Reflection Paper on ‘The Character Factory’
David Brooks’ article ‘The Character Factory’, talks about the conflicting assumptions that parents and governments make about children when it comes to decision making about their life outcomes. Brooks says that nearly every parent want their children to develop character to make it in life while the governments be it republican or democratic focus mainly on the economic aspects of the child development. He says that the democrats address the issue of material deprivation of the poor while the republicans adjust the economic incentives or regulatory barriers. Brooks quotes from Reeves’ article, ‘The New Politics of Character’ to further his opinion and says that individuals are treated like abstractions by the government and with reason. No one wants the blame to be on the victim and many believe that the government could do very little in altering the character of an individual.
Brooks passionately believes that if the character of an individual, if not changed or developed into being prudent, resilient or conscientious, all the cash flows into bettering their lives will serve no purpose. Furthering on Reeves’ article, Brooks refers to experiments by other sociologists and scientists to drive home his point. Brooks talks about the series of experiments, the Marshmallow effect, conducted by Walter Mischel for the Stanford University. In this experiment, a child is offered a choice between an instantaneous reward and two rewards after a period of time. It was inferred at the end of the experiment that the child, who resists the temptation of the wait to finish a task, is more likely to fare better in all spheres of life later on. He also mentions Carol Dweck’s work which shows that people with a growth oriented mindset and who are willing to change their basic qualities fare better than people who have fixed basic qualities. Angela Duckworth’s examples and statistics show that college students with higher resilience fare better than the others. The same goes for Spelling bee competitions, where students who score more on grit are usually winners in the consecutive rounds. In effect, Brooks echoes Reeve’s ideas and says that self determination and drive influence academic excellence as much as cognitive skills (Reeves, 2014).
Brooks also comes up with suggestions for the government on how it can help with character development of individuals and not focus just on the economic benefits. To begin with he recommends a change in habits or behavior that can eventually lead to change in disposition. He mentions the changes that parents and school officials have brought about by encouraging students to observe basic etiquette and acts of self restraint. He says that the government can follow a similar method in helping develop the character of an individual from an early stage. The second recommendation Brooks comes up with is the issue of opportunity where he gives the example of a teen mom. Brooks opines that if a girl is presented with the possibility of an affordable college, there are less chances of her becoming a teen mother.
The third recommendation is that that of introducing exemplars into the life of an individual as character cannot be developed individually. He believes that the baby boomers could be recruited into something like an AmeriCorps-type program to help the poor climb up the social ladder. The final recommendation Brooks comes up with is to increase the standards of an individual. He uses research from Martin West of Harvard University to say that individuals will do better by raising their own expectations and judge themselves based on demanding criteria.
Brooks’ article is about how character development would help an individual come up in life. The premise of the article is good and welcome, but he faults in his tone. There are instances in the article where Brooks comes across as insensitive and a classist. For example, Brooks says rich kids excel better because they have fewer distractions and poor kids do not do so well because they face problems at home. This is not completely true. Character development does not always depend on the economic status of an individual and generalizing on this topic would reflect badly on any experiment or government policy. Brooks also comes across as patronizing and sexist. A welfare state subsidizes the poor and is based on sound economic principles. To claim that subsidies and cash transfers are a wasted effort and that there should be more emphasis on character development is to encroach on the personal space of an individual.
Any government or an individual cannot encroach on another life because the person is poor or because he or she is on benefits. The example of the correlation between teen moms and affordable colleges is also downright sexist and is not based on any sound experiment. Not only this is a sexist example but it is also a bad example as it is not backs up by any solid facts. There are also a lot of reasons for teen pregnancy and an example of this sort should never be used in such a scenario. Brooks uses many examples and experiments of other sociologists and scientists to drive home his point, but at the end his article comes across as being too biased and patronizing towards the poor people. To blame a character deficit for the economic status is offensive and can set a bad precedence when it comes to decision making. Brooks’ op-ed could have been better if it was not so biased and if it had used some solid sociological principles instead of randomly quoting experiments by other people.
Works Cited:
- David Brooks. “The Character Factory.”The Opinion Pages.n.p.1 August.2014.Web.3 November.2014
- Reeves. V. Richard. “The New Politics of Character.” Brookings.edu. 2014. Web. 3 Nov. 2014.
