The Formation of Character in Education

From Aristotle to the 21st Century

James Arthur

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429557538
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The Formation of Character: From Aristotle to the 21st Century offers an introduction to the foundations, practices, policies and issues of character formation historically. Following a chronological order, it charts the idea of character formation in the Western tradition by critically examining its precursors, origins, development, meanings and uses.

The book is based on the premise that current conditions and debates around character formation cannot be fully understood without knowledge of the historical background. It introduces many of the debates character formation has generated in order to offer different perspectives and possibilities and uses Aristotle as a lens to gain a better understanding of some of these positions, particularly the theoretical goals of character formation. Chapters explore character education from the classical period through the medieval, early modern, enlightenment and Victorian eras to 20th century influences, ending with a discussion of contemporary policies and themes relating to character education.

This book will appeal to academics, researchers, and post-graduate students in the fields of character and virtue education as well as the history of education.

Chapter 1

Definitions and models of character

Introduction

The formation of character could be said to be the aim that all general education has historically set out to achieve. It is an aim that has often not been explicitly stated, instead it has simply been assumed because much of the school curriculum has been traditionally a prerequisite for character formation. The inculcation of character has been seen as a primary function of culture and schooling, particularly since schools first appeared and there has been a lively debate about character formation for centuries. Debates about character formation have pervaded the course of history and arise at different levels of generality. Character formation has proven to be a remarkably resilient idea seen in the endurance and reoccurrence of the concept. Multiple forms of character formation have also made the concept difficult to fully capture, particularly when character is often defined as a broad based and unspecific entity. Beliefs about the formation of character were regularly taken for granted; they were tacitly presupposed and involuntarily formed rather than formally expressed or argued for. These implicit philosophies of character formation have persisted over a long period of time and are more lasting than the concrete manifestations of character in any period in time.

The transmission of knowledge was traditionally secondary to character formation. What was taught by way of content was believed to have the potential to stir the imagination, pass on enduring values and disclose the motives that actuate human character. Indeed, the idea that certain virtues should be cultivated in children via formal and informal education can be found in numerous ancient texts or writings: Sumerian, Chinese, Egyptian, Indian, Israeli among others, but this study begins with the Western tradition in the thinking and practice of Aristotle (384–322 BC). However, it recognises that during the Axial Age (8th to 3rd centuries BC) there were many cultural developments that overlapped between major civilisations on beliefs, values, religion, social and political thought and ethics. For Aristotle and the ancient Greeks, the education of a child was in part a matter of transmitting information, but also a matter of shaping their normative outlook, i.e. what is the best way to live? Education in this sense is never intended to be neutral for as Chesterton (1950: 167) says: ‘Every education teaches a philosophy; if not by dogma then by suggestion, by implication, by atmosphere.’ After two thousand years of analysis and discussion we have failed in modern times to resolve or reach a consensus on questions about character formation.

It was well understood that teachers affect what their students value and therefore teachers help influence the character of their students. Aristotle discusses in his Politics whether the job of character formation is best done by the child’s father or by the community. He recognised that the home is a private, not a public institution, and that any inequalities in parental nurturing will reinforce inequality in the community. However, he did not recommend the practice of Sparta which was for the State to take over the whole education and life of young boys at the age of seven. In Athens the State left parents free to make their own arrangements for the education of their sons. It can be argued that the educational thought and practices of Greece are the most important of all earlier contributions to our contemporary education. It is, for example, from Greek thought and practice that the modern conception of the school as the constructive instrument of the State arose.

Today, many modern educationalists believe that human autonomy is the ultimate end of education. This implies an orientation towards the future through a concern for ever increasing opportunities for choice by continually widening the range of options. This has led to doubt and uncertainties with the precise meaning of character open to diverse and often contradictory interpretations. Who today wishes to be virtuous? Who even uses the word? Yet there are hundreds of definitions of character. Character is often used interchangeably with personality, particularly as psychology from the 1930s has tended to treat many character qualities as features of a theory of personality (Nicholson, 1998). Indeed, character was effectively supplanted by personality, but did not entirely disappear (see Allport, 1921). The language of character and personality is a discourse about individual differences, but character has a much longer pedigree. Character has moral overtones and is connected intrinsically with a normative understanding of human conduct while personality is more descriptive concerning the non-moral aspects of people. Character is about who you are and refers to what is truly at the centre, your inner beliefs and feelings and therefore cannot be separated from the person. Personality, in contrast, is often about how you seem to be or how you present yourself to the world. We cannot therefore reduce character to a question of personality or life-style.

