Translator: Tanya Cushman Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
[Character, not circumstances, makes the man - Booker T. Washington]
I love this quote by Booker T. Washington.
While born into slavery, never knowing his father,
Booker T. Washington
overcame many dire circumstances
on his way to being the most prominent and dominant leader
in the African American community, during his lifetime.
Recognizing that character is not only important
but it can be developed,
as a university president,
every week on Sunday,
he spent time with his students at Tuskegee Institute
talking about the benefits of character.
I also am very interested in character
and have been researching it for a number of years,
trying to get exactly what character is.
We won't have that definitive solution today,
but what we can talk about is what I've done with the US Army,
[which is that I] looked at the role of certain character strengths,
such as honesty and self-regulation,
and how they compare and contrast with personality traits and values.
The short story is,
character is not personality and it's not values;
it's something different.
No matter how we slice it and define it,
we have a crisis in character today.
I'm a long-standing academic of roughly 30 years tenure,
and I've noticed, very sadly, the increase in student cheating over the years.
In fact, in one study, 88% of students self-reported that they cheat.
More troubling, when asked how often do they cheat,
the modal response was 100 times -
or more.
We have an epidemic
that many pious people don't talk about.
But there's many implications, as we all know.
But this is not about negativity; it's about redemption.
And there is hope, much hope,
and so today, my talk will involve an aspect of this hope
in using what I call, and others, the "3H approach" -
the head, heart and hands - to character development.
I have a real example of one of my students
who practiced what I call "delayed integrity"
and actually turned himself in to me after he had successfully "cheated."
By that, I mean he had not gotten caught.
All right. So why is this important?
Let me tell you a little bit about the scenario of delayed integrity.
One spring semester,
I got an urgent email from a student, said he had to talk to me;
it was very important.
When I prodded him about what he needed to talk to me about,
he said, "There was a problem"
with the final exam that he had just taken.
He came in the next day, sat down.
I could tell he was very nervous, a lot of anxiety.
And then he blurted out, "I cheated on your final exam."
Sat back.
He proceeded to tell me how he cheated,
and he said, "I'll take any punishment that you want to give me."
Now I'm standing back.
You know, I'm a gray-haired professor,
so I've taught thousands of students over the years.
I can tell you that I've never had this situation, so it got my attention.
Let me give you a little backdrop about the student.
Like most, he had started college immediately after high school
but soon dropped out, got a job, got married.
Well, his marriage didn't work,
but he had a beautiful daughter and he was most proud of her.
So he realized now, with his growing family,
that he needed to go back to school
so that he could get his degree and progress in his career.
"But why did he do this?" is the 65-, 64- even, thousand-dollar question.
Again, this has never happened to me before.
Well, it wasn't my dry lectures and the assigned readings that got him.
One of the tenets of this class
involved having students consider and reflect upon
what their meaning and purpose of life is
and then to write an action plan of how they're going to address it.
Well, he considered me a positive role model,
but much more importantly,
he wanted to be a positive role model for his daughter.
In fact, he broke down into tears
when he said something that almost got me crying:
"You know, Professor,
I don't want my daughter to think her dad is a cheat."
Well, that was pretty heavy.
So, how did this situation resolve itself?
Well, he had a C going into the final exam.
Now, by rights and university statutes, I could have flunked him.
But that might not have reflected
someone who's a wanna-be man of character, me.
He had already suffered enough;
he was crying in my office, etc.
So I said, "Let's figure out another alternative."
So, we decided that he would retake the final exam
and whatever he got, that would be his final grade.
However, still a little suspicious, I said,
"Well, maybe it won't be a written exam since we had problems with that.
It will be an oral."
So he spent his time, came back in,
and I could tell, a little ways into the questioning,
that he was very nervous,
and that's understandable given the trauma this had transpired.
After all, he was a nontraditional student and he was crying in my office.
But he eventually did well enough to get a C,
and we both agreed that a C was an appropriate grade.
