Character, The Golden Mean, and the Quiet Ironies of How We See Ourselves

In my MA and school work, a big thing at the moment is the Aristotelian Golden Mean.

For those unfamiliar with the principle, Aristotle suggests that every virtue sits between two vices: one of excess and one of deficiency.

Courage sits between rashness and cowardice in the same way generosity sits between wastefulness and stinginess, and self-control between meekness and indecisiveness.

The Golden Mean is not supposed to be bland moderation, but the right action, with the right intention, in the right way, at the right time.

Virtue therefore becomes a tempered practice - shaped by judgement rather than fixed rules. Many fall short by viewing the Golden Mean as the perfect balance, but this is a misconception. The Golden Mean cannot be monolithic or absolutely fixed given what may be a Golden Mean in one situation may be an excess or deficiency in another. In other words, the same virtue can demand opposite behaviours depending on circumstances. Let’s view this through the vantage point of schools and educators:

Example: Honesty

Saying nothing can be:

• Cowardice (deficiency) when silence enables injustice or wrongdoing

  BUT…

• Discretion (Golden Mean) when silence protects a sensitive safeguarding process

  
  

Speaking bluntly can be:

• Integrity (Golden Mean) in a clear, professional line-management conversation

  BUT…

• Brutalism (excess) in a parental meeting where context and care matter

  
  

Same behaviour. Different context. Different moral meaning.

So when we talk about virtue, we are not talking about compliance, or being perfectly virtuous, or ‘good behaviour’ in a generic sense. We are talking about the right judgement, ethically applied, for that specific thing at that moment in time. The ability to do this freely and fairly is what the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues describes as practical wisdom, or phronesis. Aristotle’s Golden Mean is ultimately about judgement in context - the capacity to choose well when rules alone are insufficient. Contemporary character research describes the same. It is not just philosophical. Large-scale research conducted by the Jubilee Centre shows that schools which intentionally prioritise character education are not trading off academic outcomes for moral ones. In fact, schools formally recognised for excellence in character education demonstrate higher average Progress 8 scores than comparable schools, even when prior attainment is controlled for. This suggests that judgement, discernment, and moral calibration do not sit alongside learning as optional extras, but operate underneath it as enabling conditions.

When Virtue Meets Social Desirability Bias

At my school, a lot of work is being done into up-skilling virtue literacy. We are at the right stage because, from a cultural point of view, we have seen better regulation, climate, results and embedded habits since beginning our improvement journey.

Our next natural progression led us to think more structurally about how we truly teach character. We thought: well, we narrate and expect compliance; we talk to students when they get it wrong; we correct their wrong actions through rehabilitative and restorative interventions - but do our students know what good character looks like in the first place? Better yet, do the adults in the room know what virtue traits are becoming of a well-rounded student in our setting?

If we do not laminate, codify and use these as a shared referential base, how can we expect to see graduation? And if the answer to that is no, how can we then hold our school community to shared values if those values are arbitrarily open to interpretation by different stakeholders?

Virtue literacy matters because:

• Behaviour policies tend to describe what not to do

• Teacher correction tends to intervene after conduct or virtue goes wrong

  
  

But what of setting the conditions in the first place? We needed a tapestry that pre-empted the entire chain from start to finish and could be cascaded from Year 7 through to Year 11 so that we (as educators) didn’t have to deal with the guilty conscience of “but… you didn’t tell us.”

In our school, like most, we have trainees and ECTs, middle and senior leaders, front-facing support staff and non-front-facing staff. It is not a generalisation to say that even in the most challenging of schools, we all have well-meaning intentions to improve our communities - otherwise why would we persist in education? But sometimes a well-meaning intention does not model the character virtue in the moment.

We can easily point our fingers at what students should or should not do, but we do not always provide an objective standard by which moral judgement is anchored.

If we extend the same principle to students, irrespective of background, religion, race, need or disposition, we often lean on readiness virtues such as uniform or punctuality without addressing deeper, higher utility virtues such as integrity, awareness or judgement.

Moreover, how often do we lecture with a series of loosely connected desirable behaviours rather than virtuous models to aspire to?

For those at the back of the room wondering “whY Are YOU STRIPPING auToNOmY or CeNsOrInG INdivIDUALity!” I restate: we are not saying if you do not achieve the Golden Mean you will be sanctioned, nor are we saying this will make you a bad person:

What we are saying is… you enter our doors in Year 7 as you are, and after five years of schooling, enrichment, personal development, getting your grades and developing character, you leave as good young adults.

