strong and supple mind.
The overwhelming conclusion of all this research is that grades are not enough. Getting the grades opens doors and broadens choice, and that’s surely what any parent or teacher would want for their children. But, if they are to prosper once they have passed though those doors and made those choices, children also need these qualities and habits of mind. And it is open to any teacher to pay more attention to their cultivation. Bluntly, you can teach the Tudors in a way that develops the habits of independence, imagination, empathy and debate; or you can teach them in a way that develops passivity, compliance, credulity and memorisation. You can teach the water cycle in a way that stretches students’ ability to dig deep in their learning and ask good questions; or you can teach it in a way that makes them dependent on their teacher and frightened of making mistakes. Both can get good results. Only one reliably develops the habits of mind they are going to need; the other increases the risk of becoming a Nadezna or an Eric.
Cultivating character
There are broadly three clusters of these character strengths that are (a) predictive of success in life and (b) capable of being cultivated by schools. The first is called rather grandly ‘self-regulation’. It is the cluster of habits that enable you to concentrate despite distractions; to stay engaged despite being frustrated; to make short-term sacrifices in the interest of longer term gains; and to deal with frustration or disappointment. (‘Self-soothing’ is the fancy word for this last capacity.) These are the abilities that underpin self-control, self-discipline, emotional intelligence and will-power. Ruby called it ‘commitment’. A massive study in New Zealand showed, beyond doubt, that the lack of these damages your life chances very significantly – whatever your grades. 6
Self-discipline is very different from obedience. When children are disciplined they learn to do what others tell them – and not pursue goals and projects that they want to do. Obedient children learn to behave well to gain praise or rewards, and to avoid harsh words or punishment. Sometimes that may be necessary but it doesn’t, of itself, develop those self-regulatory abilities. With self-regulation, children discover how to make life go more smoothly and satisfyingly for themselves. And it turns out that social games – whether it be creating an imaginative fantasy world, where everyone has their own ‘character’, or playing football in the yard – are powerful incubators of self-regulation. Put simply, you find out that it just doesn’t work if you suddenly decide that you want to ‘be the doctor’ or to take your cricket bat homeif you are out for a duck. People get cross with you. You don’t get invited to play next time. A way of teaching pre-schoolers in the United States called Tools of the Mind structures this kind of play – and it has shown that children develop self-regulation faster, and also show better development of literacy and numeracy. Self-regulation lays the foundations of being a more effective learner: less prone to frustration or distraction. 7
The other two clusters are, if you like, the two main branches that grow out of this trunk of self-control. The first branch grows into the habits and attitudes of a ‘good person’: kind, friendly, generous, tolerant, empathic, forgiving, trustworthy, honest, having moral courage and integrity, and so on. Jihadist and racist groups would probably have a different list, but both humanism and the world’s major religions agree on something like this. Most schools have some kind of moral code of this kind, though it is sometimes honoured more in rhetoric than reality. Traditionally, the ‘learning methods’ for developing these attitudes tended to focus more on the punishment of breaches than on the cultivation of strengths which, for the reasons just cited, tends to be less
The overwhelming conclusion of all this research is that grades are not enough. Getting the grades opens doors and broadens choice, and that’s surely what any parent or teacher would want for their children. But, if they are to prosper once they have passed though those doors and made those choices, children also need these qualities and habits of mind. And it is open to any teacher to pay more attention to their cultivation. Bluntly, you can teach the Tudors in a way that develops the habits of independence, imagination, empathy and debate; or you can teach them in a way that develops passivity, compliance, credulity and memorisation. You can teach the water cycle in a way that stretches students’ ability to dig deep in their learning and ask good questions; or you can teach it in a way that makes them dependent on their teacher and frightened of making mistakes. Both can get good results. Only one reliably develops the habits of mind they are going to need; the other increases the risk of becoming a Nadezna or an Eric.
Cultivating character
There are broadly three clusters of these character strengths that are (a) predictive of success in life and (b) capable of being cultivated by schools. The first is called rather grandly ‘self-regulation’. It is the cluster of habits that enable you to concentrate despite distractions; to stay engaged despite being frustrated; to make short-term sacrifices in the interest of longer term gains; and to deal with frustration or disappointment. (‘Self-soothing’ is the fancy word for this last capacity.) These are the abilities that underpin self-control, self-discipline, emotional intelligence and will-power. Ruby called it ‘commitment’. A massive study in New Zealand showed, beyond doubt, that the lack of these damages your life chances very significantly – whatever your grades. 6
Self-discipline is very different from obedience. When children are disciplined they learn to do what others tell them – and not pursue goals and projects that they want to do. Obedient children learn to behave well to gain praise or rewards, and to avoid harsh words or punishment. Sometimes that may be necessary but it doesn’t, of itself, develop those self-regulatory abilities. With self-regulation, children discover how to make life go more smoothly and satisfyingly for themselves. And it turns out that social games – whether it be creating an imaginative fantasy world, where everyone has their own ‘character’, or playing football in the yard – are powerful incubators of self-regulation. Put simply, you find out that it just doesn’t work if you suddenly decide that you want to ‘be the doctor’ or to take your cricket bat homeif you are out for a duck. People get cross with you. You don’t get invited to play next time. A way of teaching pre-schoolers in the United States called Tools of the Mind structures this kind of play – and it has shown that children develop self-regulation faster, and also show better development of literacy and numeracy. Self-regulation lays the foundations of being a more effective learner: less prone to frustration or distraction. 7
The other two clusters are, if you like, the two main branches that grow out of this trunk of self-control. The first branch grows into the habits and attitudes of a ‘good person’: kind, friendly, generous, tolerant, empathic, forgiving, trustworthy, honest, having moral courage and integrity, and so on. Jihadist and racist groups would probably have a different list, but both humanism and the world’s major religions agree on something like this. Most schools have some kind of moral code of this kind, though it is sometimes honoured more in rhetoric than reality. Traditionally, the ‘learning methods’ for developing these attitudes tended to focus more on the punishment of breaches than on the cultivation of strengths which, for the reasons just cited, tends to be less
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