Of the many ills that plague modern society, perhaps one of the most insidious is the wedge we have driven between character and excellence, or ethics and achievement. Contemporary examples abound of “successful” men and women who have earned impressive accolades despite deep recesses in character, and occasionally, because of those recesses.
As a result, for many young people today, it remains an open question whether character actually counts, and if so, to what degree. Today’s sports stars don’t exactly illustrate this truth during their excessive victory celebrations. Nor do the upper echelon of celebrities and business moguls as they seek to outdo each other in the clothes they wear and cars they drive.
In The Road to Character, New York Times columnist David Brooks observes that part of the problem is that our culture has come to value “resume virtues” over “eulogy virtues.” Resume virtues are the skills you list on your resume, the ones that contribute to external success, especially your career profile. Eulogy virtues, on the other hand, are the deeper qualities of character that are remembered at funerals–humility, kindness, faithfulness, and the like. We live in a culture, and by extension, within an educational system, that nurtures career-oriented, ambitious, self-promoters and all but ignores meek, others-oriented, self-sacrificing servants.
As I wrap up my blog series on “Teach Like a Champion for the Classical Classroom,” I want to suggest that character and achievement, or resume and eulogy virtues, needn’t be at odds. Character and excellence can actually go hand in hand. After exploring David Brooks’ ideas about character formation, then examining Paul’s discourse on love, I will look specifically at the fourth and final part of Teach Like a Champion 2.0, which deals with classroom culture. In these chapters, author Doug Lemov lays out several principles for cultivating a positive classroom culture that sustains and drives excellence. What I hope to show is that the sort of high-achieving classroom culture Lemov envisions is best realized when a heart for service and humility is the true driving force.
Of Mountains and Timber
First, back to Brooks. You may be familiar with the conservative writer and his spiritual journey over the years. In his own words, Brooks has gone through quite the personal transformation. Early on in his career, Brooks fit the prototype of the young and ambitious careerist, focused on making a name for himself. Although raised Jewish, he wasn’t particularly religious or interested in cultivating a strong “inner self,” either spiritually or morally.
But then something changed. The threads of his life began to unravel. The early success he encountered began to lose its shine. He went through a divorce. He experienced loneliness to a degree he had up to this point not encountered. He began to ask himself deeper questions…about faith, morality, and purpose. These reflections led him to reconsider the organizing principle of his life and what makes for real and lasting joy.
These experiences ultimately led to a paradigm shift for Brooks. In his most recent book, The Second Mountain, Brook casts a vision for life as the journey between two mountains. The first mountain is obsessed with personal accomplishments and tackling ambitious goals for self-promoting purposes. All activity on this peak is geared toward cultivating the resume virtues described above. The second mountain, in sharp contrast, focuses on relationships and service to others through the honing of deeper character qualities, that is, the eulogy virtues. His argument is that the good life–the life of joy and flourishing–is found in the journey from the first to the second mountain. The road of this journey takes a person through the valley of humility and brokenness before beginning the ascent.
A journey that calls pilgrims to descend before ascending may feel foreign to our culture today because the virtue of humility is part of a former moral ecology, what Brooks calls the “crooked timber” tradition. This tradition demands humility, not incredulity, in the face of our human limitations. It calls us to “…confront our own weaknesses, tackle our own sins” and confront ourselves to the core (xiv). The result, as men and women pass through this valley, is a life of character, which is well-integrated, and marked by contentment and joy.
A Cultural Shift
Brooks believes that today’s society has replaced the crooked timber tradition with the culture of the Big Me. Young people are raised to view themselves as the center of the universe and destined for fame (7). The self-esteem movement, embodied in the mantra “Be true to yourself,” has created a generation primed for self-centeredness, narcissism, and self-aggrandizement. This moral framework provides few tools for people when they experience rejection, brokenness, and pain. In the culture of the Big Me, the only response to suffering is disbelief, outrage, and eventual despair.
The culture of the Big Me leaves little room for growth in character because under this scheme, one’s “timber” is perfectly straight. The problem is not the individual, but the world around him. When circumstances take a turn for the worse, which they inevitably will at times, the boy blames the people and power structures that exist, not the human flaws that dwell within.
A More Excellent Way
Brook’s conclusion is that at the end of the day the good life is the one marked by humility, not pride, and self-effacement, not self-promotion. This is the way of the crooked timber tradition.
