We are all patchwork, and of such an unformed and diverse composition
that each part, each moment, plays its role. And one finds as much
difference between us and ourselves, as between us and others.
Montaigne
A twelve-year-old student had been bullying a younger boy on
the school bus. When confronted with his bullying, he dissolved
into tears and said it was not fair that only he was being blamed for
something others also did. I recounted this story to a colleague, who
commented,“So it’s just a front, then.” But was the boy basically a bully
putting on a vulnerable exterior, or basically a softie putting on a tough
exterior? Which statement depicts his ‘true’ character?
Is there such a thing as the real person, fixed in orientation to
the world?
We do observe quite predictable patterns of behaviour in adults. We
experience personalities that are essentially cautious, uptight, bristly,
gentle, angry, humorous, preachy! Children too seem to possess essential
personality traits, even though our descriptions of them (compared to
adults) may seem more fluid. We teachers are often struck by how closely
our perceptions of individual children agree. Images certainly have the
potential to be rigid, but it is interesting that our images of the basic
constitution of a person can concur. More often than not, we see stability
over the years in children’s personalities. Often we despair that there has
been no change in dysfunctional traits such as one child’s resistance to
work or another’s aggressive tendencies.
Moreover, we seem to like our images of people and seek confirmation
of them, both from their actions, and from others’ descriptions.
Even when children display inconsistencies, we look for the ‘real’ person
underneath it all. We look for consistency and neatness to explain the
situation. So when a child is a bully on the bus, but kind and helpful in
class, we struggle to pigeonhole him, to settle on the final explanation.
He’s essentially X, but at times some factor Y makes him behave in
uncharacteristic ways.
How did this ‘real person’ emerge?
Adults certainly seem to display full-blown personalities, but where
did these come from? Developmental psychologists have long been
interested in the question of temperament. Temperament has two
aspects—it is thought to be genetically influenced (even newborns have
recognizable temperaments), and there are differences among newborns
on temperamental dimensions. All babies show attachment to
their caregivers, so that is not an example of temperament. But some
babies are more active than others, or some babies show more negative
emotion than others—these are examples of temperament. There seems
to be something inevitable (biological) about these early differences.
However, very quickly the environment begins to act on, and be acted
upon by the newborn’s temperamental qualities. As the years roll by,
human interactive processes can channel a few basic temperaments
into a variety of colourful personalities! Temperament evolves into
personality along pathways that now seem much less inevitable, and also
much more sensitive to context. That is, our behaviour is not always the
same across different situations. Yet repeating patterns of responding do
exist, because both genetic and environmental forces condition us to
behave in habitual ways. No wonder we are tempted to, and yet find it
difficult to, peg our twelve-year-old bully (or is it softie?).
Early personality is soon recognized, described and amplified by
others in the child’s environment. We may not see it, but we are forming
our own and each others’ personalities in subtle and ongoing ways: in
community life, in families, in offices, in intimate relationships. In
her ways of reacting to a parent, a child fashions her life along a certain trajectory. If her family’s politics are conservative, she may create
for herself a radical personality. Conversely, another child may be
broadly shaped in line with family beliefs. A father’s anxiety may be
heightened by a child’s rebelliousness, but the way he responds only
increases the rebellion and therefore his own anxiety. Or a child’s
rebelliousness may lead the parent to give in, with different consequences
for both personalities!
The picture of personality formation gets more complex and
interesting as we move further and further away from the newborn with
its simple temperamental tendencies. A peer group, a romantic interest,
a hobby, a cultivated eccentricity, a talent—there are many arenas in
which personality is formed. We adopt an interest, and want it to endure
and define who we are. It makes us feel comfortable to be describable.
‘I am not like that’, ‘I hate pink’ and ‘My favourite actor is so and so’.
We can become obsessed with these markers of personality.
Society certainly encourages us to do conscious self-definition.
Today this is true for certain sections in society, but the trend will
doubtless extend eventually to many other social groups. What is
common to all of us, regardless of our social position, is the urge to
develop a story of ourselves in which we are the heroes. This narrative
of uniqueness is enthusiastically encouraged at every turn by our
contemporary social environments. We are constantly building,
tweaking, communicating and acting out our narratives. Children’s
rooms (and adults’ homes!) are decorated with their thoughts of who
they are and who they want to be seen as. Advertisements seek to appeal
to our sense of ourselves through what we choose to buy, ‘Express Yourself through our product’, they tell us. Virtually any aspect of daily life can
become the theatre of our personality.