Even in 2025, it is not archaic to say many still quietly hinge on the hidden curriculum for this process, only for students to seek a different kind of socialisation, or moral exemplar(s) from different contexts - crime; deviance; popular culture; unstable homes. Our role then becomes more incumbent than ever - to avert this tragic alternative; not necessarily to impose ourselves 'holier than thou', but to inform. To cultivate the discernment young people so critically need in an unforgiving world.

Our Approach

The work began through self-auditing where we were, what we needed to do and how we planned to get there.

This is complex work with many moving parts, so I will fast-forward to the 'doing.'

We began with a VIA Character Strengths Survey of staff and students. The VIA is a widely used, research-informed framework from positive psychology that supports reflection on character strengths.

Listening around the room afterwards, I paused. The social desirability effect was immediately evident. I overheard staff and students describing themselves confidently at the Golden Mean where, in reality, they sat closer to excess or deficiency: ambition bordering on bravado, humour edging into cruelty, empathy evaporating under challenge.

I am guilty of this misdiagnosis myself.

It is difficult to snap out of the temporal bias of assuming “I think, therefore I am” when character is fluid and contextual. We all view ourselves through a favourable lens. The VIA survey alone was not representative.

So we triangulated:

• We combined student voice on year-group deficiencies and excesses.

• Staff and SLT reflections.

• Behaviour data filtered via MIS comments over time. (I cross-analysed this using AI to expose gaps between self-report and lived behaviour)

This yielded both self-reporting and moment-in-time data, which together built a fuller picture. Without this triangulation, self-evaluation risked collapsing into self-flattery. With it, however, objective nuance emerged.

The Virtues Handbook: A School Culture in Miniature

In line with the above, I began crystallising this work into a Character Handbook - a front-facing reference for students, staff and stakeholders that captures our culture in miniature.

It is designed to unify “caught, taught and sought” approaches we practise already, but provide the common thread and scope to expand these further.

The handbook includes:

• a student-friendly title page breaking down each of our nine virtues (definitionally, with a moral exemplar consolidating the point)

• a systematic breakdown of deficiency, Golden Mean and excess by year group in positively framed ‘student statements’

• worked examples across school, home and the wider world
  

Two things dawned on me during this process.

1. A Fanciful Document Does Not Guarantee Good Culture

This handbook could be beautifully designed and meticulously written, but without fidelity it means little. Its impact lies in how deeply it is embedded.

I realised that the lasting legacy of this will not necessarily come from how well it is written to the letter (though that helps), but from how efficiently it becomes embedded and recognised across the school. In other words: how can this be drip-fed meaningfully into school life without becoming the “shiny new initiative” that is introduced with bells and whistles at the start of the year, only to be forgotten by the next term…

Although I continue to collaborate with a primary school in our network whose work to this end is alive and kicking in their own setting and context (much of which I am trying to learn from, magpie, and appropriately translate into my own setting,) I am also aware that much of this work must come through self-discovery rather than replication.

Beyond aesthetics - visibility, consistency, and certainty matter most. If it is to be a reference guide, it must be ubiquitous. It must live in:

Assemblies

A congregatory means of “the way we do things here.” This ought to set the tone of virtue readings and the direction of travel for that week. A virtue of focus, dissected with regularity and continuity in messaging, lays the groundwork for why this handbook matters in the first place.

Form Time

A purposeful, directed, reflective object of study, building on the assembly content. Broken down, unpicked, and revisited circularly through scenario exploration, this becomes a vehicle for developing a moral compass. Its utility becomes clearer when explicit reference to the handbook evidences its own functionalility.

School Environment

The first thing students see as they enter - on screens, in corridors, in communal spaces. It needs to be ‘in the air’ to be ‘caught’.

The invisible, subtle smile in the corridor and passing pleasantries matter. The propensity to do something kind for another person without agenda or expectation matters. The felt sense of warm and welcome matters. The cleanliness of the environment matters. The unspoken stewardship of all our spaces matters.

Specifically:

• Do the arrangements of spaces encourage social communion, reflective thought, and self-regulation?

• Are there spaces that reflect the different amenabilities of students?

• What of the toilets? Are they clean? If not, how regularly are they maintained? Is there distasteful graffiti on the walls? Is decorum upheld even in the least monitored of spaces?

• Are bins overloaded with energy drink cans, junk food wrappers, or undesirable items? Are bins used at all? Are there even bins where bins should be, so as to connote “we look after our environment”?