Assuming we generally agree with this idea, as educators, we must ask: How can we train students to view the world in this way, while also encouraging them to strive for excellence? Christ himself said it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye a needle than it is for a rich man to inherit the kingdom of heaven. Perhaps something similar can be said of the quest for achievement. Can one seek achievement along the road to character, especially humility?
In his first letter to the Corinthians, I believe the apostle Paul offers some key insights for our question. During his treatment of spiritual gifts, Paul underscores the fact that the gifts of the Spirit ought to unite believers, not divide them. Just as organs within the human body work together in unity for the good of the body, so Christians ought to use their gifts for the good of the church…no matter what the gift is.
And yet, Paul writes, “But earnestly desire the higher gifts…And I will show you a more excellent way” (1 Cor. 12:31 ESV, italics mine). This way, Paul will go on to explain, is love.
We see in this passage that in Paul’s mind, the pursuit of the higher gifts is not in conflict with love, but indeed, love is their ultimate fulfillment.. When building others up is the aim, spiritual gifts reach their highest end. Conversely, when love is absent from achievement, excellence is futile. Paul writes:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
1 Corinthians 13:1-7 ESV
While in this passage Paul is addressing spiritual gifts particularly, I propose we can expand this idea to gifts, accomplishments, and achievements, in general. Love, along with the other virtues, does not prohibit the quest for achievement, but instead, sanctifies it. Through the way of love, men and women can use their gifts in service to others. In a school that takes this vision seriously, students will be trained to give, not take, and serve, not receive.
Now that we have a broad vision for how character and achievement can work together, we need to think about how to apply these ideas in the classroom. We must acknowledge that teachers are on the front lines of character formation: each day they provide students opportunities for both personal accomplishment and humble service. In this way, schools can be the incubators for future culture makers of character if they support teachers to cultivate the right classroom culture. Let’s now turn to Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion 2.0 to consider the core ingredients of this goal. (Note: I won’t have space to make explicit connections between character development as we have been thinking of it and these principles, but I hope to provide some general categories for practitioners to consider on their own.)
Lemov’s Five Principles of Classroom Culture
In the fourth and final part of Teach Like a Champion 2.0, author Doug Lemov lays out five principles of classroom culture: discipline, management, control, influence, and engagement. Admittedly, I’m not the biggest fan of the terms themselves. Most of them contain the conceptual residue of modern education presuppositions. Nevertheless, I was overall impressed with Lemov’s treatment of the five principles and believe that they can serve as effective handholds, when properly defined, for creating a culture geared toward excellence with a foundation of character. Let me walk through them one at a time.
Principle 1: Discipline
The first principle is discipline. Lemov defines discipline as “teaching students the right and successful way to do things” (344). Too often teachers assume that their students understand the nuts and bolts of what it means to be a scholar and, as a result, give abstract commands: “Pay attention” “Give this assignment your full effort” “Read this next paragraph carefully.”
But as Lemov points out, what teachers need to do first is breakdown these commands into individual elements. Instead of “Pay Attention,” say “Sit up straight, eyes on me, and four feet on the floor.” When teachers give concrete instructions and then provide accountability for obedience, students are able to most effectively grow in the discipline of, in this case, attention.
Overtime, the disciplines the teacher focuses on will become habits. Patrick has written at length in his free eBook about the importance of habit training and how the human brain is wired to put certain tasks on auto-pilot. As teachers, we can leverage this useful function of the brain for the student’s benefit. We can teach students how to be students and watch them grow in the habits of a scholar, including exhibiting strong character, over time.
Principle 2: Management
Lemov’s second principle for classroom culture is management. In modern educational circles, classroom management systems are par for the course. Teachers are baptized in the behaviorist psychology of Skinner and Pavlov and expected to leverage these insights about human behavior to meet their management objectives. Lemov defines classroom management as “the process of reinforcing behavior through the use of consequences and rewards” (343).
Management systems are attractive, minimally, because they tend to yield visible short-term results. For example, if a student has trouble controlling his urge to run in the hallway and the teacher rolls out a consequence of five minutes off of recess for each illicit dash, this action will likely curb his behavior pretty quickly.
