“Honesty’s the best policy.”
Benjamin Franklin

The NCAA now grabs America’s sports’ headlines with March Madness. We’re down to the Final Four and a week away from the national championship game. While the NCAA captures the attention of avid and casual basketball fans alike, another national collegiate organization is focusing significant energy on building America’s Champions of Character. That organization is the NAIA, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics.

Launched in 2000, the NAIA’s Champions of Character program addresses character issues more comprehensively than any other national program for youth. Currently, the program reaches hundreds of thousands of students on nearly 300 college and university campuses in North America and extends into their surrounding communities. The Champions of Character program is an educational outreach initiative that emphasizes the tenets of character not only for college students, but for younger students, coaches and parents in our communities.

Championship teams are defined by the four cornerstones: individual talent, outstanding team play, stellar defense, and never-say-die-persistence. The NAIA teaches that champions of character are defined by five core values: respect, responsibility, integrity, servant leadership and sportsmanship.

For me, the NAIA’s definition of integrity is their values heart. It offers a succinct capstone on the FINISH LINE’S month-long focus on honesty. Integrity is expressed as: Keep commitments and conduct honest behavior.

The character mentor who wears the name of dad, mom, coach, teacher, or community leader takes intensely passionate interest in putting a youngster onto life’s daily court using skills to play the game of life with one conspicuous and consistent game face: Honesty’s the best policy.

It’s all too easy to gloss over these words rather than digging deeply for their meaning. Is it possible that 'Ol Ben, the Philadelphia Sage, understood that honesty requires confronting personal doubts, demanding one’s personal game of life be played with one’s limitations while giving each day’s court play credible, consistent and conscientious attention to honesty’s details?

The virtue-seeking Franklin never experienced throwing a round ball through a suspended basket, but he sure worked at honesty’s four skills: straight-shooting words; decisive actions; truthful adjustments to mistakes; and vigilant mental preparation in readiness to shoot an honesty game winner regardless of the consequences.

I anticipate the excitement of next Monday’s NCAA national basketball championship game. But I am really thrilled by the NAIA commitment to teach America’s kids how to become tomorrow’s Champions of Character.

“Life to me is no brief candle; it is a sort of splendid torch
which I have got hold of for the moment,
and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible
before handing it on to future generations. ”
George Bernard Shaw

While George Bernard Shaw was likely not musing on moral courage when he penned these words, it is my conviction that men and women of moral courage are society’s bright torch bearers. They are visible. They stand out. They attract attention. They burn to light the way for others.

As a character mentor of moral courage, you cannot engage life with milk toast intentions. If you do not grasp the metaphor, may I suggest you heat up a cup of milk in the microwave and pour it onto a piece of toast in a bowl.

What was firm…what had structure… becomes mush in a moment!

Ah, the milk-toast, moral mush American society! Are those judgmental words? They are not meant to be. They are written to paint a picture of America's moral compass in the opening years of the 21st century. The moral mush was not clearly evident forty years ago. Now, the moral mush is mainstream thinking. It operates on a startling assumption that carries a societal result comparable to how milk toast nurtures an individual. The assumption is that values must soothe and offer comfort. One, only one, important value flavors the reassuring moral mush. It calms and quiets everyone. It is not questioned. It is perceived as both intelligent and noble. It is: all values are equal. Yes, welcome, respect, accept, make room for, hold as equally relevant…all values because anyone and everyone’s values are meaningful and worthwhile.

What drives this new bedrock societal conviction? An emerging 21st century secular America, carried by electronic wings that transmit everybody’s good and bad ideas.

Today’s character mentors do not accept the moral mush premise. They do not presume that values are defined by the let's-all-feel-good-about-ourselves narcissism. Rather, they carry the bright torch of utilitarian, timeless spiritual values which are meant to challenge. Character mentors of moral courage boldly find opportunities to communicate to America’s kids the values that are anchored in the search for human dignity and sourced by the Divine.

Character mentors step over, under, around and through America’s moral mush. They envision their three-score-and-ten as Lifelighters...human torches if you will, offering youngsters the timeless remembrance of the Engraver’s wisdom.

Russell Williams is President of Passkeys Foundation Jefferson Center for Character Education. For more information contact centerjcce@aol.com or www.passkeys.org.

“To see what is Right and not to do it,is want of courage. ”
Confucius

As an adult character mentor, you may recall in your teens when you were captured by an incident in which you felt the Right but did not act upon it.

These watershed moral moments often fly below the radar screen by others, but for the individual who is convicted by such an encounter, it can lock in and initiate the life-long journey to act with moral courage.

I remember such a moment in 7th grade, entering a new school with many new faces, including those intimidating 8th graders!

There was a special class at the school for the mentally and physically disabled. Daily, they were bussed to school. Their limitations made them conspicuous among the “regular” kids. One kid was Rusty. He was 14 or 15 years old; he had the mind of a seven year old.

