' Mr. Hundert: Molding Someone's Character

How do we mold someone’s character? In the movie, Mr. Hundert believes that it is his ultimate responsibility as an educator to mold the characters of his students. He asks his students, "How will history remember you?" and teaches his students "Great ambition and conquest without contribution is without significance." He encourages his students to walk with the great men who have walked before them. In the classroom, like in the movie, we were taught a lot of information, ideas, religion, culture, science, mathematics, philosophy, principles, to include history and the life’s of great men like Aristotle, Aristophanes, Socrates, Plato, Cicero, national heroes and others whose life during their time exemplified the highest standard of statesmanship, of civic virtue, character and conviction. This are the people that we will look up to or to become our model, not only to admire but as an inspiration and as guide in
our life’s journey. In a documentary on the film, Roberta Ann Johnson states, “The William Hunderts of the world remind us of the core values of ancient Greece and Rome, remind us of virtue and civic responsibility. They remind us of that in the classroom, and that alone make them worth knowing and worth having in a society.” The purpose of the school, St.
Benedictus School for Boys, is theoretically to mold them into leaders. Hundert tells them "a man's character is his fate". But more truth is contained in the words of a U.S. senator whose son is in trouble at the school: "You, sir, will not mold my son! I will mold him." The troubled student is Sedgewick Bell, smart, but interrupts the class and disrespects the teacher. Despite all of the molding and shaping St. Benedictus has performed on its students, the other boys of course idolize Sedgewick. Roger Ebert, a film critic states, “Strange how, among the young, there is nothing sillier than a man who wants you to think hard and do well, and nothing more attractive than a contemporary who celebrates irony and ignorance.” In the movie, although the entire class may be engaging in pranks with Sedgwick, they are also impacted by Mr. Hundert and continue to excel academically, a scene shows, that the students were actually absorbing Mr. Hundert’s lessons and learning as everyone besides Sedgwick can recite the forty
emperors.
Abraham Maslow is the major proponent of the humanistic theory and claims that a person’s personality is molded by his attempt to achieve a set of human needs that are hierarchically arranged. Because of the hierarchical arrangement, Maslow emphasizes that a person cannot fully attain self-actualization without satisfying the lower order needs. The hierarchy is composed of the following: Physiologic needs (oxygen, food air), safety and security (shelter), loving and belonging (family, relationships), Self-esteem (self-perception), and self-actualization (highest form, where a person realizes his full potential).
Molding someone’s character therefore, includes several factors, first, heredity, which includes constitutional biological and physiological factors, second, environmental, where he comes to have moral ideas, social attitudes and interest and third, psychological factors, which include motives, acquired interests, attitudes, will and character, and intellectual capacities.

“Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever.” What are your thoughts?
Comedian Ron White: "If your eyes go bad, you can have LASIK surgery, and they can give you 20/20 vision at any age. If your hearing starts to fail, they can put a device in your ear that'll make you able to hear as good as you could the day you were born. But let me tell you something folks -- you can't fix stupid. There's not a pill you can take. There's not a class you can go to. Stupid is forever."
Ignorance is defined in Webster, as a condition or quality of being ignorant; lack of knowledge, education or unawareness. However, if after being informed one still adheres to the same flawed reasoning, one is stupid. According to Steve Edwards, who teach natural horsemanship to students, “ Few things are more rewarding than to teach an ignorant, but curious, person. Few things are more frustrating and ultimately futile than trying to teach a stupid, arrogant person.”

Do we want to live a good life, an examined life, or do we want to be successful at any cost? We want to live a good life, an examined life. Socrates states, “I say that it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others, for the unexamined life is not worth living” (Apology 38a). Socrates sets moral philosophy, for him, the goal of life is to find “virtue” and “the good” in order to improve the soul, and then act in accordance with these findings. A person should reflect, evaluate his personal thoughts, perceptions, feelings, opinions and beliefs in order to have a clear conscience and to live a virtuous life.