Free Market Institute Blog
Forming Character, Sustaining Freedom
Freedom is not a gift we simply hand to young people. It is a responsibility they must be prepared to carry. A free society depends on more than elections, constitutions, and declarations of rights. It depends on the character of the people who live within it. The question is not simply how much government should we have, but what kind of people our institutions are guiding us to become. The deeper question is - are we forming adults who can think for themselves, make difficult choices, accept consequences, and govern themselves? Or, are we gradually teaching them to expect someone else to solve their problems?
If we want a free society to endure, we must build more than knowledgeable students. We must build people of character - people with the courage to choose, the discipline to persevere, the humility to respect others, and the responsibility to live with the consequences of their choices. Because ultimately, the strength of a free society is measured not only by the freedoms it grants, but by the character of the people capable of using those freedoms well.
This is where the purpose of education becomes much larger than academic achievement. At Brookfield Academy, we talk about character formation because we believe education should prepare students not simply to succeed, but to become capable human beings. We ask students to be satisfied with nothing less than their very best, to develop the confidence and determination to tackle difficult and worthwhile things, and to understand that difficulty is not necessarily something to be eliminated. Sometimes difficulty is precisely what forms us. Personal accountability, perseverance, courtesy, respect for others, and the Golden Rule are not decorative virtues. They are habits that make self-government possible.
Consider what happens when we remove every obstacle from a young person's path. We may make life easier in the short term, but what have we taught the person to expect? That frustration should be eliminated? That failure is someone else's responsibility? That difficulty is evidence that something is wrong? That someone will intervene whenever things become uncomfortable? Perhaps one of the great paradoxes of modern life is that in our desire to protect young people from difficulty, we can deprive them of the very experiences through which confidence and character are built. A student who learns to master something genuinely difficult discovers something that no lecture can provide: I can do hard things. That knowledge becomes a form of freedom.
And this brings us back to the larger question of our political and economic institutions. The goal should not be to create citizens who are dependent on either government or markets, but adults capable of navigating both. People who can make decisions, tolerate uncertainty, accept responsibility, disagree respectfully, cooperate with others, and solve problems without immediately asking who will solve them for them. A free society requires laws and institutions, but it also requires people with the character to live freely. That is why character formation is not separate from the project of self-government. It is the foundation of it. The challenge of education, and perhaps the challenge of a free society itself, is not simply to give young people freedom. It is to help them become the kind of people capable of using it well.