From the sublime to the ridiculous, to the pedantic, environments and the upkeep of them display their own (very telling) character signifiers. Borrowing from Media Studies: does the mise-en-scène itself promote character osmosis?

Behaviour Systems

Virtue embedded as an economy of language (“integrity shown” / “lack of integrity”). I am not going to delineate an argument along binaries of traditionalist or progressive ideals here (i.e. sanctions versus rehabilitative approaches), as this quickly morphs into its own intransigent debate.

I am instead propping up the idea of character-informed wisdom (where systems signal proportionality and mirror aspects of the real world outside) while still recognising that adolescents are developing humans who will get it wrong before they get it right.

Where systems (like the Golden Mean / excess / deficiency as outlined earlier) account for the right equilibrium between individual circumstance and the wider objective message or precedent being set.

And is there a preamble, centrally and in student-, staff-, and parent-facing versions, that actually explains (even implicitly) the virtue-led talking points behind the behaviour policy, phone policy, or reward policy?

I am not talking about a generic copy-and-paste job, but a position you can articulate without aid, defend, justify, and rationalise as to the why. If not, does it really mean anything? Small things matter, especially when done with due care rather than as generic box-fillers.

This matters in the current policy climate. In its April 2025 response to Ofsted’s Education Inspection Consultation, the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues cautioned against the removal or dilution of explicit reference to character development within inspection frameworks. The Centre argued that sidelining character risks creating a disconnect between policy and practice, encouraging schools to rely on surface-level proxies - behaviour, compliance, calm - rather than the deeper conditions that support judgement, belonging, and human flourishing. When character is reduced to what can be most easily seen or measured, we risk inspecting the performance of virtue rather than its substance.

Reward Mechanisms

A currency that is neither hyperbolic (overpraising) nor akin to meiosis (under-recognising). Because both extremes underwhelm.

If a certificate for exceptional character is given out as readily as a merit for holding a door, then is it really exceptional?

Likewise, if a subject award cannot be given, because, despite a student’s exceptional progress in that subject, poor conduct elsewhere renders the award redundant, then we need to ask ourselves: are we rewarding character, or merely compliance?

These are common quandaries I have experienced time and again, and don’t for a second think I am being pedantic. Students are not given enough credit for how switched on they can be. These are young people for whom this stage of life at school is their lived reality, just as your professional life right now is yours.

So, without sounding facetious, the extremes I describe above would be as perverse as you being paid incorrectly, or a colleague smiling at another colleague and “making their day”… being given the same recognition as a staff member who managed to pre-empt or prevent a serious safeguarding incident from escalating. Let me be clear: what may feel like a false equivalence to you may mean the world to an impressionable student who lives and learns by what you say and do.

Over-rewarding trivial acts devalues exceptional character. Under-recognising genuine virtue teaches the wrong lesson. Young people notice these inconsistencies acutely.

This made me think even more, and is where the analogy really sharpened in my mind:

Nearly every historically inspirational figure carries some controversy. History itself is shaped by interpretation and, more often than not, by the agenda of the ‘victor’. Yet this, in itself, can be a teachable moment: people can be flawed and still be revered for admirable character elsewhere.

For me, this was loosely reminiscent of the Of Mice and Men curriculum debate a few years ago. The same text, the same racial slurs, yet as a shadowing trainee back then, I observed that in some classrooms it was taught obscenely (to my second-hand embarrassment) and in others with a purposefulness that empowered me first-hand.

The difference wasn’t the text. It was the moral framing of the teacher.

If we cannot distinguish rich character from poor character, if we collapse everything into a one-size-fits-all notion of “good behaviour”, then is the handbook even worth the grandeur? Drift can negate the end goal. Just as the OMAM debate revealed how interpretation shapes meaning, our approach to rewarding character must recognise nuance, acknowledge flaws, and still celebrate virtue where it meaningfully shines. Otherwise, it risks becoming a bland, pretentious exercise.

Virtue Literacy

We realised early on that virtue literacy must begin with staff. Without this, the message will always remain half-conveyed.

Through well-planned, scaffolded, componential CPD, we aim to: a) develop a shared language, and b) cultivate our own frameworks for navigating real moral situations.

Crucially, this is not intended as a test of recall, but as a natural way of navigating social, moral, spiritual, and cultural realities. In other words, character education done judiciously should tangibly interleave into other areas of practice - whether that is behaviour management, teaching and learning, the role of the form tutor, or, more broadly, in concretising the cultural direction of the work itself.

For example, consider the most natural, relatable, or ‘larger-than-life’ pastoral figure(s) you know for a moment. I will go as far as to say that their manner with students often appears unteachable, and at times simply unattainable for the average teacher.

