Character Lab
“Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education." (Martin Luther King Jr.)
What makes an education worthwhile? This question goes to the heart of our purpose as educators. It is a question I return to often in workshops with school leaders and teachers, since it is easy to get side-tracked into slavish adherence to a high stakes assessment culture and forget that at the heart of education is, as Martin Luther King Jr. aptly said, a marriage of intelligence plus character formation. A more detailed exploration of the purpose of schooling can be found at What is the purpose of schools? where we look at three case studies.
It is commonly recognised that the skills students need in their present and futures are not limited to academic ones. 21st Century Skills looks at different taxonomies of skillsets (e.g. Tony Wagner's 7 Survival Skills | Ken Robinson's 8 Competencies | OECD's Future of Skills in 2030). On that page we also looked at some of the key character trails | skills: resilience, perseverance, hope and optimism, self-regulation, stewardship).