Character

Throughout human history scholars and people more generally have vigorously debated the purposes, desires, feelings and habits that guide human conduct. It was inevitable that discussions of character would become fraught with conflicting definitions and with endless personal and ideological battles. How we are disposed to think, feel and act is clearly open to argument and interpretation, but the powerful idea of character lies at the heart of this debate even if there is less agreement on what it means and consists of. The origins of the word are not surprisingly Greek, ‘Kharakter’, signifying an ‘engraved mark’ impressed upon a coin or seal – a kind of stamp impressed by nature or education which marks out individuality. Through the centuries this has come largely to mean the complex sum of ideas or qualities distinctive of individuals and which need to be understood within particular contexts, both historical and modern. Character is a multi-faceted aggregate of ideas and qualities that significantly vary between individuals – it is what makes us different from each other, and like ‘personality’ it constitutes our distinguishing attributes. Today, character is often conflated with personality or personal growth. Gaps in character formation clearly correlate to gaps in income, family function, education and employment. Character is also an evaluative concept for its use can be of a commendable or culpable nature. Character qualities in the popular mind are often viewed through a lens with descriptive adjectives in order to distinguish types of character: good or bad, stable or unstable, noble or base, strong or weak, high or low and odd or no character. This evaluation of someone’s character qualities can suggest the existence or lack of admirable character qualities. Ultimately, the way a person reacts to a situation defines their character which is often associated with virtuous behaviour which is to act on virtue from some particular motivation.

In the Republic, which is dedicated to outlining the formation needed for true virtue, Plato emphasised that character formation should begin early: ‘The beginning is the chiefiest part of the work, especially in a young and tender thing, for that is the time at which the character is formed and most readily receives the desired impressions.’ A modern commentator, Hauerwas (1975: 203) is even more profound: ‘Nothing about being is more “me” than my character. Character is the basic aspect of our existence. It is the mode of the formation of our “I”, for it is character that provides the content of the “I”… . It is our character that determines the orientation and direction, which we embody, through our beliefs and actions.’ In this character and identity are the same thing. John Stuart Mill from his On Liberty emphasised the independence of character when he wrote: ‘A person whose desires and impulses are his own – are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture – is said to have character.’ There is an endless range of commentary on what character is or might be.

What are the general components of character, particularly in how it ought to be used in the academic literature? I provide a brief survey of some of what I consider to be the essential inter-connected factors that character consists of. Indeed, my attempt is to outline the descriptive features of what character means and which distinguish it as a particular kind of normative guide. First, character involves change over time – it is not fixed, static or set, but is malleable and continuous, not immutable during life. Character is also visible in our conduct. Second, character is shaped within and by cultural and civic context and therefore is a social, not an entirely individual process. It has the potential to transcend social, religious and racial differences – character is not completely contingent on identity, it may surpass our divisions and allow us to share many common values. Character, I believe, ought never to be aligned to either the political right or left, nor must it be co-opted for narrowly sectarian causes. Third, it involves choice and autonomy – to freely choose a way of life is to ensure our actions are guided by intelligence and reason resulting in reasonable action. It requires an ability to evaluate reflectively the moral claims of others in a sensitive way. We need to deliberate about which actions to take when the principles and convictions we have formed do not adequately or clearly apply, but knowledge alone is not sufficient without motivation. Fourth, it involves a life dominated by principles and convictions, the ability to discover or define one’s life mission and desired lifestyle without blind conformity to the convictions and actions of others. There cannot be character without principles and ideals which are the guiding standards of an authentic life. A person of character will need to remain true to deeply held commitments so that their behaviour and actions reflect their enduring and settled habits. These habits are often automatic behavioural responses to cultural cues, which develop through repetition of behaviour in consistent contexts. Fifth, it involves observable actions according to these principles, convictions, rules and life mission – in other words character always requires practical expression through a lived ethics that puts into place the fundamental convictions of life. It must also involve self- observation and/or self-criticism in order to refine these principles, but ultimately through attitudes that are expressed consistently in judgement and action. Sixth, it involves regularity of expression – which requires a certain stability in moral attitudes and a persistence of effort. Character involves habitual behaviour as it is shaped by our doing. Seventh, it requires will power and motivation as well as the ability to act on appropriate judgements – the will here is self-conscious activity by the power to act deliberately. The development of any of these components can be blocked or impeded, particularly by the lack of basic resources, both human and material.

