Chapter 4
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Dark times lie ahead of us and there will be a time when we must choose between what is easy and what is right.
—Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Chloe could always be counted upon to tell the truth. She took responsibility for her behavior and would mention when her academic efforts or personal conduct fell short of her own expectations. In this regard, she was her own worst critic. In fact, she was so forthright that I was careful not to ask her questions in public, lest her candidness alienate her peers. Though she was very popular, Chloe didn't hesitate to tell her friends when she thought they were acting inappropriately. But her integrity didn't always come easily—it was clear that she worked to be an honest and responsible person.
Lander was never in trouble but was always on the periphery of a problem. If there was a disruption in class, one of Lander's friends was likely to be pegged as the initiator while Lander was off in the shadows. By watching his eye contact with classmates whenever trouble was afoot, it became clear to me over time that Lander was often manipulating the action from offstage. On those moments when other students called out Lander as the instigator, he was always able to manage a credible excuse—and, later, would ensure that the kids who identified him were ostracized from his clique. Substitute teachers liked Lander because he came across as a helpful do-gooder; they weren't around him long enough to appreciate that he was actually a talented manipulator. Because of his cleverness, Lander maintained a decent academic record that obscured his penchant for duplicity.
We've all enjoyed dealing with Chloes, and we've all been worried about Landers. As educators, we need to teach students like Lander to exhibit greater integrity. If we don't, I worry not only about him and his life's prospects but also about the people close to him. Just as someone exhibiting integrity elevates the behaviors of others, so too can a lack of it have deleterious effects on individuals and groups.
Figure 4.1 shows the self-assessment survey for integrity. Take a moment to answer the questions before continuing with this chapter.
Note: The following survey is designed to provide a sense of your feelings about integrity. It is a tool to elicit reflection and discussion, not a scientifically valid instrument. Directions: Place a 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (not sure), 4 (agree), or 5 (strongly agree) after each item.
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Scoring:
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If you scored
Note: You can find an integrity self-assessment survey for students in Appendix A. |
Integrity stems from honesty, but is a higher, more public form of action. Merriam-Webster defines honesty as "fairness and straightforwardness of conduct; adherence to the facts" and integrity as "firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values; incorruptibility." It is possible to be honest without displaying integrity, but it is not possible to have integrity without honesty.
Though it would be a Sisyphean task to try to rank the relative value of the Formative Five success skills, integrity is the one most often mentioned as essential by employers. Certainly that's the attitude of Warren Buffett, the multibillionaire and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway: "In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you." In fact, integrity is crucial to every sector of society. As Bob Marley once put it, "The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively." George Peternel, the retired associate director of the Northwestern University Center for Talent Development, noted that he'd "never met a person whom [he] respected who did not exhibit a high level of integrity," and "that few, if any, people can succeed for any length of time in any workplace without the respect of colleagues, subordinates and super-ordinates. Not to mention in the world outside of work where all relationships, including and especially marriages, where integrity sustains and nurtures the relationship" (personal communication, January 26, 2016). Likewise, First Lady Michelle Obama highlighted the importance of integrity when she said, "We learned about honesty and integrity—that the truth matters … that you don't take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules … and success doesn't count unless you earn it fair and square" (Cassidy, 2012).
Of all of the Formative Five success skills, educators are likely to think of integrity as the one we do the best job teaching. We start early: kindergartners learn about George Washington purportedly proclaiming, "I cannot tell a lie." Honesty is esteemed and promoted in every classroom, and that's as it should be. Although educators and parents can disagree about a lot, they speak the same voice when it comes to valuing honesty. Teachers and principals indeed do a good job of focusing on honesty—but we need to pay more attention to integrity.
Being honest is a response—to a comment, a question, a situation, or an opportunity. We may be alone or in a group, acting privately or in public. It is also rooted in choice: we can respond honestly or not. Some examples of when students face this choice:
Of course, we confront decisions about honesty all the time as adults:
Sometimes, making an honest decision requires us to think a matter through; other times, it occurs instantaneously, without us being aware that we're making a decision. For some people, doing the right thing is deeply ingrained—and that's how we'd like it to be for our students (and ourselves). To that end, teachers must teach honesty directly. It's important for students to realize that we can exhibit more or less honesty depending on the situation, and that it can often be harder to maintain it in private than in public. Asking, "What effect does what your friends think have on how you might behave?" is a good way to open up student reflection on the subject. The more realistic and relevant our lessons and discussions are, the more likely it is that students will understand and internalize them.
The need to manifest honesty is all the more important in our current era of social media. Our ability to communicate instantaneously over the internet has opened up the world, exponentially increasing the number and types of the people with whom we interact—but it can also work against us building deeper, more trusting relationships. One look at online comments sections in newspapers will confirm that electronic communication makes it much easier for people to be dishonest and act in uncivil ways. I have noticed that when commenters are allowed to contribute anonymously, nastier opinions tend to appear. People can hide behind their screen names and act in ways that they never would dare to if they were being held accountable. Further, this lack of honesty and care isn't limited to anonymous comments on blogs. How often do we read an e-mail that causes us to raise our eyebrows because it sounds so unlike the sender we know? Communicating through the internet reduces the personal connection, and it's easier for honesty to be lost. The fact that today so many of our interactions are electronic means that being confident about others' trust and integrity is even more important today than in it has been in the past.
Whereas honesty can be private and innate, integrity is always public and developed intentionally—when we act with integrity, we are consciously making our personal values known to others. Writing on the Alliance for Integrity website, Jim Thomas notes, "The major difference between honesty and integrity is that one may be entirely honest without engaging in the thought and reflection integrity demands" (2011). Integrity means being responsible for our actions and owning our roles in solving problems. And because it is interpersonal in nature (unlike honesty, which is intrapersonal), it is a key component in becoming a successful leader. By teaching and promoting integrity, we help our students become leaders and change agents who feel a commitment to take a stand and make things right.
