For more than forty years, I had the privilege of working with students who occupied every square inch of the educational spectrum. Some could solve algebra problems before breakfast. Others considered finding the right classroom a major academic achievement. I taught children who were gifted, children with learning differences, children who could charm the socks off anyone, and children who would rather argue with a parking meter than admit they were wrong. Through all those years, I came to one conclusion that never changed: every child had gifts worth developing. The problem was that schools became remarkably good at measuring test scores while overlooking many of the qualities that actually determine success in adult life.
Those years also convinced me that the most important subject in school isn’t algebra, chemistry, or even the proper use of semicolons—although I remain passionately pro-semicolon. The subject we’ve quietly pushed into the background is character. Responsibility, grit, courage, generosity, focus, resilience, collaboration, independence, and a positive mindset are not “soft skills.” They’re life skills. We spend years teaching children how to calculate the area of a trapezoid, then seem surprised when they struggle to manage a calendar, resolve a disagreement, or keep going after failing. Somewhere along the way, we started treating character as the side dish instead of the main course.
That might have worked in a simpler era, but today’s world has changed the rules. Children now grow up surrounded by social media, endless distractions, influencers selling overnight success, artificial intelligence doing much of the thinking for us, and enough political shouting to make family dinners feel like cable news. Parents are doing their best, but they’re competing with devices that rarely run out of battery and algorithms that never sleep. No other institution has the daily access, public trust, and opportunity to help children build strong character the way schools do. If schools don’t take the lead, it’s difficult to imagine who will.
The student who finally convinced me we can no longer ignore this responsibility was Rodrigo. School judged him almost entirely by what appeared on a report card, and by that standard he never looked especially successful. Yet the Rodrigo I came to know possessed qualities that no standardized test could measure. He was resilient enough to keep trying, courageous enough to face failure, generous enough to help others, and determined enough to build a successful life after leaving school. His story struck me because it forced me to confront an uncomfortable truth: school hadn’t failed to recognize Rodrigo’s intelligence—it had failed to recognize his character. And if someone with his potential could leave believing he wasn’t successful, how many other Rodrigos have quietly walked out our school doors believing exactly the same thing?
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