Increasingly, there is a feeling that developing this personality is the
key to success or happiness. An online search of the phrase ‘personality
development workshop’ yields almost a million results. Catch phrases
include ‘a better understanding of your personality’, ‘become a better
person’, ‘discover yourself ’, all of which will ‘help further shape your
personality, to make a bigger mark’.
What relationship does education have with the development of
personality?
For the purpose of this article, we are not looking at the skill- and
knowledge-building aspects of education, but rather the way education
impacts personality. A significant amount of teacher energy goes into
moulding students’ personalities, fixing the little flaws, changing the
person into a more ‘manageable type’. None of this is a part of the
organized curriculum, but there is something about bringing many
children into one space that triggers our impulse to control and contain.
Thus in most schools, a certain kind of personality is rewarded—the
obedient, polite and hardworking child. The urge to respect authority is
inculcated, but so too is ambition and looking out for oneself. In socalled
‘alternative’ schools, the attempt may be quite different—to
nurture kindness, sensitivity, responsibility. But if the struggle for the
student then becomes to define herself as kind, sensitive and responsible,
doesn’t that too turn into a kind of personality development?
In contrast, in some circles of ‘child-centred’ education, it is almost
obligatory to celebrate the unique personhood of each child! The idea
seems to be to encourage personality formation, to reinforce small
tendencies in children. In cultivating strong declared likes, dislikes,
favourites and idiosyncrasies, a stronger personality emerges. The phrase
‘individual attention’ is often used these days to characterize this kind of
education. Many parents instinctively feel this will be good for their
child, in contrast to the assembly-line approach of traditional education,
and schools accordingly advertise themselves in this vein. Students
certainly seem to reap some positive benefits from this approach. They
feel special, and this may lead to increased motivation and eventual
success. They can take control of a specific facet of their lives—becoming
part of a musical sub-culture, for example—and sustaining it to
feel secure.
Whatever the educational thrust, it seems important to pay closer
attention to the process of personality formation. It seems an essentially
benign process, but the darker undertones emerge just beneath the
surface. Catering to personality nourishes the ego and justifies an
outlook that is already essentially self-centred. There can be a profound disregard of others and the ways in which ‘we’ are actually formed by
many threads of life. There is the additional bias, that our inner package
of self-images is justified—in other words, we always have excellent
reasons for why we are the way we are! Sustaining a personality takes
an energy that can become all-absorbing. There can be a diminished
capacity to appreciate the bigger picture as the person grows up, when
the person is geared towards ‘my’ particular outlook. If billions of
humans approach their inner and outer worlds in this fashion (as is
certainly the case), the capacity for living lightly with a sense of freedom
from the tyranny of the self is massively crippled. The personal, social
and ecological consequences of this self-absorption are terrifyingly selfevident
across the planet.
Another possibility…
There is another way to look at this whole question of personality. There
is the fact that our psychological lives are shared across all humanity; we
are not uniquely trapped within our minds. A deeper reality connects
us all, humans and all other life forms. As many mystics have observed,
we are essentially empty and free within. Upon this emptiness is the
construction of our seemingly separate identities. As for the personalities
we experience in each other, just because a person’s behaviour is
repetitive and predictable does not imply that there is ‘someone inside’.
In the light of all this, how are we to live and work with the young
entrusted to us, and also with each other?
As we have seen, the child certainly comes to us with some tendencies
and dispositional habits. We will soon recognize these as patterns
of responding to situations in school. The way we respond, in turn, could
potentially crystallize these habits, so we need to watch this process of
solidification. Very soon, we will begin to describe the child to each
other, to her parents, to herself. We write long, descriptive reports of the
child each year—these are helpful and insightful, but how can we ensure
that they do not become rigidly limiting? We have to respond to
situations afresh, watching the need to fix the child as being one way or
another. Can we, as learning communities of adults and students,
experiment with both temperament and personality, not pushing for a
continuing narrative of self-definition? By watching ourselves, by being curious about the formation of identity, by wordlessly questioning our
assumptions regarding this matter, we lighten the energy of selfoccupation
that personalities generate. The personality can be seen as
rising and falling naturally, fading and swelling, as do the sights, sounds
and smells of daily life, without a centralizing power and without the
need to control the process of living. As the child grows older and more
self-aware, we could invite her to watch the need to feed the personality
as it arises and to remain interested in the question of the essential
unreality of the self.
One must clearly understand that the narrating self is none other than
the narrated stories. Apart from the stories there is nothing. Or rather, no
one […] Most people find that a shocking assertion. I’ve never
understood why. I find it quite pleasant that that’s how it is. Somehow
[…] liberating.
Pascal Mercier