The stories of Sarah and Oliver illustrate an important point: sometimes the character is there, but the vehicle for expressing it is missing. Sarah and Oliver had many of the qualities we want in successful people—responsibility, perseverance, and a willingness to do the right thing—but the traditional academic system did not always give him a fair opportunity to demonstrate them. It is a little like having a perfectly good engine in the garage but no car to put it in; impressive potential, but not much chance of getting anywhere.

That is why character report cards should be given equal importance with academic report cards.

Schools have never hesitated to tell parents whether a child is succeeding in Mathematics, English, Science, or History, so why should they be reluctant to report on responsibility, grit, collaboration, courage, or resilience? If these qualities genuinely matter—and we spend plenty of time telling children that they do—they deserve more than a passing compliment from a teacher at a parent conference. They deserve to be taught, discussed, practiced, assessed, and reported with the same seriousness we give to Algebra.

The Founders would probably have looked at our modern report cards and wondered how we managed to produce such wonderfully organized documents about things that are only part of an education. Samuel Adams and Thomas Jefferson understood that an educated citizen needed more than a well-stocked brain; he or she needed judgment, responsibility, courage, and the character to use knowledge wisely.

We welcome you to the conversation.  Please let us know that you care by liking comments, forwarding posts, or joining in our dialogue at johnzurn.com.  We would love to hear your own “Stories From the Classroom….”.

From our first posting:

“As parents and teachers, we need to reclaim our traditional role as influencers of our children – not by shouting louder than the influencers our children discover online, but by stressing ideas that are more important than fancy shoes and snappy TikTok tunes. We need to emphasize traits that everyone agrees children will honor.  We need to convince our children that the people who are most important to them have a better understanding of what it takes to be successful in life.”

#charactereducation #successtraits #parentingtips #homeschooling #teachertips