Rewarding Character

Connections: Commencement 2009  -- I was talking recently with a parent whose two children will be entering Hackley in the fall. I asked him why he had chosen Hackley, especially since there were other independent schools much closer to his home. He told me that the Admissions Director at one of those schools had told him that at her school, they don’t believe in individual achievement. He was very surprised to hear that, and asked, “Then how do you teach personal responsibility?” Hearing that story, I knew that he was a true Hackley parent!

Hackley does believe in the importance of individual achievement and personal responsibility, and we honor those values annually in our Class Day and Commencement ceremonies, where prizes are given not only for academic, artistic, and athletic accomplishment, but also for character. At Class Day this year, after announcing that the President of the Class of 2009, Andre Mauri, had presented the Anton and Lydia Rice Inspirational Teaching Award to Upper School English teacher Dr. Scott Boehnen, I described Dr. Boehnen’s speech to the class at the Senior Dinner:

He explicated Hackley’s much-considered saying, Enter Here To Be and Find a Friend, and gave our thoughts on friendship new insight. A point he made then is very relevant for us here today, as we assemble to honor teachers and students, our friends. He said that friendship is an activity, not simply an emotion. When we think of friends, we think of the feelings we have for them, and that is natural. But friendship is something that we do. Only by acting as a friend can we be a friend. Dr. Boehnen pointed out that our actions as friends change us, and change our friends, and so our friendships are and should be constantly changing. That is in fact one purpose of friendship, to change us, to make us better, and to help us make our friends better. When we gather here to honor teachers and students, we gather as friends. Our honoring them is an act of friendship, which will change them by reinforcing those good qualities that have earned them distinction. Our honoring them changes us, too, by reinforcing in us respect for those qualities, and directing our aspirations. There is no higher act of friendship that to give honor where honor is due.

I told the parent who asked the question about personal responsibility an anecdote I wrote about in Connections in 2002:

When I was living in London, I remember a conversation with English educators who were decrying competition as inevitably having corrosive effects. I disagreed. I said I thought competition was a tool, and, like any tool, could be misused. Used properly, though, competition could help students discover potential in themselves they would never have guessed or believed.

Like competition, honoring individual achievement can be misused. At Class Day and Commencement, the pleasure I feel in honoring the exceptional achievements and character of our students is shadowed by my concern that these honors will be misunderstood. I worry that some may feel that they have been overlooked or treated unfairly in not receiving an honor.

If honor is a social action, an action of friendship, the idea of “winning” a prize seems counter to the spirit of the day, because “winning” implies “losing,” and those of us honoring our friends should not be understood as having “lost.” There is a right and a wrong way to receive honor, and there is a right and a wrong way to participate in honoring others.

On Class Day and at Commencement, we create our heroes for the day. Heroes are those who serve to embody the ideals and aspirations of a community. I say “serve to embody,” because no one can truly embody an ideal. We choose people to honor because we can see the quality we value in them, we believe they too value that ideal and strive for it. The truth is, we are honoring the ideal through them -- they are serving as our heroes to allow us to affirm the possibility of guiding one’s life by that ideal.

Those who receive honor should do so humbly, recognizing that it is the quality they have demonstrated that we honor. The true value to them is not the prize, but a heightened awareness of the quality they have demonstrated, and as a result a strengthening of that quality in them – whether it be intellectual, artistic, athletic, or moral excellence. In that sense, honors are like grades. They are signposts pointing to qualities. Valuing a good grade as an achievement in itself is confusing the signpost with the destination. We have all had the experience of receiving a grade better than we feel we deserve, as well as the opposite. That self-assessment is of greater value than the grade awarded by others, because it shows we have internalized a standard by which we can guide ourselves. For the individual, good grades and honors are just stepping stones to guide us to the autonomy of such self-assessment and self-direction.

Those who participate in honoring others should remind themselves that the true reward is having the quality honored, and that by honoring that quality in another, they strengthen that quality in themselves. In athletic contests, inevitably referees make judgments that players feel are incorrect. Learning to accept that with maturity is more important than the game, as is participating in the honoring of others for qualities or achievements similar to your own. If you have the quality your community has chosen to honor, you have what is truly of value.

The Greek philosopher Epictetus makes a distinction between things in our control and those not in our control. We control and are therefore responsible for our own opinions, feelings, goals, and actions. We are not in control of the opinions, feelings, and actions of others. Wisdom and power lie in making that distinction, and reminding ourselves that the things that define us, that have true meaning, are those under our control.

At Hackley, we value individual achievement, and we teach personal responsibility. Students are responsible for things in their control. Grades and honors are in the control of others, though a student’s choices and actions will influence them. What is of true value is what the grades and the honors point towards. Those qualities are under our control, and they represent true individual achievement.

-- Walter C. Johnson
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