Martin Luther King said: “Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of education” and Theodore Roosevelt said: “To educate a person in the mind but not in the morals is to educate a menace to society”. Clearly, character education is exceptionally important for our children, and this is an aspect that we, at Wetpups, are trying to emphasise as we realise how essential it is for our boys’ future success.

Our mission, vision and values point to the importance of character development in growing our boys to become the best they can be for the world. The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues at Birmingham University has an excellent way of summarising the important values and virtues that we need to instill in our boys for their character development. They break them into four different categories that make a great deal of sense:

Civic: service and volunteering; neighbourliness; citizenship; community awareness and spirit; social justice

Moral: courage; compassion; gratitude; honesty and Integrity; justice; humility or modesty; self-discipline; tolerance; respect

Performance: resilience; perseverance; grit and determination; leadership; teamwork; motivation or ambition; confidence

Intellectual: reflection; focus; critical thinking; reason and judgement; curiosity; communication; resourcefulness; open-mindedness

In line with developing our boys’ characters, we have decided that our theme for the year will be “Growing Goodness”, and to assist us in this we will use the Fruit of the Spirit as highlighted in Galatians Chapter 5. There are nine fruit of the spirit that Paul speaks about: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.