Character Education: Forging Habits through a Soft-Skills Revolution

‘Good habits formed at youth make all the difference’ – Aristotle

Dennis Silk, celebrated former Warden of Radley College and sometime President of the MCC, says in the BBC documentary ‘Public School’ that a school’s main purpose is to help its pupils acquire ‘the right habits for life’. That was in 1979. The best part of 40 years later, most of modern educational thinking seems to be agreeing with him. 

We are reminded frequently by political and social commentators of the increased importance that employers are placing on ‘soft skills’ (terminology which, with one bullishly ill-advised adjective, undermines and undervalues the very point these commentators – and employers – are making). Dr Anthony Seldon, the iconic former Headmaster of Wellington College, made the headlines – and arguably the first waves – with the rolling-out of his Wellbeing Lessons, his insistence on ‘service’, and his school’s sector-leading focus on Character, Grit, and Resilience. The founding of the UK-wide Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues (2012) and the rapid rise in in-house initiatives such as Failure Week (Wimbledon High School), Silent Retreat (Blundell’s), Bounce Week (Latymer Upper), RAK (Random Acts of Kindness) Week (The Perse), and the daily periods of collective stillness in the Cathedral Quire and Chapter House that we have introduced at Exeter Cathedral School, all suggest pretty strongly that we are, as a sector and as a nation, becoming slightly less hesitant to agree with Professor James Arthur’s assertion (2013) that ‘character matters more than attainment’.

Heads are afforded various soap-box moments during term time, and one of the consistent messages that I try to give during mine is that it matters very much to me that children be recognized and rewarded not just for what they achieve, but for the way in which they go about trying to achieve it. In other words: attainment matters, but character matters more. In other words: those ‘soft’ skills are the ones that count the most. In other words: those ‘habits for life’ are what we really prize. The development and promotion of character, the up-holding and embedding of core values, the modelling and nurturing of the right habits, and the acquiring and practising of key skills ought to be at the very heart of what really good schools try to do, both explicitly and implicitly.

There is a great deal of talk across the educational sectors about the quasi-impossible task facing schools today: as Richard Riley (US Secretary of Education under Bill Clinton) once put it, ‘We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist…using technologies that haven’t yet been invented…in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet’. Terrific emphasis continues to be placed on the importance of STEM (Sciences, Technology, Engineering, Maths): the future is computer-based; educate children for that future.

And yet Andrew Pinsent, Research Director at the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, University of Oxford, makes the point that from here-on-in anything that can be automated will be; anything that can be run by/done by computers will be; and so what’s left for people at that point? His answer: all of the important stuff. To think on that a little longer: in a world increasingly governed by and served by machines, the ‘soft skills’ (empathy, gentleness, emotional intelligence, manners, nuance, persuasion, social intelligence, kindness, subtlety of expression, interpretation of information, team work, leadership, self-reflection, self-awareness, resilience, perspective: in short, insight) are going to be more important than ever as today’s young adults head out into the world seeking employment and meaningful relationships. Will Gompertz, the BBC’s Arts Editor, takes this line of thinking to its logical conclusion and makes the case for every school being an Arts School; because, he points out, everything else will end up being done by computers.

There is, as is usually the case with these things, a balance to be struck. Schools must embrace the use of technology as a learning and communication tool, and must recognise the importance of digital literacy in the lives and futures of their pupils (at Exeter Cathedral School we are pleased to have introduced Digital Wellbeing for our ten-to-thirteen-year-olds). But they must also be environments where ‘soft skills’ are highly-valued, modelled, promoted and prized. As I have said before during my soap-box moments, the job of a really good School is to work with families to help pupils acquire the right values, habits, and skills for life.

Silk, Seldon, Pinsent, Gompertz and Featherstone (audacity fully acknowledged) may all agree on what matters most, but I suspect that none of these can claim to be the first to have thought of it. For that, we ought to hand back to Aristotle: ‘It is not unimportant, then, to acquire one sort of habit or another right from our youth; rather it is very important, indeed all important’.