As college students return to highschool, the air is stuffed with pleasure — new backpacks, new classmates, massive targets. However beneath the floor of every new 12 months lies a deeper query — one not about grades or take a look at scores.
What character are we nurturing in our youngsters?
We reside in a time when efficiency typically trumps presence, when flash is mistaken for substance. But two males from very completely different worlds — Fred Rogers and President Theodore Roosevelt — provide timeless classes on actual character. This fall, their phrases could also be simply what college students, academics, and households want.
Fred Rogers, beloved creator of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” was identified for his calm voice and cardigan sweaters. However behind that light method was a daring philosophy: kindness, empathy, and presence should not solely virtues — they’re acts of quiet braveness.
In a 2002 Dartmouth handle, Rogers urged graduates to replicate on the individuals who had “cherished them into being.” He informed the story of a boy who fell throughout a Particular Olympics race. The opposite runners turned again, helped him up, and completed collectively.
To Rogers, this wasn’t sentimentality, it was heroism. A reminder that success isn’t about crossing the end line first, however how we deal with one another alongside the way in which. His message was easy: “You don’t must be good. Simply be your self and hold attempting to develop.” That is the braveness college students want — not simply to talk up, however to be variety. To hear. To indicate up when it issues.
Then there may be Teddy Roosevelt, who famously declared: “It isn’t the critic who counts…The credit score belongs to the person who is definitely within the enviornment.” His speech, “Citizenship in a Republic,” celebrates those that dare for greatness — who stumble and check out once more.
In a world filled with armchair critics, Roosevelt’s problem nonetheless resonates: Don’t sit on the sidelines. Get within the enviornment. Whether or not attempting out for the refrain, becoming a member of the soccer crew, or tackling an AP class, sustained effort is itself an act of braveness. Roosevelt didn’t promise success — he promised that means within the striving.
One wore sweaters, the opposite a Tough Rider’s uniform — but each remind us that braveness is available in many types. It consists of saying, “I’ll attempt” — and saying, “I’m sorry.” Roosevelt urges us to be courageous in effort. Rogers urges us to be courageous in empathy. If we need to increase good individuals, we’d like each.
As households juggle this new college 12 months, let’s dare to ask our youngsters questions of braveness and kindness:
Will you do the fitting factor, even when it’s exhausting?
Will you’re taking dangers — not simply to succeed, however to assist another person?
Actual character is selecting the exhausting proper over the simple improper. It is usually lifting others up as we climb. Let’s increase a technology daring sufficient to step into the world — and mild sufficient to help within the neighborhood.
Dr. Peter F. Folan is Head of Faculty at Dexter Southfield in Brookline
Initially Revealed:
