to give to others and a love of fun. Bit by painful bit (and by no means consistently), tough times have eventually drawn out of me a resilience in the face of adversity that many would recognise as a particular type of strength of character. I think there’s also a greater consistency in how I act that others would recognise as robustness – another type of strength of character, I guess. Put them together, and some people might even think that I have some wisdom, or maybe that’s just the grey hairs in my beard. The signs of aging – of wear and tear that bear witness to the experience of adversity – suggest the development of a character that’s at least worth something.
Thank you for allowing me to share some of the story of my growth in character with you. I’m now a little more than twice the age I was when I became a father for the first time, and my oldest son has a son of his own who’s named after my father Brian. I’ve learned much in that second half of my life. I think I’ve grown even more in character than I thought I would or needed to grow, hopefully for the better.
Yet there’s more to my story of character than that. For it’s been my privilege to make the study of character and the design of an education for good character an essential part of my life’s work – my purpose. In doing so, I’ve built on the work of teachers, thinkers and writers who have been engaged in this work at least since the time of Aristotle and most likely before that too. Character education is no fad; it’s an enduring characteristic of excellent education.
In my own work, I’ve been talking to people of all ages around the world now for the past fifteen years about character. I lead the world’s longest running research project into what an education for character might be in our schools and beyond. I’ve been granted awards and even a professorship that recognise the imperative of this character work.
When people talk to me of character, they talk to me of the good times as well as the tough times. In fact, they talk to me of the character drawn from a whole life.
“We teach who we are. That’s why character is the reason why we do school.”
So what is this thing called character? And how might we educate our children for character?
Let me answer these questions using five other questions: the “What?”, the “How?”, the “Where?”, the “Why?” and the “Who?”.
The “What?”
Character is who we are – our being.
Character is who we might be – our becoming.
Character is how we strive to lead a life that’s both worthwhile and well-lived – our thriving.
Character comes from the wrestling.
We wrestle to realise the inner character of who we are, who we might become and how we might make a mark.
We wrestle with how we might measure up – how we might replicate the external expectations of others.
It’s in this wrestling between what’s inside us and what’s outside us that the character is formed.
Everything we do as we wrestle with our being, our becoming and our thriving forms three types of character:
Everything we do has a civic, performance and moral quality to it. How, then, do these three types of character fit together?
"Character is seen through our words, our actions and our impact. It’s purpose and how we put it into practice for the sake of people and place and planet through our character that help us to make a difference in the world."
I’ve learned from young people and those who teach, care for, lead and love them across the world that the more we feel as though we belong, the more likely we are to fulfil our potential. The more we feel as though we belong and fulfil our potential, the more likely we are to do good and right in the world.
Character is seen through our words, our actions and our impact. It’s purpose and how we put it into practice for the sake of people and place and planet through our character that help us to make a difference in the world.
There’s a pathway to excellence that can help us to make this difference as both the best versions of ourselves and good stewards of yesterday, today and tomorrow.
It’s about building character (and the competency and wellness that support it) through who we are now, who we might become and how we might thrive in the world.
We build character on the pathway to excellence by asking four powerful questions about who we are now – our being:
1. Who am I?
2. Where do I fit in?
3. How can I best serve others
4. Whose am I?
These four questions help us to locate the essential character qualities to become who we need to be:
1. Self-awareness
2. Relationality
3. Selflessness
4. Vocation
These four questions also help us to grow in the essential competencies – the way we live our lives – that help us to thrive in our world:
1. Learn
2. Live
3. Lead
4. Work
As we learn, live, lead and work, we need to enrich our character with the adaptive expertise and self efficacy that will enable us to thrive in our world.
Adaptive expertise is how we respond to the changing circumstances of our world. It's often referred to as ‘resilience’.
Self-efficacy is how we organise our strength of character to achieve our purpose. It's often referred to as ‘robustness’.
As we wrestle with our adaptive expertise and self-efficacy, we learn how and when to balance resilience with robustness.
Our adaptive expertise and self-efficacy – how we use our character and these competencies – will never be perfect.
All we can do is strive to to become both the best versions of ourselves and good stewards of yesterday, today and tomorrow.