But there was more to this.
More in the sense
that it's been deemed worthy enough to talk to TED talk,
which I'm very happy about.
So we undertook an independent study,
and I generated a number of questions,
and the student went and researched them,
did such a fine job
that our results were published in a journal of management inquiry
and offered us several insights.
One insight, that I just want to mention in passing, is very important.
Remember I said up to 88% of students cheat?
That only leaves 12% that don't.
Out of that 12%, we interviewed some of the people,
and they felt stigmatized.
Some of their fellow students would make fun of them,
call them "Goody Two-Shoes," and this, that and the other thing.
The simple scenario is - and I hope all would agree -
that as a society,
we can't have people being stigmatized for doing the right thing.
That's not where we want to be.
The other one, insight, that I received,
was giving me more insight into the 3H that I mentioned:
the head, heart and hands.
Let me spend just a minute or so talking about that.
The head approach is the typical approach
that someone like myself grew up on as an academic:
lecture format, one-way communication.
In this particular scenario,
we talk about why it's inappropriate to cheat or wrong to cheat,
and then we quote Plato or Aristotle or Immanuel Kant.
Well, the rubric that we can use is "you think as I say."
The student is outside the box, so to speak, right?
This student told me
this had no effect at all on his decision to turn himself in.
The heart approach,
which can be looked at with the saying "you feel as you think,"
gets emotion and feelings involved.
This was a little better, the student thought,
and it mirrors some of the technology that is coming out of the social sciences,
but still wasn't enough.
What was most important was the third, or hand, approach:
"You do as you feel."
This student said this really got to him,
coming up with his purpose and meaning in life.
For instance, he said, "Hey,
my purpose is not to be considered by my daughter a cheat."
Well, he almost had me crying on that.
This is an approach considered in tandem that gets at the whole person,
so we're not just talking about the intellect,
we're not just talking about the psychology or the emotions,
we're not just talking about morals,
but we're talking about behaviors.
And he had a behavioral plan that was very important for him.
He considered me a role model, as I said.
Also, more importantly,
he wanted to be to his daughter a role model.
So, what can we learn about this today?
I want to give you a take away.
Well, there's lots of different role plays that I use in my classes and elsewhere.
One of them
is called the three positive things, good things, in the morning approach.
Simply stated, every morning,
What are three things that you have to be grateful for?
Well, this morning, for me,
I have good health,
I have a loving wife, who's in the audience, and family,
and I'm here at TED Talk.
It's a good day, right?
(Applause)
I present to you that others, all of you, can incorporate the same approach,
can do it - it's easy.
But it's not that easy.
Let me use myself as an example.
While I was preaching this to my students -
the 3H approach, the gratitude, three good things -
I wasn't practicing it for a period of time.
So, I'm a person who's been physically active his whole life,
but with that physical activity,
I have a number of sports injuries and surgeries.
So instead of practicing what I preach,
I would wake up, and I'd turn to my wife and say,
"Oh my back hurts,"
"Oh, my foot hurts,"
"Oh, my knee hurts,"
until finally, gracious woman that she is, she turned to me and says,
"Why don't you practice what you preach to your students?
What's wrong with you?"
I says - I acted very innocently -
I said, "Well, what do you mean?"
She said, "Say something positive when you see me in the morning."
Good advice.
(Applause)
So to my credit, after that little blip,
I have been positive as I go forward.
All right, to wrap it up with Booker T. Washington
and the quote,
and pardon me, I didn't show you the head, heart and hands approach.
Booker T. Washington was correct.
He's left a legacy.
So the students that went to his Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon
character-themed discussions
had children of their own,
and his legacy has remained for over 100 years.
He has an excellent book on character;
I would suggest that if you have a mind to it,
that you look into it.
And I would offer as my fourth thing I am happy, too.
I am glad and I appreciate very much
and I am thankful for your attention today.
Thanks.
(Applause)