Number range CHAPTER

White House Talk on Character and Community, 19 June 2002

***The Roots of Character and the Role of Community***

William Damon

Stanford University

How do young people acquire good character? What can we, as adults, do
to promote their character development? Because of recent advances in
research on character development, we now can provide some solid answers
to these questions. My purpose today is to summarize what today's
research tells us about character development, and about the role of
community in educating young people for character.

The first message is that every child begins life with the building
blocks of character already present in rudimentary forms. Of course
there still is much learning that needs to take place for these building
blocks to become mature character, but the basic elements are present
from the start. This means that a basic moral sense does not need to be
forced down a child's throat like unpleasant medicine - it is part of
the human system. To be sustained and expanded, the child's moral sense
requires lots of nurturing by parents, schools, and communities, but not
force-feeding.

What are these early building blocks of character? Four that scientific
studies have identified are: *empathy*, *fairness*, *self-control*, and
*self-awareness*. *Empathy* is the capacity to experience another
person's pleasure or pain, and it provides the emotional root of caring
about other people, the heart of compassion. Newborns cry when they hear
sounds of crying and show signs of pleasure at happy sounds such as
cooing and laughter; and by the second year of life it is common for
children to comfort a peer or a parent in distress. An awareness of
*fairness* begins as soon as children begin playing with friends. When a
playmate hogs a plate of cookies or refuses to relinquish a swing set,
the protest "That's not fair!" is a highly predictable response, because
even young children understand that they have an obligation to share
with others. The child's interest in *self-control* can be seen in an
eagerness, as early as infancy, to regularize behavior through
repetition, rituals, and rules. *Self-awareness* begins as soon as
infants notice that their experience is distinctly their own and not the
same as that of their caregivers - usually in the first months of life.

For these early moral capacities to become fully formed character,
empathy must grow into sustained *concern for the well-being of others*;
fairness must grow into a real *commitment to justice*; self-control
must grow into a strong *sense of personal responsibility*; and
self-awareness must grow into a *determination to be a good and
honorable person*, *free from subjugation, and* *dedicated to noble
purposes beyond the self*. This is precisely the kind of character
development necessary for sustaining a democracy, because it leads
directly to a love of liberty balanced by a commitment to the well-being
and rights of others in the broader community.

None of these developments can happen by itself. Children need certain
kinds of support and guidance from adults in their lives if they are to
turn their early positive inclinations into the mature virtues that
constitute character. Adults can influence children in a number of ways
and places: first and foremost in the family, but also importantly in
schools, in community settings such as sports leagues, libraries, and
religious institutions, and in the mass media.

Based upon everything we have learned from research, there are three
things that I can say about adult influence on children's character.
Adults promote good character in young people under the following
conditions:

1\) When adults communicate high expectations and standards to children,
urging children to fully maximize the tremendous potentials that *all*
children are born with.

2\) When adults from all spheres of a child's life - family, school,
community - are "on the same page" with one another regarding the core
moral values that they profess to the child.

3\) When adults encourage young people to develop strong moral
identities of their own by setting good examples in behavior, by
acquainting young people with admirable examples from history and public
life, and by introducing children to noble purposes that inspire them.

Unfortunately these conditions are not always met in today's society.
Adults sometimes have low standards for children and do not hold them to
their responsibilities, out of the mistaken assumption that expecting
too much of a child can wound a child's self-esteem. Yet research
indicates just the opposite: a youngster builds self-confidence by
accepting responsibility, even when it is difficult to do so. Adults
sometimes present conflicting values to children - such as when a
teacher says don't cheat but the sports coach says that breaking a rule
is OK if you can get away with it; or when a T.V. show glamorizes
behavior that any parent would disapprove of. Yet research shows that
children take values seriously only when they perceive at least a rough
consensus on them among the adults whom they respect. Adults do not
always make the effort to present admirable examples to the young; nor
do they regularly discuss with young people the deep questions of
meaning, purpose, and what really matters in life. Yet research shows
that youngsters learn moral truths by seeing them enacted in the real
lives of flesh-and-blood exemplars, and by reflecting on how this
informs their own search for personal direction, not through abstract
injunctions about right and wrong.

These conclusions lead directly to some guidelines for character
education in our schools and communities. In a recent book that I edited
for Hoover Institution Press, *Bringing in a New Era in Character
Education,* I (and other people who are here today) have presented a set
of suggestions for an informed, effective approach to character
education. Briefly, they include:

1\) In order to present children with coherent messages from all the
important people and settings in their lives, character education must
be a community-wide endeavor. Of course it is essential that these
messages promote core elements of moral character, such as caring,
fairness, self-control, and a respect for rights and liberty. Schools
should join with all other institutions - family, civic, recreational,
religious, media - to create a community where young people can find
these consistent standards, high expectations, social support, and
opportunities for learning and growth wherever they go. Research has
shown that young people do far better in communities characterized by
shared moral values than in communities where the young receive
conflicting messages - and this is true whether communities are rural or
urban, wealthy or modest in means.

2\) Character education must consist of more than skin-deep programs
that ask students to merely recite virtuous words such as honesty,
tolerance, respect, courage, and so on: such words do little more than
pass in one ear and out the other. Character education needs to have a
real-life side that engages students in activities, either within the
school or in the broader community, that help them acquire regular
habits of virtuous behavior. Active engagement not only ensures that
young people will invest themselves in the program; it also nurtures the
capacity to make moral choices freely, and the love of liberty, one of
the defining virtues of citizenship in a democracy.

3\) Character education, in addition to teaching children what *not* to
do (don't lie, don't cheat, don't act disrespectfully, and so on) also
must have a positive side, inspiring young people to dedicate themselves
to higher purposes. In the long run, it is a sense of positive
inspiration that sustains good character. A young person who is
committed to truly noble purposes does not need external injunctions to
walk the straight and narrow path: as they say in sports, a good offense
is the best defense.

Charitable work is one way to introduce students to a larger purpose.
Research has found that community service programs, especially when
combined with reflection about the moral and personal significance of
serving others, are powerful inducers of character development. The sort
of community service programs that are promoted by the Freedom Corps are
excellent examples of this, and the inspirational nature of this
initiative sends exactly the right kind of message to young Americans.

Work as a sense of *calling*, a means of contributing to the betterment
of the world by using one's personal skills and talents, is another
character-inducing source of purpose for a youngster; as is the wish to
establish and nurture a thriving family. Faith and spirituality, too,
offers young people positive experiences with transcendent purposes.
Another transcendent purpose is love of country and a selfless
dedication to it. In the case of a country that stands as a beacon of
democracy and freedom for the world, this is a noble sentiment. The
age-old term for this spirit of dedication is *patriotism*, a term that
in recent years has not always been promoted in our educational
settings; yet now, when our society has been called upon to combat the
evils of international terror, patriotism has assumed its rightful place
as a source of inspiration for the young.

In order to fulfill their character education missions, our schools and
communities must make special efforts to provide young citizens with all
these sources of inspiration and more, becoming places where all young
people can discover their own callings and noble purposes.