Is character a thing that can be taught?

Do you know what drama workshops, scout leaders, your parents or guardians, the Pope, every teacher on earth, drug intervention sessions, your forefathers' military leaders, and a Lakota sweat lodge attendee all have in common? They have all pondered that same question!

This immediately delineates the need to first DEFINE "character", only then to determine if is indeed even teachable at all. Here goes

Now let's first single out the aforementioned drama workshops. Their concern is teaching and developing a different version of "character", but you get the drift. The word "character" has two connotations. As you already know, in modern usage there is a tendency to emphasize individuality or distinctiveness and merge "character" with "personality."

These days you may witness it phrased a bit more poorly like "what a freakin' whacko", but the meaning is the same as "what a character" was years ago. You could also combine it as the ever popular "What a freakin' character!" (I'd take that last one as a compliment. Why not? It sounds like I've attained a rank within the classification of "character")

For the purpose of this article, let's consider both meanings, and their interchangeability. We all have both definitions floating within us. That is: "A collection of morals and values" versus "a person's idiosyncratic mannerisms, social gestures, or habits of dress." As for those folks (class clowns and the like) you know who you'd throw into the less noble of the definitions, who knows? Perhaps they may end up attending the aforementioned drama workshop and still wind up on the "Characters with Character" list, posted on a bulletin board somewhere just past the Pearly gates.

As we keep both descriptions of "character" in mind, I'm reminded of a friend of mine whose vividly lived up to both definitions since I met him in the early 1980's. He's from Massachusetts but let's call him "Tex." I'd love to call him "Mass" but he'd take offense at that. Not because he's a Catholic, but because he used to be fat. Mass was his enemy; or perhaps the end result of his lifestyle of that time overriding his urge to possess greater character? I suppose what I'm insinuating is that my friend was once a character still seeking character; but we were young, and youth itself will very often trump many character-building efforts. To top it off, not only were we young; we were young American G.I's stationed in (then West)

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