Book review: ‘The Fabric of Character’ is a book we need right now
We grow up hearing about “character.”
It’s what others we admire have and we need to get. Like obscenity, we can’t define it, but we know it when we see it. Or do we?
“It builds character,” a burly high school coach might say to an athlete before telling him or her to just “walk it off.” It’s what makes you stronger – if it doesn’t kill you. It’s what you should look for in people who want to be our leaders.
But it doesn’t take long to realize some of what we’ve been told about character is worth as much as what comes out of the back of the bull. Sports can build character; it can also give you a concussion that ruins your intellectual future. What doesn’t kill you doesn’t always make you stronger; it hurts deeply and can cause debilitating depression or a spiral into a life of crime. Being a Boy Scout isn’t what it used to be. As for our leaders? A convicted felon could be president of the United States next January.
Which is why “The Fabric of Character” by Anne Snyder is one of the books we need right now.
A product of the Philanthropy Roundtable, this aims to give donors to charitable organizations a map to define the groups that really help sculpt character – the kind that improves society, not just wins games or elections.
Now, this is a complex issue that cannot be exhaustively examined in a 141-page guidebook. But Snyder, through tight writing that never strays from the point, does give an overview of the true building blocks of character. She also provides vivid examples of organizations and institutions across the U.S. that are busy forging meaningful work in the lives of children, adults at the neighborhood and community levels.
The timing couldn’t be better, as we face an increasingly fragmented, divided and isolated society. The withdrawal from community sociologist Robert Putnam described at the beginning of this century in his book “Bowling Alone” is becoming all too true, and the loneliness is eroding the very concept of what character once means.
But Americans are fighting back. “Across multiple domains, from education to the marketplace, to a millennial generation’s longings and demands, there’s a kind of humanistic renaissance going on, a renaissance in which the needs of the whole person are getting a fresh hearing,” Snyder writes in her introduction. “You might call the whole person revolution.”
Morality is at the heart of character. But even then, Snyder deals with it in more factual and social science terms without being preachy. It’s a cold, hard look at the elements that make people care.
Within a dry, methodical approach, Snyder serves up juicy revelations of people coming together to forge connections and improve the lives of those around them.
We learn of the early childhood school in Indianapolis that instills critical thinking in its students, and graduates youth from all socio-economic and cultural backgrounds recruited by the area’s top high schools.
We go inside the second-chance group in Salt Lake City who helps people with lengthy criminal sheets and heavy addictions rebuild productive lives.
We follow a pastor who goes back home to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, only to find his childhood neighborhood infested with crime and isolation and how he helped bring it back to its former pride, safety, and inclusive community.
We see what happens when Wake Forest University in North Carolina dared to ask what a college education is really supposed to do, then proceeded to answer it in a way that went beyond classes, grades and dissertations. The questions eventually became, “How do we train leaders not just to make a living but to live?”
What story about character would be complete without a thorough essay on the Boy Scouts? Meant more as a lesson than a spotlight, we see a group that once defined high moral character lose its grasp with disinterest and falling numbers, leaving an organization tied in its own knots.
This is not only a book for donors who give money to big causes. The information within these pages will be helpful to anyone who wants to shape their community, even if one as small as their own family in their own living room.
Parents will find information to help their children become complete, caring adults (hint: ground those helicopters). Teachers will learn about how they can help the difficult students in front of them conquer their learning difficulties. Administrators will find out how they can support their teachers. Cities will learn how to make their streets more welcoming.
Even a few coaches might realize it’s them, not sports, who truly build character.