It is possible—and actually pretty common—for people to have honesty without integrity. Consider the example of a student named Linda. She is always truthful, keeps her word, and wouldn't think of keeping the money if an error were made in her favor. But Linda also fails to intervene if a friend is dishonest or benefits unfairly from a mistake. If she sees another student cheating, she turns her head. Linda lacks integrity. She is honest, but feels no obligation to be true to her values and step up when the occasion demands it.
To be clear, we absolutely should be exhorting and developing honesty in our students, but we should not stop there. Integrity is being accountable for what we do by acknowledging our responsibility and stepping forward to own our role in finding a solution to the problem. Integrity carries our value of honesty to a higher level. By teaching and promoting integrity, we help our students become leaders and change agents, people who feel a commitment to take a stand and make things right.
There are five steps to progressing from honesty to integrity:
This developmental sequence of honesty evolving to integrity is depicted in Figure 4.2. (Note: The chart implies more of a linear sequence than is reality. When learning a complex skill or attitude, progress is never smooth or always consistent.) Another way to view the continuum of honesty to integrity is shown in Figure 4.3.
In his book Integrity, Stephen Carter says that it "demands a difficult process of discerning one's deepest understanding of right and wrong, and then further requires action consistent with what one has learned. It is possible to be honest without ever taking a hard look inside one's soul, to say nothing of taking any action based on what one finds" (1996, p. 10).
Of course, taking action is not always easy, even if you're fully confident that your position is correct. According to Brené Brown, "integrity is choosing courage over comfort; choosing what is right over what is fun, fast, or easy; and choosing to practice our values rather than simply professing them" (2015, p. 123).
In almost any situation, the honest response is fairly obvious—the difficulty lies in choosing it over the dishonest response. Integrity is much more of a challenge to teach, especially when exhibiting integrity might well mean refusing to comply with classroom or school rules and regulations. As Carter points out, "many of the most honored figures in the pantheon of integral Americans are people we admire precisely because of their willingness to break laws they considered unjust" (1996, p. 180).
Trust me, I understand that students do need to comply with rules—in my 37 years leading schools, I spent a lot more time dealing with rule breakers than I would have liked. Too often, I would return from supervising the lunchroom to find the bench outside the main office full of students who'd been sent to see me for noncompliance. (To be fair, although they never sat on the bench, it was sometimes the adults in the building who had the most difficulty following rules!) Adherence to rules is necessary for an organization to function effectively, but it is naïve to expect that our students can develop integrity without ever questioning them. (I've been to a school where students are expected not only to stand in line quietly in the hall but to ensure that their feet are aligned with the floor tiles so that the lines they form are perfectly straight. While I can appreciate the need for clear expectations and order, I can't help but wonder what students are losing by having to follow this kind of protocol.)
Of course, teaching integrity gets quite complicated because what is perceived as fair and just by one person can often be considered unfair and unjust by another. Today, a majority of Americans would view the actions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as just, but that wasn't the case when he was visibly displaying his integrity by working as a civil rights activist. Similarly, today there are protests against police shootings of unarmed black males as well as counter-protests in favor of the police, and protests both for and against legal abortion. These issues confound and frustrate adults, let alone children, so they make teaching integrity a challenge—but a necessary one.
One teacher at my school purposely orchestrated unjust situations for students (e.g., taxing students for the paper they use or their trips to the restroom) after teaching them about the Boston Tea Party. Invariably, the students would protest her unfair actions. Even though they knew it was a class activity, they felt the injustice and need to respond. This is an effective way to help students understand the meaning of integrity—both their responsibility to exhibit it and its potential to right injustices. As Carter says, "the rest of what we think matters very little if we lack essential integrity, the courage of our convictions" (1996, p. 7).
In teaching both honesty and integrity, we need to consciously articulate the trade-offs and rationales behind our thinking. An honest act becomes one of integrity when we share it with others—and by sharing examples of our own integrity with students, we can serve as role models for them.
For all teachers:
(A detailed explanation of the activity can be found here and the actual Value Sort cards can be seen here. Created by Miller, Baca, Matthews, and Wilbourne, this instrument is in the public domain.)
Extend the Values Card Sort activity by then having students work in a group to try to determine where a card should be placed. This can be difficult, and it highlights the different perspectives and values that people hold. Doing this, a teacher should be prepared to conclude the exercise by asking students to identify patterns and themes of agreement and commonality (rather than letting the class end with everyone focusing on how people differ).
For middle or high school teachers:
"The real learning came when we discussed why Plato wrote the story," he continued, "which centers on the question of whether something is wrong in and of itself or only because we're afraid to get caught. Our 6th graders were left thinking about integrity and the importance of being consistent when it comes to what they believe is right and wrong."
For elementary teachers:
For principals:
I hope that all of the ideas and strategies to advance integrity presented here can be helpful to teachers. At the same time, I understand that there exist systemic reasons why teaching integrity can be difficult in schools. Jarin Jaffee, head of Evansville Day School in Evansville, Indiana, makes the point well:
I would argue that to a large extent kids inherently possess integrity and it is the conditions of school (namely standardized testing and an obsession regarding grades) and life thereafter that erode this natural attribute. I think a similar argument can be made with creativity (the Marshmallow Challenge is a prime example). So for integrity, cultivating a school and classroom culture that promotes collaboration and rewards teamwork is one avenue, as is trusting students to develop and lead an honor system that puts kids at the foundation of school culture. (personal communication, October 26, 2015)
Picture books:
Chapter books: