I have been blessed and cursed with having two beautiful daughters. Blessed because they are wonderful young women. Cursed because they are beautiful young women, taking after their mother, thank the Lord! I am not talking just about physical beauty that attracts all those pesky boys, but also about the internal beauty that we frequently call character.
I am the father of two girls. I worry. It’s in my job description. I worry about the boys they go out with. I want them (the boys) to fear me. But in truth, I know that no amount of fear on the part of any boy will ever replace the character of my daughters. When either of them heads out the door on a date, or to a football game, or to a dance or anywhere that young people gather today, I send them off with the same words: “Remember who you are.”
That one short sentence represents almost twenty years of teaching and modeling that they have received in our family. “Remember who you are,” tells them that they have what they need from which to draw to make good decisions. “Remember who you are” is the shortcut on their desktops that leads them to the storehouse of love-based teaching they have received over the years. It is the phrase that leads them to their character education.
Character education is not primarily the role of school teachers or Sunday School teachers or preachers, pastors or prophets, even though each of them has a role. One of the reasons that it hits so hard when a pastor or school teacher goes wrong is that we have high expectations of those people, that they represent good character. They are supposed to be examples for our children as well as for us adults.
Character education is primarily the role of the family. We, as parents, are the bearers of our family stories. In our faith tradition, we are also called to be the bearers of The Story. The Story is to be taught to our children in such a way that they learn the lessons that are important.
When Joshua was finally allowed to lead the children of Israel across the Jordan River into the Promised Land, he instructed the leaders of the twelve tribes to gather a stone from the waters of the river and carry it to the other side where they were to build an altar to God. He instructed them, “When your children and your children’s children ask, “What is this?” you will answer, “Israel crossed over the Jordan here on dry ground.” What Joshua was telling them to do was to build an altar of memories that told the story of the history of God’s people.
Each of us builds an altar from our own stones of remembrance, from those events and teachings and relationships that have made us who we are. We choose our own stones of remembrance that we believe shaped us. Some are sharp and cut deeply, while others are smooth and feel good to handle. Some we choose and some choose us. As we build our own life altars from these stones of remembrance, these altars represent character education.
Some people seem to have the graceful ability to overcome the sharp stones and smooth them out as they grow and have their own children. Others, for a multitude of reasons, seem to choose to hold to the sharp stones and use them to continue the pain that was caused them. Those who were abused as children often carry that sharp stone around with them and abuse others. Part of character education that continues through until our dying breaths is the ability to make those sharp stones smooth so that we do not cause the same hurt that was caused us.
Our first and foremost role as parents, second only to loving our children, is to teach our children, but it is not enough to teach with words. We are required to teach by our actions as well. We use our altars which are built from our own stories to teach our children.
When I say to our daughters, “Remember who you are,” I am reminding them to be who they already are, to live the values they already have, to stand steadfast in the faith that has been given them, to resist temptations that will inevitably come their way and to walk and stand proudly, knowing that they are doing the right thing. I remind them that their character and integrity are the formative elements of their reputations, and that they represent themselves in every action, every choice.
Most of us have heard our parents’ voices coming through our own mouths as we have matured. Most of us thought, as children, “When I grow up I’m never going to be like that,” and then we are. I remember one of those stories that became a reference point for me. When I was 12 years old, I heard that the Freedom Riders were coming to my hometown, a small Georgia town of about 35,000 souls. They were planning a sit-in at a drugstore lunch counter a block from my father’s law offices. At that time of his career, he was a judge. I told him that I wanted to go to the drugstore, which was owned by a friend of his and with whom we conducted all of our family pharmaceutical business, and participate in the sit-in. He looked at me and asked, “Do you know what you’re doing?” I answered, ‘Yes sir, I believe I do.” “Then do what you have to do,” he told me. Within an hour, I was being lifted off a stool at the counter by two policemen who carried me outside and sat me on the curb – the only white face in the crowd. The next day, the drug store opened, and there was a sign in the window “Everyone welcome.” That easily, the drug store was integrated.
“Do what you have to do” was my father’s way of teaching me character. It was his way of reinforcing values that he and my mother had modeled through the years. Somewhere along the way, one of his stones of remembrance had to do with justice and integrity. That was a smooth stone he used to teach me.
Character education in that moment for me was about taking all of the lessons I had learned from their words and actions, mixing in a good dose of Christian church upbringing, and focusing all of it on that moment wherein I believed I could make a difference. It was about taking that stone and making it a part of my own altar.
Someone once said that character is what you do when no one’s watching. I like that definition, because it speaks to me on a spiritual level as well as on a behavioral level. We can all remember being children and doing something that we knew was wrong just because we thought we could get away with it because no one was watching. So at the root of character education is the notion that some things are bad, and some things are good.
At some level we know there is a difference between good and bad. I am intentionally avoiding the word “evil,” because not all bad is evil, and the point I want to make is not about evil, but about bad choices. Just knowing the difference does not make us live the difference. The inner strength to do the right thing no matter what, is an important element of what we call character.
Another important element of character is respect. Respect starts with oneself. The Scriptures tell us to “do unto others as we would have them do unto us.” We want to be respected, but until we respect ourselves, we will neither receive respect from others nor be able to respect them.
Another story from my Dad will illustrate this point. In his early twenties, he worked as a Special Agent for the railroad. His job was to investigate any crimes that occurred on board a train or in the train yard. One day he caught a young boy of about six stealing from a boxcar. Instead of taking him to the police, he decided to let the family handle it. He took the boy home and told his mother what he had done. He said, “If you will take care of the problem, I’ll let him go.” The mother immediately snatched the little boy up by one arm and started beating him while screaming at him “What did you let him catch you for?”
So if two elements of character education are knowledge of good and bad and respect, then the third is responsibility. The mother in the story neither took responsibility for what her child had done, nor taught him character. She wanted him to learn not to get caught rather than learn to make the choice for good.
As we teach our children, we shape their futures. If we acknowledge and change our negative behaviors, we shape our children. Our values frequently become theirs. Our actions are mimicked and their lives are shaped largely through habit and repetition. Character education is about shaping lives and building altars. It is about remembering who we are.