I remember standing with my 7th grade buddies watching the special education bus arrive. Often, there was a small group of 8th grade boys waiting to make fun of Rusty as he awkwardly walked to his classroom with his classmates. I felt the teasing. It was painful; it was wrong. I did nothing. I said nothing to my buddies let alone to the big 8th graders. I knew what was Right but I did not have the courage to stand up for it. I was ashamed of myself. But, nobody knew it.

Do we learn about character virtues from our failures? Yes. Probably more so than learning from our successes. That’s where the adult character mentor can be so important in guiding a youngster to not only observe the Right but to act upon it.

Such moments require the character mentor to take out from his character tool belt a flat-head screwdriver instead of a hammer. Surely, it is easier for a mentor to bring out the admonishing hammer of ought and should. But, the effective character mentor knows that the screwdriver can be used effectively to pry open, through questions and reflection with youngsters, what appropriate choices might be available in the future to not simply think about the Right but to carry the moral courage to act upon it.

A footnote to this story: Rusty graduated from high school with my class six years later. I was proud that he did. I told him so.

Russell Williams is President of Passkeys Foundation Jefferson Center for Character Education. For more information contact centerjcce@aol.com or www.passkeys.org.

“If I were asked to give what I consider the single most useful bit of advice for all humanity, it would be this: ‘Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life and when it comes, hold your head high, look it squarely in the eye and say, ‘I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me.’”
Ann Landers

Every individual has a daily workout on their personal life playing field. Often, game day conditions require moral courage. What essential life skill underlies the ability to demonstrate moral courage?

Valued voices agree on one answer. What is it? Read on. Seneca stated: “Let us train our minds to be big enough to take life on.” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Nothing external to you has any power over you.” Washington Irving commented, “Little minds attain and are subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them.” And Maxwell Maltz said, “This is where you will win the battle…in the playhouse of your mind.”

If character’s mental muscles are developed by being big enough to take life on, as Mary Caroline Richards commented, then being big enough does not demand a sweaty gym workout, but requires regular moral and ethical thought workouts.

Where do you suppose kids find their cues for taking a stand on the Right and the Good? Inspirational author, Wilfred Peterson, was dead on when she wrote, “Our children are watching us live and what we are shouts out more than anything we can say.” That’s why America needs character mentors to show up.

They are moms, dads, teachers, coaches and community leaders who understand that moral courage is sourced by a sturdy mind that does not run from life moments seeking moral clarity and action. Kids learn mental toughness by watching their mentors not run away!

Moms and dads who help build mental strength and toughness to practice moral courage do not wilt when they hear a teen say, “But, everybody does it!” (whatever it is!) Coaches do not become dull-minded when a game-time teachable character moment becomes as important as winning the game. Community leaders who hire part-time teen employees do not shy away from presenting an employee training on ethical work behavior.

Moral courage does flow from the pure mental fountain of the one who regularly wrestles with the Right and Good and constantly asks what does it look like in my thoughts and actions?

Russell Williams is President of Passkeys Foundation Jefferson Center for Character Education. For more information contact centerjcce@aol.com or www.passkeys.org.

“If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson…
hold yourself up as an example and not a warning.”
George Bernard Shaw

Character mentors are exemplars. Parents, grandparents, teachers, coaches, business professionals and community leaders of character show up with actions, not words that can camouflage an adult’s character indifference.

If there is a litmus test for a character mentor, it is the practice of Moral Courage, the FINISH LINE’s focus for February. Moral courage requires marshaling inner strength to take action on what is The Right and The Good, without malice toward others.

This month’s articles carry a subtle, bedrock theme that every moral courage practitioner communicates to children and young adults. The philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, addressed this theme when he wrote, “The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think (and do) alike than those who think (and do) differently.”

Adults of moral courage do not go along with the crowd. They are giraffes. They stick their necks out by acting conspicuously for their character convictions. America’s Civil Rights Movement is filled with stories of those who championed moral courage by taking action in commitment to The Right and The Good. Rosa Parks sat down; Martin Luther King marched; Peter, Paul and Mary sang; Hubert Humphrey legislated.

These notable voices of The Right and The Good faced down their enemies without holding enmity. They articulated actions that underscored their convictions. They swam against the current of public opinion. They showed up for The Right and The Good, without contempt for those who hated, disliked, or disapproved of them.

As a mentor in your home, school or community, you can take your stand for moral courage this week for America’s kids as you find a way to show up for The Right and The Good and let the kids you care about know about it!

The history books will not chronicle your individual act of moral courage. However, appreciate that your actions, consistent with perennial values, do counteract the ethical malaise of our society. Your action can challenge today’s conventional wisdom that encourages The Right and The Good to be defined by opinion polls, blogs and focus groups that encourage dull, unenlightened moral and ethical relevancy premised on the quicksand assumption that all values are of equal value if they make one feel good.


Russell Williams is President of Passkeys Foundation Jefferson Center for Character Education. For more information contact centerjcce@aol.com or www.passkeys.org.