As we wrestle with the challenge of what is inside and what is outside us, all things being well, we will grow, make progress and succeed.
We will thrive.
The “How?”
Young people are inherently and deeply interested in character.
They want to become good people.
They usually think that they're not good enough.
They usually don’t know what “good” looks like – although they can tell us how it feels.
And too many of them (up to 50%) feel as though they don’t belong at school.
"Character is learned through the experience of school – a journey from childhood to adulthood where values are put into action through experiences that teach actionable behaviours which create both values and value. "
We need to rethink how we design a school for character. In other words, how do we take all of the different streams of school and channel them towards a set of outcomes that might describe who a young person is by the time they’re ready to leave, and the knowledge, skills, dispositions and habits they have acquired along the way that will prepare them to be, to become and to thrive in a life that’s both worthwhile and well-lived – to thrive.
We need a framework – a description of character development as a set of actionable behaviours organised by age and stage according to our key values or other significant ideas and beliefs.
It's these that help us know what “good” character looks like and how we are growing in it over time.
It’s these that help us establish an agreed values and value proposition against which we can measure our own success.
It all starts with belonging.
We need to see and build schools as homes for character that are:
1. Human centred
2. Technologically enriched
3. People and place and planet conscious
4. Intentionally purposeful
We need to be intentional about teaching, learning and leading for and with character.
We need to be deliberate about how we:
1. Coach and measure it
2. Listen for and live it
3. Plan and share it
4. Grow and defend it
It’s too important to be simply accidental and incidental.
"Character growth takes place in the liminal space between what's inside us and what's outside us – a journey from being to becoming to thriving nourished by that secret sauce of great schools that equips, empowers and enables."
There’s a secret sauce that helps us do this purposeful character work in schools:
⁃ Equip students with an environment characterised by aspiration, a sense of kinship and pathways to excellence
⁃ Empower students with a school community that keeps them in their groove and holds them to their purpose
⁃ Enable students through relationships that inspire, challenge and support them to achieve the graduate outcomes of the school framework
The content of character is learned through a curriculum that is purposeful. This can be done through flagship programs where character is explored up front and in depth. However, character is learned in every classroom and beyond, no matter the subject. Any subject, topic and experience can be used to talk about what character is, how we learn and grow in it, and what this means for our being and becoming and thriving
As a history teacher, I can choose to teach content or I can use content to teach character. Knowledge of content at a superficial level is important; it fuels many of the important transactions in education and beyond. Knowing what to do with this content and how to apply it to your life is even more important. If we as teachers help our students to understand and do what really matters in their lives using our content to go further — the know what, know how, know why, know where and know who — we can make our contribution to their transactions and to their transformation. And they’ll almost certainly end up with the marks they deserve along the way. Every teacher has this choice – more on this later.
As we go about the character work, we need to be explicit and implicit, planned and spontaneous in how we teach character.
Great teachers know how and when to teach in all of these modes according to the situation of their students.
Our 2018 IBSC research study told us that 71% of students tell us that they make their big character breakthroughs outside the classroom; 29% make these breakthroughs in the classroom.
Every student benefits from learning in which they’re immersed in experiences where they cycle into and out of the learning of civic, performance and moral character through application and reflection.
“Our research tells us that relationship is the only pedagogy of character that really matters; everything else is a set of techniques within a relationship.”
Whether it’s inside or outside the classroom, whether it’s learned through immersion or as part of a flagship program or in daily lessons and activities, students tell us that they almost always learn and grow in character on a daily basis through relationship.
Our research tells us that relationship is the only pedagogy of character that really matters; everything else is a set of techniques within a relationship. If you get the relationship wrong, there’s no set of techniques that can compensate.
We can map our character and its growth by telling the story of the development of our inner need to make our mark and how we are measuring up to the external expectations of others.
We can measure our character by the quality and consistency of our behaviours and how they align to both our values and the value we bring to others – a natural and normal developmental journey from “me” to “you” to “us”.
What about leadership in and beyond our schools?
We lead from the core of our being, our becoming and our thriving.
It’s the example that we give that’s the biggest reason why our character matters to others; we need to show it.
Leaders of character are leaders of culture.
