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Brainstorm: Lives of the Mind Laurie Fendrich

No Character? We Can Fix That

“Fine, then may I please have your lunch money.”


In an article in this month’s issue of the AAUP’s magazine Academe, Angela Walmsley and Jeffrey McManemy argue that “It’s time we set some expectations for our students that go beyond the syllabus.” They proceed to discuss something they blithely label “character dysfunction,” which they define as a “deficiency in social skills necessary for successful professional relationships,” and which they then argue “often leads to communication disruptions and unsatisfactory interactions between students and faculty and staff.”

I’ve always thought that “character” is a noun, rather than an adjective, and that it concerns the overall moral and ethical quality of a person, rather than a set of particular, atomized social attributes. When we say that someone “has character,” or “lacks character,” we mean, essentially, that the person has good character or bad character, as a totality. Questions about how character is molded, or to what extent it can be molded, or when exactly in a person’s life it can be molded, have been the subject of contentious disputes throughout history, and the answers — judging from the endless, unchecked parade of wicked human beings on the planet — clearly lack exactitude, let alone certainty.

Our notion of character derives from the stern Romans, rather than the effete Greeks. The Romans saw character as something that could be developed (in a man — they hadn’t yet heard about women’s liberation) through an early education that emphasized duty, obligation, and obedience. (This education is in stark contrast to our modern educational system, where the goal is self-realization.)

Walmsley and McManemy posit “character” as a neutral thing, like an ignition that won’t start the car on a cold day. To them, “character dysfunction” among college students is manifested in such examples as the “inability to demonstrate ‘boundary control’” (translation in plain English: “bullying”), or not knowing how to “interact socially without expecting others to meet one’s needs immediately” (translation in plain English: “whining”). Professors are exhorted to employ “strategies” to correct the “character dysfunction” of their students, such as to “clearly communicate expectations with students and allow for feedback.”

The most disturbing aspect of this article lies not in the authors’ tips to professors on how to handle socially problematic students — they’re fairly helpful, although obvious in the extreme, e.g., “Exercise consistency and fairness as guiding principles.” (Is there a faculty member out there who aims to exercise inconsistency and unfairness as guides to conduct?) Rather, it lies in the consequence of their profound misunderstanding of the nature of character.

In replacing the word “character” with the pseudo-psychiatric term “character dysfunction,” the authors reach the erroneous conclusion that students’ bad characters can be cured by helping them improve their social skills. Talk about dangerous delusions!

Improving the social skills of a bully, whiner, liar, and thief will only make them more effective and devious than they were before. The bully with improved social skills won’t cease threatening you, but rather will threaten you more subtly. The whiner won’t stop whining, but will become more rhetorically convincing in arguing that perhaps the grade on the paper might indeed be too low. The liar will have you thinking that maybe the dog did eat the homework. And the thief will say, very politely, that no, he wasn’t in your office when the coffee-pool money disappeared.

There are many ways professors can mitigate the bad behavior of students, but it will take a lot more than fuzzy academic language and numbered bromides to change their characters.

Image from the Photobucket files of salamander_03

Posted at 01:16:44 PM on January 25, 2008 | All postings by Laurie Fendrich

Comments

  1. I’m of mixed feelings with regard to these issues. Some of it is just elementary classroom sense that any teacher will acquire with experience: sometimes you have to tell people to be quiet, to take turns, to expect that email may not be answered for 24 hours, and so on. Some students we encounter in our classrooms are immature; part of our job is to help them mature by correcting them.

    With respect to student life outside the classroom, however, some faculty have a knee-jerk reaction: “I am not a babysitter (harumph).” I have no sympathy for this view at all. No, professor, you are not a babysitter, but you do have responsibility for the personal and intellectual growth of the young people in your charge, and that involves more than talking at them from the front of a room three times a week.

    A generation’s worth of self-serving avoidance by faculty of the broader issues of student development on campus created an opening for the whole student-affairs/counseling industry, which has been more than willing to pick up the slack. But their version of “student development” (or “character education”; pick whatever name you like) is often vacuous and juvenile itself, suited more for use with ten-year-olds than young adults.

    If we really want to make a difference in the lives of our students — personally and intellectually — then we the faculty must place ourselves in the midst of student life. This is what Catholic educator Michael Buckley advises in his fine essay Newman and the restoration of the interpersonal in higher education. I, a secularist, recommend to all.

    — R.J. O'Hara · Jan 25, 05:05 PM · #

  2. To R. J. O’Hara: The problem of the poor character of college students (if there is in fact such a problem) might be a result of their buying in to such infantilizing ideas as you express. They are adults and need to be taking responsibility for themselves. We need to ask them to do that. Please don’t sell them the idea that they need babysitting.

    If good character means anything important and profound, and is not in place in people 18-22 years, it’s not something to be fixed. Like these silly pledges that are popular at graduations (“I will be a responsible eco-citizen”) there is nothing but superficial gesture involved.