The problem, which Charlotte Mason practitioners, among others, are apt to point out, is that this approach fails to take seriously the heart and will of a child. It aims for behavioral conformity, not personal growth. Lemov himself admits that these sort of management systems work in the short-term, but pay decreasing benefits over time. The more you use a consequence or reward, the less effective it becomes. Management systems, without the other principles, devolve quickly. Students become desensitized to the rewards and consequences, and teachers are forced to dial up the dosages to get the desired effect.
As we think about cultivating classroom culture from a classical perspective, we would do well to leave these management systems out of our approach. A preferred course of action would be to focus our attention on training students in disciplines (principle 1) and habits that will serve them better for the long-term.
Principle 3: Control
Let’s move to the third principle: control. It’s not the most culturally palatable term today, but you’ll soon see what Lemov is getting at. He defines control as “The capacity to cause someone to choose to do what you ask, regardless of consequences” (344). Notice that control operates independently of applying consequences within a management system. The teacher instructs. The students obey. The matter is settled.
Notice also that control here doesn’t negate agency. According to Lemov’s definition, teachers preserve the student’s responsibility to choose to obey. This points to an undergirding truth about control and obedience: it leads to freedom. As students demonstrate over time their strength of will to obey when given instructions, teachers can grant more freedom. Rules move from external fiat to internal mastery.
How can teachers exercise control over their students in a way that moves them to self-mastery? The key is relationship. Lemov writes, “Teachers who have strong control succeed because they understand the power of language and relationships: they ask firmly and confidently, but also with civility, and often kindly” (345). In other words, teachers even as they exercise an appropriate form of control, do so while respecting the personhood of their students. Their students would never doubt that the teacher has their best interest in mind.
Principle 4: Influence
This leads to the fourth principle: influence. Influence is the linchpin for a strong classroom culture. A teacher can provide students with great support in discipline, implement an effective management system, and exhibit high control, and yet be failing in a key way: moving students from “behave” to believe.” A teacher cannot sustain the culture she wants for her classroom on her own. At some point, her students need to buy into the vision themselves. They must believe and trust that the classroom culture was designed for their own benefit and growth.
You are probably beginning to see how each of these principles, with the exception of the management system, work together. As the teacher demonstrates herself to be a person of character, illustrated by her love, care, and expectations for her students, students will voluntarily follow. In some ways, this is Leadership 101. People follow a leader who looks out for them. As teachers cultivate a culture of joy, belonging, and growth, students will believe in the vision the teacher has painted and respond accordingly. And as we think about developing students to be people of character, the vision we articulate is especially important.
Principle 5: Engagement
The final principle for cultivating a strong classroom culture is engagement, specifically intellectually engagement. As I have discussed in previous articles, our students are not mere clay to be formed or tablets to be written on. Students are persons, made in the image of God, created with capacities to engage dynamically with the world God created. Students are hard-wired to explore, grow, think, work, and create.
In the classroom, therefore, it is crucial for students to be engaged intellectually. They need to be exposed to rich content and then expected to chew on this content themselves, for example, through narration. As Lemov puts it, “Students minds are ready to be intellectually engaged. They need to be stimulated. Something to challenge and fascinate them. Great teachers get students busily engaged in important, interesting, and challenging work” (346).
Conclusion
Through creating the right classroom culture, teachers can lead their students to become the young men and women of character our society needs more than ever. Moreover, through implementing the right principles of classroom culture, teachers don’t have to choose between character and achievement, but instead can see first-hand how character is the driving force behind it all. When teacher and students form an alliance over the idea to strive for excellence in the way of love for the good of others, the result is a dynamic community of servant-learners.
David Brooks describes these people well:
“They radiate a sort of moral joy. They answer softly when challenged hardly. They are silent when unfairly abused. They are dignified when others try to humiliate them, restrained when others try to provoke the. But they get things done.They perform acts of sacrificial service with the same modest everyday spirit they would display if they were just getting the groceries. They are not thinking about what impressive work they are doing. They are not thinking about themselves at all. They just seem delighted by the flawed people around them. They just recognize what needs doing and they do it” (ivi).
Well said, Mr. Brooks. May this be spoken of both our students and ourselves.
Other articles in this series:
Building Ratio: Training Students to Think and Learn for Themselves
Work, Toil, and the Quest for Academic Rigor
“Teach Like a Champion” for the Classical Classroom, Part 3: Check for Understanding
“Teach Like a Champion” for the Classical Classroom, Part 2: Teacher-Driven Professional Development
“Teach Like a Champion” for the Classical Classroom, Part 1: An Introduction