Character Development: Opportunity Costs and Roads Less Traveled

by Bruce Smith

category: Unschooling Alternatives

Published September 02, 2009 @ 03:00PM PT

One of the first things you learn studying economics is that you can't have it all. Opportunity costs, they call it: given finite amounts of time and other resources, pursuing any course of action means doing without certain things. English classes typically find this concept in Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken"..."And sorry I could not travel both/And be one traveler."

Having worked in both conventional and Sudbury schools, I've noted that a key difference between the two seems to be their choosing the roads of content and character, respectively. Not that these paths are mutually exclusive; but it's interesting to observe how prioritizing each affects learning and growth.

Conventional schools devote vast amounts of time to content, to academic knowledge and skills. Everywhere you look, people are declaring what every Nth grader should know. Endless hours are spent drilling the state capitals and causes of the Civil War; multiplication tables and the Pythagorean theorem; the scientific method and taxonomy; and the differences between Shakespearean and Italian sonnets.

Covering content requires so much time partially due to students' resistance, but also because the amount of information keeps increasing exponentially. Not to mention, what little time isn't spent on instruction is consumed with assessing how well students have ingested the material. In a manner reminiscent of weeds, homework and tests become so prevalent as to choke nearly all the life out of learning.

Perhaps the most unfortunate consequence is that this fixation on academics means discounting character development, a truly critical function of education. In most schools, things like integrity, initiative, persistence and responsibility are supposed to develop spontaneously, a happy side effect of regular academic instruction.

Yet character development takes at least as much time as academics, and is too important to simply squeeze in on the side. Acquiring decision-making, problem-solving and interpersonal skills takes practice. Self-discipline, goal-setting, flexibility and resourcefulness are hamstrung when students are busy assimilating knowledge others have deemed important.

To build character, students require countless interactions with people, information, and situations. They need room to learn and experiment, not in carefully structured lessons but as full-fledged members of communities. Self-awareness and social responsibility, strength and compassion—in a word, character—cannot be mastered in classroom exercises and assessed through pencil-and-paper tests. Learning to chart a course through life requires extensive immersion in life.

Throughout their schooling years, however, students' activities are regimented according to the instructions of authority figures. Indeed, the majority of students' decisions involve not what to do, but how (and whether) to give teachers what they want. When compliance, rebellion, and withdrawal are students' primary options, their schooling is not, I submit, preparing them to become responsible adults.

Why focus so narrowly on academic content? Indeed, what outrageous hubris it reveals to pretend we can know what each individual will need in a world changing so rapidly. More fundamentally, overemphasizing content betrays a distrust of young people. When you don't believe them capable of exploring the world and preparing for the future, it becomes relatively easy to justify forcing them to study certain things. When you consider the growing complexity and uncertainty of the world, the range of things you'll make them study grows—as does the impossibility of identifying critical content, and the need to develop their character for whatever emerges.

Overexposure to content means a relative neglect of character development—but does the opposite hold true? Does prioritizing character mean less content is covered? Perhaps. Yet less guided exposure doesn't necessarily mean less learning. Too many believe that if students are talked at and made to read, do exercises, etc., then learning automatically ensues. (The next time you want to equate instruction or classroom time with learning, ask yourself how much you remember from school, how much your schooling helps you today.)

We need, therefore, to stop taking what's useful or worth knowing and pretending that it's absolutely essential. Consider Shakespeare and algebra, for example. Now, I studied both subjects, and don't regret having done so. However, is someone incapable of leading a meaningful, fulfilling life if they haven't been exposed to these things? (That's independent of the negative effects of forced study. How many students develop a lasting hatred of Shakespeare, say, because of how they were exposed to him?) There will always be gaps in people's learning—always opportunity costs, always roads we cannot take.

The good news is, gaps in knowledge can be filled with relative ease by those of strong character. For over 40 years, the Sudbury experience has been that when students are learning something because they want to, because it's directly relevant to their lives, they learn much faster and retain much more. In this instance, though, the opposite is less likely: those whose character development has been slighted do not as easily fill gaps in their knowledge. They are not as accustomed to taking initiative, adapting to new situations, etc.

Simply put, the opportunity costs of overemphasizing academics are too high, and schools would do well to prioritize character development over content. Indeed, when character is made the top priority, students are better prepared for success. At Sudbury schools, for example, students are trusted and held to high standards of responsibility; they thus become mature, articulate and confident, able to relate to people and navigate situations with aplomb.

When children grow up with these qualities—as highly capable, resourceful, and moral people—does it really matter what subjects they studied and for how long, or what grades they got? We need to scale back our obsession with academic content, and allow young people ample opportunities to develop character. Let them take that road less traveled, and we will find that it does, in fact, make all the difference.

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