All these components of character ought to be seen as having a degree of usefulness for the individual in demonstrating what character is in any life. Each one of us is in a sense a configuration of these components of character that need to be understood as supporting each other. However, even these seven characteristics of character are not sufficiently comprehensive enough to capture the full complexity of human character (see Besser-Jones, 2014: 76–93) and this is why speaking of character is always an act of interpretation. The danger of both advocates and critics of character formation is to reduce character to a single component and placing too much emphasis on that component. As Kamteker (2004: 460) rightly observes: ‘the conception of character in virtue ethics is holistic and inclusive of how we reason: it is a person’s character as a whole (rather than isolated character traits), that explains her actions, and this character is a more-or-less consistent, more-or-less integrated, set of motivations, including the person’s desires, beliefs about the world, and ultimate goals and values.’ Character is not simply how people act, but how they integrate their motives and values and how they reason. It is a mixture of cognitive and non-cognitive elements and in this thinking and feeling are not unconnected.

Acting deliberately requires constant effort on the part of the individual to seek out their own character development. As Goethe wrote: ‘Character is best formed in the strong billows of the world’ or as Heraclitus said ‘Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop character’. Character needs social experience so that the habits formed promote moral character which in turn allows culture to perpetuate itself. We could say that character is formed in particular communities marked by fidelity to a normative story. Marx (1852) once said: ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.’ This raises the important point that there are things in life that we have no choice over and these will constitute the limits and possibilities within which any given character is formed. Our character is, as Bondi (1984: 207) says subject to the accidents of history: ‘This occurs in three ways: (i) events which are beyond our control of any individual or group, (ii) circumstances in which we simply find ourselves, and (iii) the past, insofar as we cannot change what has already occurred’ and he concludes that ‘the accidents of history form the raw material of character.’ What to do in any given situation demands more than knowledge of the law, certain rules or your role. Therefore, we need the capacity to deliberate well and possess the ability to perceive what is morally relevant in any situation. We need to be able to read social situations, to understand the other’s perspective and simply gain experience of life itself.

All of these components outlined above need to be brought into harmony with each other since actions presuppose a choice which will determine the action taken and for which the individual is responsible. You could say that character is a set of personal traits or as Aristotle called them, ‘firm and unshakable dispositions’ that evoke specific emotions, inform motivation and guide conduct. The possessor of these dispositions, it is often argued, will regularly and reliably act in accordance with the virtues. However, character formation should not be reduced to moral education since character involves a much broader range of human excellences than simply those that are viewed as moral. Virtuous character involves both the intellect, the will and the rational and affective part of the self. The virtues of character within an Aristotelian lens require us to live according to reason and the virtues of thought enable proper exercise of reason itself. Taylor (1964) provides a good definition of the complexity of character when he defined it as concerned with dispositions, desires and tendencies: ‘having steady and permanent dispositions to do what is right and to refrain from doing what is wrong, having morally desirable wishes, desires, purposes, goals; and having the tendency to respond emotionally towards things in the morally appropriate way.’

Any two teachers or parents who are generally sympathetic to character formation are likely to view it differently and disagree about what features are more important. Having character is sometimes defined as knowing (cognitive) the good, loving (affective) the good, and doing (behavioural) the good. We know that someone’s character cannot be easily assessed and that such assessment attempts are often surrounded with controversy. Some nevertheless, emphasise habit over reasoning while others focus on the environment over the individual. Conservatives are often suspicious of ‘soft’ virtues which they take to imply social-moral relativism while progressives are concerned about a too narrow focus on the individual over the structural inequalities to be found in the education system and society. Others want direct instruction to inculcate certain virtuous behaviours while yet others seek inter-personal relationships and a greater focus on efforts for community cohesion. They encompass diverse approaches, but it can lead to defining it too narrowly or exaggerating it to such an extent that you provide a caricatured version in order to justify dismissing the whole approach.

