Does honesty pay? Is it
really the best policy?
Recently, I was told two
very similar stories by two different families.
In the first one, the
elementary school son of a colleague apparently found that
his teacher had mistakenly given him too high a grade on a
test. She had miscalculated the score in his favor. Having
been raised to value honesty and not to place achievement
and competition before character, he showed the teacher her
mistake and his character. She unfortunately demonstrated
little of her own. Presumably miffed at being corrected by a
child, she brushed off the incident and simply lowered his
grade to the accurate score. His mother, a professor of
education, still laments the lost opportunity for
reinforcing her son’s (a recent high school graduate) good
character.
The second story is quite
similar. I was sharing the podium at a parent education
night with a man who used his family as a source of examples
of good parenting. He told the tale of his young son doing
just what my colleague’s son had done in a similar
circumstance. Only this time, his apparently much more
enlightened teacher understood the character significance of
what that boy had done and praised him resoundingly for his
honesty, and let his parents know about it.
Both of these families
should be (and are) very proud of their sons’ actions. Only
one family has a right to be proud of their daughters’ (the
teachers’) actions.
I recall an incidence I
had when I was a psychology professor at Marquette
University many years ago. One student had taken three child
and adolescent development classes from me. He was a
delightful young man, but clearly not a very gifted student,
despite his hard work.
Furthermore, he didn’t
need to take these classes. He took them because he loved
kids and wanted to work with them someday (he had actually
been working and volunteering with kids part-time for a
while). After the third class, he came knocking on my office
door to tell me that I must have given him an incorrect “A”
in a class where he really deserved a lower grade. I checked
my records and he was correct. He had earned a “C” and I had
made a clerical error in recording his grade. This had never
happened before, nor since. I am not referring to my error
as I am sure I have made other errors and, in fact, students
have come to me to report that they thought (usually
incorrectly, but sometimes correctly) that their grades were
too low. Rather, I am referring to a student telling me his
or her grade was mistakenly too high. Never before and never
after, in a quarter century of teaching.
So what should I do? I
realized that this was clearly an act of good character. If
I simply lowered his grade, it would be as if he were
getting punished for his honesty. If I left it as it was, I
would be modeling dishonesty. I was in a bind. So I
reluctantly praised and thanked him for his honesty and
submitted a grade change to the earned “C.” But this did not
feel like enough. So I wrote a glowing character reference,
detailing this incident and his general behavior, and sent
it to him, his academic advisor, his Dean, and his
extracurricular coach. Later on, he told me that he had very
proudly shared it with his parents who were quite impressed
and deservedly pleased. The letter seemed to be enough.
I am most pleased that he shared it with his parents.
Credit needs to go where
credit is due. And parents are usually at the root of both
good and bad character. But we usually only hear about the
problems and not the sterling character we have fostered in
our kids. We all need to share our good character with
children. But we also need to share the stories of good
character with each other, especially with kids’ parents who
do the hard work and rarely hear about the good character
that results from it. If you are interested, send me your
stories of your kids’ good character and I will try to share
them with others.