    Many “other” groups are convinced they are held down by simple intolerance, not by problems of their own making, and have thus become permanently oppressed. Please don’t do something similar to our young people.

    — T Paine · Jan 26, 12:21 AM · #

  3. Tommy, Tommy, on Friday nights you gotta remember: post first, go drinking second.

    — Mate · Jan 26, 11:14 AM · #

  4. Ethics? Courage is of prime importance, yet time and again professors prove their very lack of courage. Academic careerism demands lack of courage. So what can one expect from professors teaching ethics? Anything at all? I think not. A better caption would for the bully administrator and the child-like professor would have been “Fine then, can I have your tongue.” G. Tod Slone, Ed., The American Dissident, www.theamericandissident.org, todslone@yahoo.com

    — Tod Slone · Jan 26, 03:10 PM · #

  5. When, in life, do people become formally responsible for all that is inside them and all that protrudes from them to the rest of us? If they do not make this transition in undergraduate college they probably will never make it until immense tragedy and harm to lives of self and other transpire—a costly way to learn what one’s former tuition was supposed to be paying for. “Character disorder” is the standard technical term in psychiatry and psychologic social work for a set of disorders of the “character”—that is, habitual repeated ways of interacting with others that prevent others from being unharmed by the relationship’s continuation. There is nothing the least bit vague about it—immense piles of NIH statistics are developed in a diagnostic book discriminating, in painful detail, “disorder” from “order” in each possible human relationship type.

    I as a professor have to fix character disorders in my students in order not to hate them. I announce to students that, in principle, by entering college, in my opinion (and classes) they have become fully 100% responsible for every single thing inside them and protruding from them to others. No longer can they make excuses —because I am male, because I am American, because I am young, because my parents lacked this or that, because my background lacked this or that—instead, I hold them responsible for spotting all the junk they are presently constituted out of and its harms to themselves and others, and for instant installation of campaigns to change what is inside them. One of the PRIMARY functions of college is exposing such junk-filled student lives to the best in history and in the contemporary world, so they can freely cancel junk their parents, gender, nation, profession put inside them and replace it with better stuff consciously chosen. This is the beginning of the process of becoming an adult—which is achieved at around age 50 in most cultures—only dumb Westerners define adulthood as when you can smoke, while having intercourse in a car you drive on your way to voting. It is not my role to identify what is junk and what is not in students—that is their responsibility—but I give them unmistakable hints, largely by pointing out stuff protruding from them into my classes and asking them where that stuff came from in their lives—and why they are blindly using and repeating it now that they are in college. If you think about your own best professors in college, they used novels, sociology, physics, or whatever subject matter, to reveal to you and I our own flaws of origin. I remember a one armed professor of Russian literature in translation at Wellesley who started us with Lermontiev’s A Hero of Our Time—she laughed quietly while girl after girl, boy after boy, admired the hero for his banter, clothes, social climbing, none of us realizing that everyone he contacted in the novel died horribly. Only after we students had admitted our admiration for his style did she point out the little detail that that nice hansome manly style killed. We were suitably humiliated, one and all—we had all thought ourselves too wise for falling for a murderer because of the nice style of his conversation and clothes, but she and Lermontiev revealed we were stupid celebrity worshippers no matter what our “self images” and “self concepts” were. With shallow people like us in the world, no wonder it is in trouble, and we were supposed to be the world’s elites. Poor poor world, with elites like us—this is the modesty proper to humane-ity, instilled by “the college experience” not to mention decades old research showing that character development in undergrad years was a far better predictor of lifetime income and professional rank status than grades. I have already bored readers with my pretentious arrogant “research to define what educatedness is project” from long ago. However, that project defined 64 capabilities of highly educated people and after my students, in all my classes read it, they tend to have the humility suitable for a person every day expected to change fundamental parts of their own contents, because they now are fully responsible, held to be that by me, for all that they are and do—no more excuses, no more blaming mom and dad, no more blaming being born in some one nation—-time to start the 30 year long journey toward being “an adult”. Interestingly, an artificial intelligence models of social relations class I taught some years ago, was filled with this educative content as the nerdy machine-loving men who populated that class did not have character disorders so much as missing character—a desire to hide themselves away from social parts of life because machines were so much easier to love and care for.

    — Richard Tabor Greene · Jan 28, 05:09 AM · #

  6. I agree with Richard and Paine. I don’t think character development is entirely divorced from the classroom—holding students to standards like getting papers in on time, paying attention, working well with their discussion groups, etc all contribute to character development—but it should definitely not be a priority. An additional issue: as a woman and a professor, correcting students’ behavior will only put them in mommy-flashback mode, and of all my potential job titles—professor, researcher, advisor, theorist—‘mommy’ is definitely not one I want to put on my resume.

