“A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.” ― James Allen

It’s Spring Break where I am. How come I’m still behind and can’t get caught up? Who decided to give out three long answer exams the week before – that all need to be graded this week? What’s wrong with me? Don’t answer that.

At the start of the week, I was able to travel up the road north and visit my family. It was non-stop center of attention for me with my two grandchildren. As hard as I tried, I could not stay ahead of either. One is two and the other is six.

My daughter and I were talking a little about the difference in how each handles misbehavior. The two-year-old needs a lot of direction and coaching from the outside. The six-year-old seems to know much more about the choices he’s making. Often, when he makes the wrong choice, he knows and expects consequences – if he gets caught.

If he gets caught. Have you ever noticed those signs in the dressing room at the store? The ones that let you know that there are cameras waiting to catch shoplifters. We call that external social control. The fear of being caught that keeps people doing the right thing. The police car parked under the tree as you speed around that corner. The instructor pacing up and down each aisle while you are taking your exam. Younger people who are still developing need more external controls. Society works better when its members do what’s right because they believe it’s right, not because they’re afraid of getting caught.

“To educate a person in the mind but not in morals is to educate a menace to society.” ― Theodore Roosevelt

This belief about right and wrong is called internal social control. The values and norms that we have accepted and implanted in our mind and heart. This happens because our family and school take such care instilling within us what really matters. This kind of control manifests itself in the voice of your mother haunting you as you contemplate poor decisions. A deeply felt sense of fairness and justice when you sit on a jury. The shock you feel when a friend at school asks to copy your research paper.

All of a sudden, at the end of almost 30 years in the college classroom, I’m having a terrible time with academic dishonesty. As I’ve aged, acting the role of police officer or detective is one I resist. Last year, I looked at a student who was using his phone while taking his exam. He looked back and me and knew he’d been caught. Instead of pulling the chain on the guillotine, I started an ongoing conversation with him about learning, his character and consequences. He wasn’t on the path to passing the class anyway. Maybe he was acting out of desperation. Maybe, like many students, he was unprepared for college or tackling too much all at once.

“Character is much easier kept than recovered.” ― Thomas Paine

The world that people are growing up in today provides harsh soil to nurture character. Fragmented families that are missing fathers are too busy trying to survive – while every member is on the their phone. Our media saturated environment pushes moral relativism instead of objective right and wrong that could be a roadmap. No wonder so many get lost. I fear that our schools are trying to play it safe today and keep their noses out of character – their work focused so much more on maintaining a civilized space for learning.

“Our children are only as brilliant as we allow them to be.” ― Eric Micha’el Leventhal

I believe that people need to learn how to think and act with character – one that embraces honesty and truth. It’s not something we are necessarily born with. Each time I witness another student cheating on something so completely insignificant, I know that she is unable to see that her character is in the balance.  Developing one’s character is a series of critical lessons. That student who copied his answers on that quiz has not had the lesson of character explained, modeled and learned.

The few weeks ago, a woodpecker was busy high up in the branches of a soft wood tree in my neighbors yard. It’s just a stone’s throw from my bedroom window. I can hear him violently tapping away as the sun rises in the mornings. He’s got work to do. Breakfast to wrangle. He is persistent on his task. The tree has been there for years. I have seen woodpeckers in the neighborhood often. This is the first time I have heard one banging away in that tree.

At this stage in my life, I often feel like just giving up when faced with the student dishonesty. I know that it’s probably a gigantic moral tangle that someone needs to start to do something about. Do I have the time or energy?  Some of my friends know that over the past seven years or so, the birds bring me messages that seem to really matter. That noisy woodpecker each morning for about a week reminded me, once I thought about it, that there are things that matter, like people, like young people, and it’s always worth keeping at it.

“The best way to show that a stick is crooked is not to argue about it or to spend time denouncing it, but to lay a straight stick alongside it” ― D.L. Moody