Teaching Dignity

We are leaving the hospital in a few hours with our new boy, and since Sunday I have been thinking about raising children, which always fosters a kind of enthusiastic anxiety. This morning as I am reading some of my regulars on the internet, I have been acutely aware of what it means to be a good person and been wondering how I might help my kids become good people. Fancy that I came across two nice little editorials that articulated well some of those traits that are not inherent but can be developed by an individual from an early age (daunting thought for a father). Both writers I have invoked before on the blog, not only because I think they are good writers but also because they are clear thinkers, whatever their politics or preferences may be. And you would do much better to actually read these pieces than read the rest of this entry.

The first was David Brooks's editorial on dignity, which emphasizes that a certain amount of artifice is necessary for functioning well. This fact is well-acknowledged in some of the materials that I am reading for my own research: conduct books and behavior manuals have been basically the same since the twelfth century, and most of the advice given then still applies today despite the regular scorn that current culture heaps upon them.

The second is from Roger Ebert, whose review of Transformers 2 caused a maelstorm of resentment from the philistines, and in response he defends intelligence and taste as markers of our teachability and curiosity, key traits of a full person.

These fortuitous editorials seem significant this morning for new parents, not only because I want to have a hand in teaching Calvin dignity, curiosity, teachability, and intelligence, but also because these are calls for my own renewal: dignity has never come naturally for me, although Brooks's point is that it doesn't come naturally for anybody, and curiosity and intelligence are characteristics I occasionally find lacking in my own activities, but hopefully I am teachable enough to show my kids how to acquire these traits by struggling to acquire them myself.