Character needs to be defined broadly as Aristotle described it when he argued that the goal of human life is to develop its essential excellences, the potentialities that define and constitute it. Aristotle places before us a vision of the good as an ideal to make progress towards. For Aristotle acquiring the virtues in order to secure the standards of good character and virtuous action, in turn requires persistent effort with the virtues becoming the habit of right performance. We need to know what virtue is before we can acquire it and it is clear that there is more to being virtuous than good behaviour. Aristotle provides us with the most developed and historically influential idea of character. The Greek educational tradition understood that the teaching of virtue was not intended for students to give a good account of themselves or that they should defend the idea of their good character in debate. It was rather about doing the good as the virtues were expected to have some practical and beneficial effect. Virtue here was defined as the disposition to desire and to do the right thing. It was also understood that virtues would be shaped by different communities. Virtue was viewed as constitutive of human flourishing, not simply instrumental to it and that virtue is both intrinsically and instrumentally valuable to an individual.

In summary, the main features of character can be said to comprise the following:

• 1 Malleable over time even when it is difficult and requires great effort
• 2 Is the product of reason and freedom
• 3 Requires sustained effort of the will to act deliberately
• 4 Conforms conduct to convictions and desired lifestyles
• 5 Is a complex sum of beliefs, emotions and actions that varies between individuals
• 6 Is shaped within and by cultural context
• 7 Results in self-caused practical actions

Some people have these qualities and potentialities to a greater or lesser extent than others. Character is the set of traits, good or bad, that makes someone the kind of person he or she is. Aristotle would say that we are partly responsible for our own character and that excellence of character results from habituation or repetition of actions which result in turn in the formation of settled habits. Character formation therefore must continue throughout adulthood. Aristotle of course has had his critics, from the left and right, from Hobbes to Mills, who say he is ‘elitist’, ‘impractical’, ‘racist’, ‘sexist’, ‘naive’, ‘morally prescriptive’, ‘politically incorrect’ and presents ‘outmoded ideas’. It is not the intention of this text to address these criticisms only to say that Aristotle is not an easy philosopher to understand and he does not answer all our questions about character, so it is important that I do not exaggerate the extent to which his ideas are relevant to current debates about character formation. Others reject Aristotle’s ethics completely, as Trianosky (1990: 104) writes:

although one’s attitudes, emotions, reactive capacities, and skills are or can to some extent be developed by will, no effort of will, however sustained, is sufficient for their development. Character is the product not only of voluntary action but also of the activity of temperament, along with upbringing, childhood experiences, social environment, peer expectations, and pure happenstance. And not only temperament but all of these things are not themselves the product of some exercise of agency, whether voluntary or non-voluntary. Hence, no Aristotelian account of responsibility for character can succeed.

Harman (1999: 316) questions the existence of character itself as he writes ‘ordinary attributions of character traits to people are often deeply misguided and it may be the case that there is no such thing as character, no ordinary character traits of the sort people think there are, none of the usual moral virtues and vices’. There is a difficulty in giving an adequate account of why a person should live the good life in Aristotle’s thinking as well as the apparent weakness in his largely theoretical account of addressing particular decisions in concrete cases. Bertrand Russell (1945: 195) is perhaps the most critical when he wrote harshly: ‘The book (Ethics) appeals to the respectable middle-aged, and has been used by them, especially since the seventeenth century, to repress the ardours and enthusiasm of the young… . There is … an almost complete absence of what may be called benevolence or philanthropy. The sufferings of mankind … do not move him… . More generally there is an emotional poverty in the Ethics.’ Copleston (1993) is more judicious and his History of Philosophy provides a classic account of the ethical theory of Aristotle.

Kristjan Kristjansson (2013) in an important, balanced and influential article argues that there are persistent myths about character formation and he challenges these misgivings while recognising that there are still some well-founded misgivings remaining. He divides these challenges into six categories: conceptual, historical, moral, political, epistemological, and psychological (2013: 269). For Kristjansson, and for this present text, character formation is best understood as any form of moral education that foregrounds the role of virtuous character in the good life. His challenges could be briefly summarised in the following way: first, the concepts of character and virtue are not amb...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Definitions and models of character
• Section I Foundations
• Section II Practices
• Section III Policies and issues
• References
• Further Reading (History and Philosophy)
• Appendices
• Index