It seems they have the Midas touch. Their reputation (and ability to manage the unmanagable) precedes them.

I can almost guarantee they talk, and invoke vehemently, the importance of “building relationships,” “presence,” “habits and routines,” and the like - rightly so.

As fortunate as we are to have these individuals in our schools, what they may forget to explicitly mention or model (or what others may forget to magpie!) is that they are exhibiting, in some way, shape, or form, tailored, repackaged, refocused expressions of character education itself.

Have you ever considered:

• Character is to ‘building relationships’ what integrity is to trust - you cannot form anything meaningful or durable without a backbone of honesty, reliability, and moral steadiness.

• Character is to ‘presence’ what courage is to leadership - presence is not charisma; it is an educator’s ability to act with calm authority and moral intentionality at the right moment.

• Character is to ‘habits and routines’ what self-discipline is to excellence - routines do not create order on their own; they cultivate consistency, perseverance, and the quiet rigour of doing small things well, repeatedly and over time, until they become the norm.
  

These ‘pastoral staples’ are arguably character staples before they are pastoral – and here lies the misnomer:

Character education is often placed in a different bucket to pastoral care, behaviour, or school climate, when in reality it is arguably prior to all of these. These so-called “pastoral instincts” are simply virtues in motion, lived out through predictable, observable behaviours.

Virtue literacy simply gives us the vocabulary - and therefore the intentionality - to name what is actually happening beneath the surface.

This all sounds nice, but does it actually matter?”

Large-scale national data now suggests that schools which intentionally embed character - not as slogans, but as whole-school culture - do not sacrifice academic outcomes to do so. In fact, they outperform comparable schools on England’s most demanding value-added metric, Progress 8.

A longitudinal study of over 3,000 secondary schools and three million pupils found that schools formally recognised for whole-school character education achieved significantly stronger academic progress, even after controlling for prior attainment and contextual factors. In several years, the strongest schools demonstrated gains equivalent to more than half a GCSE grade per pupil across subjects.

Culture

Modelled quietly. Perpetuated consistently. Present even when no one else is looking - until it becomes the default.

Big feat, I know. But if we fail to plan big, we plan to fail big. The highest leverage levers must be pulled so the moving parts can fall into place.

All of this raises a further question, one that goes beyond systems, rewards, or policies: how do we honour character when it is lived exceptionally well, over time, and in ways that quietly shape a community/culture?

Character Diploma

I want to preface the idea of a character diploma by first acknowledging those generational few and far between: the rare, yet still very real, trailblazers and change-makers who go on to become beacons within their communities and, in many cases, some of the sharpest young minds in the country. We have to be alert enough to recognise that such individuals do emerge from our corridors. The question, then, is simple: shouldn’t we mythologise them as our own moral exemplars?

I once worked at a school with an alumni hall of fame that was genuinely impressive. Walking through it gave me a tangible sense of greatness attached to those select few, but it also did something else.

It offered a window into the school’s history, its values, and the kind of people it was proud to have shaped. That sort of institutional memory, I think, is not homaged often enough in schools.

Such is the fast-moving pace of education that we move almost immediately to the next cohort, the next focus, the next set of results. In doing so, we forget the faces that helped carry our flag along the way. We celebrate outcomes, but rarely pause to honour the character that helped produce them.

This is why I feel strongly about creating a diploma that explicitly celebrates character growth, alongside achievement. Whether awarded yearly, bi-yearly, or across a full five-year journey, it signals that who students become matters as much as what they attain.

A basic idea is could be to construct our own “hall of fame”: not as a vanity project, but as a public declaration of what we value. To make character development feel ceremonially real.

2. "I can deal with 'naughty' students all day long... but can I deal with 'naughty' staff?

As cryptic as the heading sounds, this question sits at the fault line of one of the profession’s most uncomfortable conversations. It is wide-ranging, often contentious, and rarely spoken about with the same clarity we expect of others. For the purposes of this section, I want to keep the focus firmly on professional character, rather than personalities or polemics.

It’s all good and well telling our young people what good character looks like - but what about showing them the human being behind the role?

What about the day to day, behind the masks, when we are alone in our classrooms or when everyone has gone home? In conversations with colleagues. In moments where our moral fibre is tested quietly, not performatively - not in “teacher mode”.

Adults are seen as the authority - but are we the role models we would ourselves have liked, or frankly needed, growing up?