    — madame smartypants · Jan 28, 07:03 AM · #

  7. So either:

    1) Character can be taught- it is likely to be hard and unpleasant to have to do it. We have not been well trained within the academy to address this need. Reviewing research and best practice might help, but where to start? Humanities or Social Science? Philosophy or Psychology?
    2) Character cannot be taught- it is someway/how genetic and therefore is outside of education’s domain, we need to observe and remove from the credentialing ladder those deemed without;
    Or3) Character can be taught, but College is too late to help shape the individual student. Once they get to University the weak, deformed and neglected are to be abandoned as soon as possible for the good of the order.

    By example? By rubric? By cultural context? By coercion? Seems that neglect hasn’t worked yet. Good to identify the issue. Thanks!

    — painter who studied engineering · Jan 28, 08:33 AM · #

  8. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, ‘educate a boy who is stealing bolts from the train yard and he’ll steal the train’. There are certainly elements of truth in these posts, however, our society and culture are increasingly modeling ‘lack of character’. Much of this is perpetrated by ‘celebrities’ followed by a fawning media. I understand that Hitler held strong opinions about the ability of education to inculcate ‘character’. It seems to me that most people used to know what was right and wrong and were serious about doing right and ensuring that their children did as well. Maybe our best bet is to create character education programs in the day care centers that are raising our children.

    — Clive · Jan 28, 09:38 AM · #

  9. Character, service-orientation, empathy, and awareness of those who are different are qualities that are not as likely for the 74% of top 146 college students that come from the top 25% in income in the US (Carnevale in Kahlenburg, New Century). Those from lower and middle income origins that manage to overcome the obstacles to admission represent a different group.

    Measures such as first generation to college are important, which is why the UCLA admissions changes are most frightening. They were designed to broaden admissions despite the legal environment, but resulted in fewer first generation admissions (Schmidt, Chronicles, UCLA’s Holistic Admissions).

    Children of distribution are not diverse since they represent lower or middle income people, the typical population of the United States. The diverse types are the 65% of medical students from the top 20% income levels, they are truly different from the nation, and have the most challenges relating to most Americans, a challenge reinforced by their parents, their education, the schools, their colleagues, and their colleges.

    Children of concentration are those born and raised in the highest concentrations of income, people, professionals, education, physicians, etc. Children of professionals have constant shaping by their parents and by the environments shaped by their parents. This shaping also excludes them from adversity, lower and middle income children and people, and a relevant awareness of what most of America and most Americans are like.

    The are very accomplished, but are limited in what they can accomplish.

    Those who can accomplish have the combination of awareness, service orientation, diligence, relevance, empathy, the ability to balance people focus and academic focus, and other critical factors.

    The auto industry, the airline manufacturers (recovering now), health care, education, all are examples of areas in need of broadly skilled and aware mid-level leaders to connect top leaders to reality. In many cases the broadly skilled individuals who rose from the worker group to become management will be missed the most and many are being rehired out of retirement because of their skills. Broad skills, awareness, overcoming obstacles, self-learning, lifelong focus on learning in multiple dimensions, may have much to do with initial status – not too far out to prevent advancement, but not too high on the scale either.

    With the nation dividing into rich and poor, we have more at both ends and fewer in the middle. It is indeed the middle ground that is suffering and the service oriented pool with this situation.

    By marginalizing nurses, teachers, public servants, and primary care, the nation has lost touch with needs and with proper application of programs and funding in education, health, public security, and other areas.

    Children of status can be different, and even better. The prime examples of those with character who overcame the defects of professional upbringing are usually those that have family setbacks or personal health setbacks. Early in life situations brought a different America and different people to their awareness. The nation most commonly turns to these folks in desperation. think of desperate times and who led the nation. In wars, those who gained positions of influence are soon replaced by those who can influence others in the most necessary areas.

    The message for parents is to find ways to teach their children awareness, interations, immersion, and integration of people skills along with their academic skills, preferably in the impressionable early teen years.

    Colleges and medical schools must also learn to reject those with insufficient awareness as education without awareness, common sense, and a focus on developing wisdom is a powerful weapon in the wrong hands.

    Robert C. Bowman, M.D.
    rcbowman@atsu.edu

    — Robert Bowman · Jan 28, 03:15 PM · #

  10. At the risk of adding to the bromides and fuzzy academic language, I am reminded that President Clinton, called upon to comment on his own “character,” in light of the Lewinsky misagos, saw [characterized?] “character as a journey, not a destination.”

    — Tom Wilinsky · Jan 29, 02:02 PM · #

  11. Character enlightenment in college? I wonder how many departments out there affirm cheating? Some professors repeatedly take student exit exams, memorize the questions, and present them in their classes. “Anyone can take those tests and take them as often as they like. Funding depends on test scores,” I was told. ~~~ Of course, students know what’s going on. How about that for character development?

    — Barbara Wagamon, Ed.D. · Feb 3, 09:47 AM · #

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