Heads Up Blog: Concepts of Character

This summer, the Cathedral School faculty read Paul Tough’s How Children Succeed. Tough offers new research that indicates that certain character traits, developed in childhood, correspond more with educational, personal, and professional success than traditionally recognized attributes, like intelligence and test scores. The article Tough wrote recently in The Atlantic titled “How Kids Learn Resilience” encapsulates much of the research and findings that he offers in his book. 

 

While the theme of character development is not a new one for us, we are spending more time studying how we develop character at Cathedral School. In fact, our Boys Study Committee has selected character as this year’s research topic. We have also applied to participate in a research project titled Character Education in Schools for Boys commissioned by the International Boys School Coalition. This two-year project will use boys’ schools from around the world to investigate and report on effective practices in boys’ character education.

 

Our library has copies of Tough’s book, How Children Succeed for parents to check out, and I encourage you to read the book if you haven’t already. We anticipate offering a number of conversations about the implications of Tough’s work later this spring. 

 

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas!

Best, 

Burns