Let’s start with the fundamental idea that virtue can best be taught by example.
We can spell out character values such as courage, kindness, and responsibility for the young, but unless they see those definitions in action, the words will have little meaning. Former U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett described this disparity as “the futility of precept in the absence of example.” He then recounts this sadly ironic incident: “More than once I’ve been in schools where they are teaching a ‘virtue of the week.’ In one such school, the virtue of the week was honesty. There had been a test on honesty, and the teacher told me that she had had to prepare a second test because she had caught so many students cheating on the first.”
