Developing good character matters more than passing exams
04 Feb 2013 | Anthony Seldon
Anthony Seldon, Master of Wellington College and
co-founder of Action for Happiness, believes schools should
prioritise character above exam results
The current focus in our school system is a single-minded drive
to improve educational attainment. Yet education is much more than
a mechanistic process which achieves its highest state with the
maximisation of academic performance. Exam success is a necessary
but not a sufficient condition for being an educated human being.
As human beings, we are not machines but flesh and blood, with
capacious minds, with bodies, with emotions, and with a soul. We
are organisms and our current mechanistic model of the purpose of
education fails to rise to the heights and wonders of the organic
model that young people across the land cry out for, as do their
parents.
It is not enough for young people to emerge from school with a
string of exam passes and for schools to pat themselves on the
back, thinking that the box has been ticked and the 'job done'.
This is only a part of the whole education journey. Families have a
key role in the development of the finished product. So too do
schools. Academic attainment and exam success can never be more
than part of the story of the profound moral responsibility of
schools to children, parents, society and the nation.
I would argue that schools that make children and their parents
believe that exams are all-important are cynical and negligent.
Worse, they are ignorant. Because school provides a once in a
lifetime opportunity. That opportunity is all the more
precious when young people come from disadvantaged home
backgrounds, which do not provide the same chances for enrichment
as those from more affluent backgrounds.
The work of education, as the linguistic root suggests, is to
'lead out'. Schools need to lead or draw out of young people all
their talents and aptitudes. We cannot and must not define this
task purely in terms of academic success. Not the least because a
focus on mere academic success often drains the lifeblood out of
academic subjects, creating heavy and dull minds. As a
headmaster, I know that what is not 'led out' of young people, what
is not nurtured, by the age of 16 or 18 may remain dormant in that
person for the rest of their lives.
At Wellington College, the fee paying school in
Berkshire which I head, and at Wellington Academy in Wiltshire, the state
school we run in a relatively deprived rural area, we aim to 'draw
out' a wealth of different qualities or intelligences from our
young people. The development of good character lies at the
heart of all that we do. We are not just trying to maximise the
exam performance of our students, good though we are at that: we
are seeking to maximise the chances of our young leading happy,
successful and healthy lives. We are preparing them for
university, with curious, disciplined and appreciative minds. We
are preparing them for work, for family life and for society.
A focus merely on exams can all too easily lead to closed minds
and leave the heart cold. A focus on character seeks to open
their hearts and open their minds. The development of good
character is more important than exam success because good
character strengths are a greater predictor of success in
university and in life than mere exam passes. But it is not at
the expense of academic work. An emphasis on character will
make academic learning more profound and also boost exam
success.
At Wellington, our new character approach has five strands. In
2006, we began to teach wellbeing (popularly called "happiness"),
based on the University of Pennsylvania's resilience programme, founded by the 'father'
of positive psychology, Professor Martin Seligman. The programme
consists of five one hour tutorial classes taken in years 10 and 11
which deploy typical dilemmas to develop character strength.
Students explore what strengths they can draw on when making
difficult but prudent decisions, for example on being offered
drugs. The process can be said to be Aristotelian in that it sees
character and virtue as ends to be learned, developed and practised
with mistakes not being deemed catastrophes, but rather being seen
as positive options of learning.
Teaching of resilience is based on the stoic idea that 'man is
troubled not by things, but by his opinion of them' (following
Epictetus). Students begin to understand that their thinking
patterns have a profound (though not total) impact upon their
feelings and their behaviour. Resilience training helps people to
tune in to their perception of situations and to learn to
distinguish perception from fact. Over time, students become more
aware of thinking patterns that are not helpful, which causes them
excessive anxiety and procrastination, or animosity with others,
and they learn to challenge those patterns of thought with evidence
so that they can gain a more accurate and flexible perspective. In
short, resilience training is about developing habits of mind that
can help to avoid an unnecessary or unpleasant burden from emotion,
and can help avoid thoughts and actions that, upon reflection, we
might regret.
The school is grounded on five core values, selected by the
students and the whole community: courage, integrity, kindness,
respect and responsibility. The five values are regularly aired
with students and adults to ensure that they become living
signposts. We take role modelling immensely seriously. Teachers
must not shout, must display real integrity, and show genuine
respect for students, as must the students themselves for others
across the community. All students learn how to be leaders,
beginning with learning how to lead themselves, acquiring skills of
organisation, self control and communication. Older pupils are
given considerable responsibility for younger, but they must
exercise their power with kindness, not force. 'Kindness' awards
for service to others, are regularly made, nominated by the
community. We also have an extensive volunteering programme.
Service, we remind ourselves, is not a week's trip abroad to help
in a village school, but is a constant attitude of mind.
We try to follow the model of 'undefended leadership', as
advocated by Simon P Walker, where we all open ourselves to
constructive criticism, embrace it, and try to learn from it. Staff
and students are taught coaching skills. Quiet listening is
fundamental and periods of 'stillness' increasingly punctuate the
school day. I regularly ask all 1200 in school assembly to close
their eyes and be totally still. I begin each weekly staff meeting
on Monday break with a period of silence which allows everyone to
collect themselves and let go of the baggage. Mindfulness is key to
all we do.
How effective is all this character work? Wellington has seen
its academic results soar in the five years after 2006, from 65%
achieving As and Bs at A-level to 93%, with students of the same
academic quality. Even if the emphasis on character resulted
in only some of the improvement in results, one can certainly say
that adopting a character and wellbeing focus has not been at the
expense of academic results. The school has also become much
calmer, kinder and more purposeful since this new approach has been
adopted.
Why then do I say that schools should prioritise
character-building above exams? Because when we prioritise exams in
the way that we have been doing, little or nothing will happen with
character. But if we prioritise character, exam success will
follow, and for the right reasons. The students will behave
well in class. They will respect their teacher and each other. They
will want to learn, rather than being made to learn. They will want
to behave rather than being made to behave. They will probe beneath
surface learning to the depths of subjects because they will be
more reflective people.
Dr Anthony Seldon is Master of Wellington College and co-founder
of Action for Happiness. This article is adapted from the Priestly Lecture, given at the University of
Birmingham in January 2013.
Tags:
Education