We often assume that, by virtue of being adults - graduates, veterans of the profession, or pillars of our community that (as staff) we possess inherent exemplary character. Sometimes the benevolent glow of the educator role convinces us of this too.

Yet beyond Teaching Standards Part 2 - which many argue leans towards professionalism baselines rather than genuine virtue conduct - how confidently can we say adults actually understand character or virtue?

What is striking is that while inspection frameworks increasingly reference “character”, the empirical evidence underpinning this agenda has overwhelmingly focused on pupils - not adults. Yet the strongest character education models explicitly treat staff culture as foundational, not incidental.

In schools recognised for deeply embedded character education, leaders consistently reported that professional judgement, relational conduct, and shared moral language among staff were not peripheral benefits, but central mechanisms through which behaviour, wellbeing, and academic outcomes improved. Character, in other words, was not something staff delivered - it was something they were consciously expected to embody.

Here are some further illustrative, sector-wide indicators:

• 39% of formal school complaints nationally involve concerns about staff behaviour or conduct, not children. Source: Collated from national LA and MAT complaint reporting summaries, 2022–23.

• One in five schools reports initiating at least one staff disciplinary case per year linked to professional judgement, communication, or interpersonal conduct. Source: NAHT workforce survey, 2023.

• Fewer than 10% of PGCE or School Direct programmes include any substantive training on virtue ethics, moral reasoning, or character formation beyond safeguarding and professional responsibilities. Source: Review of ITE curriculum content across UK providers, DfE ITE Market Review submissions, 2021.
  

At an individual school level, attrition of character is often caused not by headline scandals, but by the mundane, corrosive lapses that quietly shape culture: courtesy, integrity, reflection, judgement, motivation, determination.

While writing this handbook, I want to give a shoutout to https://simonsays.school/blog/. I came across Simon’s work and CST shortly after COVID lockdown rather fortuitously.

Educational affiliations aside for a moment, I spent many weeks quietly admiring his short, sharp, and underratedly didactic reflections, where excesses, deficiencies, and golden means of the profession were (indirectly) placed under a microscope through a perspective uniquely his own.

Engaging with some of his thinking, I found myself exorcising a number of intrusively pertinent character dichotomies of the profession - both as teachers and as adults working in education.

Let’s consider both common and seemingly mundane virtue scenarios in equal measure (through an Aristotelean lens):

Courtesy/Humility

“Respect for others’ dignity is the foundation of peace.” - Nelson Mandela

Deficiency

• Adults routinely walk into morning briefings without acknowledging colleagues, eyes fixed on laptops, contributing only when directly addressed.

• Adults not warmly greeting other adults, or greeting only those with hierarchical status.

• Adults abrasively telling, not decently asking, in ways that are unbecoming, or in a way they would not like to be spoken to themselves.

Excess

An educator conflates friendliness with oversharing - either with students/adults or both - or where one becomes reluctant to challenge or disengage from distasteful behaviour because they “don’t want to ruin the relationship.” A lack of conversational filter, or a tendency towards ‘stepping on toes’.

Golden Mean

Warm, efficient, boundaried courtesy. Greetings offered as recognition, not performance. Presence/candor without over-investment. Warmth without invasiveness or boundary erosion.

Reflection questions

• How does my greeting set the tone for the space I’m entering?

• Do my interactions maintain warmth without sacrificing purpose?

• To what extent does courtesy model Aristotelian deficiency, excess, and the golden mean?

Integrity

“Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” - C.S. Lewis

Deficiency

A colleague tells a student, “I’ll call home tonight,” or “I’ll log a merit” but never does. Or promises feedback by a certain date but silently pushes it to the next week. Half-efforting mundane tasks instead of completing them meaningfully. Cutting corners in the name of “prioritising,” while coincidentally investing full energy into self-serving pursuits.

Excess

Educators rigidly adhering to every declared rule even when contexts or circumstances change or pose exceptional circumstances. Doubling down because of ego rather than understanding. Operating on “I said it, so it must happen,” even where the bigger picture becomes detrimental. Lacking the emotional intelligence to distinguish indifference from integrity.

Golden Mean

Reliability paired with moral flexibility. Keeping promises, but adapting ethically and appropiately when circumstances require it. Understanding that warm certainty, even when contextualised, is better than cold severity.

Reflection questions

• Do I treat commitments as moral contracts, optional extras, or a ‘pick-and-mix?’

• When I adapt, is it by integrity or by bad faith?

• Do others experience me as both dependable and discerning?

