What’s a thing you wish schools actually taught?
The greatest thing a school can teach is character.
That is why I am involved in the Sydney Character Initiative, a group of academics, school leaders and teachers asking a deceptively simple question: what kind of people are our schools producing?
Education is never simply about knowledge and skills. Schools form people through their culture, their expectations, their rituals, the examples set by leaders and the experiences they create. Whether they intend to or not, schools are always teaching something about what matters and what a good life looks like.
Phil Cummins, who leads the Initiative, talks about embedding character in school culture, cultivating belonging and purpose, and developing leaders marked by humility, courage and service. Leadership, on this account, is not merely technical. Leaders help create the culture in which character grows.
I have long been interested in this because I think we usually measure education too narrowly. We talk about results, university entrance, careers and individual advancement.
But perhaps the better test comes later. Does an education produce people who increase trust rather than diminish it? Who are generous? Who serve their communities? Who can disagree without turning opponents into enemies? Who use their abilities for something beyond themselves?
These things matter because education doesn’t just produce graduates. It helps produce society.
Perhaps the ultimate test of a school is not simply what its graduates know, earn or achieve. It is whether the communities they enter are better because they are there.
The Afterword 
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