Leaders of culture are game changers – bold pioneers who don’t wait for permission to bring about meaningful transformation. They tell us the story of yesterday, today and tomorrow which creates a compelling narrative for who we might become. They show us how to take the big step forward and up together.
Game changers turn character into a shared culture – a code of behaviours that represent “the way we do things here”. They do this best when then cultivate traditions and rituals that honour our shared values and the value we bring to others.
There are many different ways to lead. We’ve found that game changers typically lead with the character of:
• Curiosity
• Compassion
• Courage
• Conviction
Game changers reflect on people and place and planet to form a sense of purpose. They put this purpose into practice to make a difference through how they:
• Strengthen
• Inform
• Orientate
• Focus
• Align
• Enrich
The “Where?”
Character is who we are, who we are becoming and the way we live; it’s comes from the wrestling and is best grown intentionally with a deep appreciation of the reflexive influence of time and place.
Character growth takes place in the liminal space between what's inside us and what's outside us – a journey from being to becoming to thriving nourished by that secret sauce of great schools that equips, empowers and enables.
Character is learned through the experience of school – a journey from childhood to adulthood where values are put into action through experiences that teach actionable behaviours which create both values and value.
Great schools, great teams, great organisations study character in depth and learn how to bring honour to everything they do.
“The result of this sum must be that our children have the character, competency and wellness to thrive in our world.”
Great schools, great teams, great organisations measure character according to the values and value brought to the lives of the community and those in it.
Great schools, great teams, great organisations have a vision and vocabulary of character.
It's this framework that helps us know what “good” character looks like and how we can measure our growth, progress and achievement against the standards of our community.
The character we learn at school cannot exist in isolation as an academic or theoretical or individual construct. It’s always a team game in which we apply our character to the living of a life in community with others, hopefully one that proves to be both well-lived and worthwhile.
Character is, therefore, the whole work of a community.
Communities have recognised and told stories about the importance of character for as long as there have been human beings.
The question is: does character come from within the heart of a community, or are there elements of character which are shared across different communities?
Is it about who we are as a particular group of people? Or is it about universal ideals of humanity?
Character is both individual and shared, unique to a place and common across the planet.
We need our young people to come to school and embark on the pathway to excellence with a firm knowledge and appreciation of where they've come from and a deep curiosity about what might be possible for them in the world at large with a values and value proposition to keep them grounded.
The “Why?”
Character is the reason why we do school.
If character is the reason why we do school, then we need to recognise that the “What?” and the “How?” and the “Where?” and the “Why?” of school really matter.
What matters most of all, however, is the “Who?”.
The “Who?”
We teach who we are.
We teach who we are. That’s why character is the reason why we do school.
That’s why the “Why?” is the “Who?” and the “Who?” is our “Why?”.
We teach who we are in relationships of character apprenticeship.
In a relationship of character apprenticeship, an expert models and coaches and scaffolds for a novice who explores, reflects and articulates.
In time, the expert stands back while the novice becomes an expert in their own right, working with other novices to pass on what they have learned.
It's a process as old as humanity.
“Great schools, great teams, great organisations measure character according to the values and value brought to the lives of the community and those in it.”
We teach this character – who we are, who we might become and how we might thrive in the world – all the time, everywhere, in everything that we do; how well we do this is up to us.
So, as a History teacher, I have a choice to make.
Either I teach students the stuff of history syllabuses so they can pass exams.
Or I can use our framework and the stuff of history syllabuses to teach them the character of an historian so that they can both pass exams and contribute their knowledge, skills, disposition, and habits to society as a whole. This what I think thriving looks like.
I know which I would rather do – do you?
The character of thriving is about who our learners become and how they learn, live, lead and work in the world.
Ultimately, we will know that we have been successful in educating our children for the character of thriving when they have the voice, agency and advocacy required to grow, make progress and succeed in their lives. We need them to show up every day and to take the big step forward and up throughout their lives.
We care about what and how our children learn. We care about who our children become. Both are part of the equation.
The result of this sum must be that our children have the character, competency and wellness to thrive in our world.
In an education for character, therefore, the “Who?” is our “Why?”.
Life's an adventure ...
Who are you now?
Who will you become?
How will you lead a life that’s both worthwhile and well-lived?
Let’s go!
Phil