Reflection

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.” - Confucius

Deficiency

After a difficult lesson, day, or week, a colleague attributes all issues to “this class” or “these kids,” their familial or demographic backgrounds, never interrogating their own controllables. Competencies such as behaviour management, classroom practice, or role-based accountability become externalised. Reflection is outsourced.

Is this a “we” problem, or a “me” problem? Where it may be both, am I owning what I can affect?

Excess

The adult over-reflects to the point of paralysis - agonising over every lesson/meeting/setback. rewriting entire schemes/ to do lists obsessively, interpreting minor challenges as evidence of personal failure. Self-sabotage masquerading as reflection where critique becomes mental self-flagellation.

Golden Mean

Intentional, bounded reflection: noticing patterns, adjusting next steps, and then moving on. Recognising human fallibility. Understanding that ownership and accountability are a two-way street that sometimes converges and sometimes diverges. Doing better without being excessive.

Reflection questions

• What is the one thing I could do better tomorrow?

• Am I reflective, or reflexive? Am I improving, or ruminating?

• Do I distinguish between what I control, can use to inform vs what I influence?

Judgement

“Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.” - Plato

Deficiency

An colleague reacts impulsively - sanctioning immediately, shouting, assuming narratives without establishing facts, relying on assumptions, escalating unnecessarily or disproportionately.

The unspoken belief:“I am the adult, therefore I am right.” “I am senior; they are not.”“I have a title; they do not.” “I am a specialist; they are not.”

Excess

An educator refuses to make any judgement call without perfect evidence. “It isn’t my remit.” “Not my responsibility.” Blind empathy. This leads to delays, uncertainty, and mixed messages. Taking things at face value, or, conversely tending to over-pathologise without due diligence.

Golden Mean

Timely, informed judgement: gathering sufficient context, responding proportionately, acknowledging caveats, and holding decisions lightly enough to revise them as new information emerges. Understanding the fine lines between benefit of the doubt, probability, and “innocent until proven guilty.”

Reflection questions

• Do I act too quickly or too slowly when faced with ambiguity?

• Is my judgement proportionate? Do I refer to policy with human/professional judgement.

• How do I communicate decisions with both confidence and appropriate openness?

Motivation

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

Deficiency

A staff member disengages quietly. Energy diminishes. Marking/performance/output becomes minimal. Initiatives are resisted. CPD is attended but not meaningfully engaged with. Low commitment despite high capability. Treating others as means to an end rather than human beings.

Excess

An adult over-functions - volunteering for everything, staying late without respite, absorbing others’ responsibilities, burning out in silence. Overzealousness to the detriment of self and others. Stepping on toes, undermining colleagues, assuming others must share the same purpose or drive.

Golden Mean

Sustainable motivation. Reading situations and tempering effort appropriately. Recognising that motivation is shaped by both temporary factors (illness, grief, home pressures) and unprecedented / more enduring ones (medical conditions, financial strain, trauma), and responding with humanity.

Reflection questions

• Is my effort consistent, or crisis-driven?

• What boundaries protect my long-term motivation?

• Have I considered motivation as a deeper sense of purpose, not just temporary drive? Strong mind, strong body?

Determination

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” - Artistotle

Deficiency

An educator gives up quickly when a strategy fails: “I’ve tried everything,” after two or three attempts. No perseverance, no re-strategising, no seeking help.

Excess

An educator persists blindly with an approach that clearly is not working, attributing failure solely to student/parental deficits rather than misaligned strategy. Doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome. Stubbornness disguised as determination.

Golden Mean

Adaptive determination: commit to the goal, but adapt/rethink/re strategise the method.

Reflection questions

• Am I persisting with the goal, or the method?

• What is one new angle to try before abandoning the strategy?

• How do I model perseverance without rigidity?

Closing Thought

“Be content, but never satisfied.” - Bruce Lee

If students are to pursue the Golden Mean, then staff (and the school) must live it - not as a checklist, but as a shared habit of judgement.

Perhaps the most misunderstood implication of this evidence is that character education is not an “add-on” competing with academic rigour. It is a coordinating force. Schools that coherently align ethos, behaviour, curriculum, and adult conduct around shared virtues appear to create the very conditions in which learning flourishes.

This mirrors the Aristotelian insight that virtue is not a distraction from excellence but its precondition. Where practical wisdom governs judgement - avoiding both rigidity and permissiveness - schools become not just calmer or kinder, but more effective. The data increasingly suggests that the Golden Mean is not only philosophically sound, but institutionally powerful.

A Character Handbook will help. But only if the adults embody the very thing we claim to teach.