Forming genuine courage is not an individual project: A reflection on guided practice in developing character
Introduction
The virtue of courage can be described easily enough. It’s a virtue that concerns how we face threats or dangers. The courageous person faces them well, enduring in a commitment to what is good and defending it wisely. There are two vices flanking courage: cowardice and recklessness. In the face of real threats, the cowardly person abandons their commitment to the good, recoiling in fear and doing everything they can to protect themselves. A reckless person attacks every threat indiscriminately, without a sense of who and what they will lose through their aggressive self-assertion.
It’s also true that there are easy ways to describe how we can become courageous. Aristotle notes that we become “brave by doing brave acts.” Act like a coward, become a coward; act recklessly, become a reckless person.
But is it really as simple as this sounds? Is that all there is to this process?
Do brave things, become brave?
If courage involves facing fears well, then practicing over time has to be part of the story of becoming courageous. I can’t imagine how we could develop courage without individual practice. But when character educators talk about practicing toward virtue — that is, when we talk about habituation — we sometimes wave our hands in ways that don’t adequately convey the complexity of the task. Take up daily practices, and soon they’ll become habits. These habits, somehow, make us better versions of ourselves. Small routines and little habits — that’s it. Do that, and you’ll become virtuous.
But habituation is not that simple. It’s more than adding a few daily tasks and making them into habits. It is a social practice.
Consider an analogy. I once had a piano teacher who told me that my biggest flaw as a pianist was how I was practicing. I had just played a piece riddled with enough mistakes to draw an audible chuckle — not my favorite moment as a student and probably not her best moment as a teacher. After recovering from the hilarity of it all, she told me that my biggest flaw was that I practiced too quickly — so quickly that I was creating patterns that were hard to overcome in a performance. Performances add pressures that aren’t present in practice. When we experience these pressures, our practice patterns show up. I was practicing in ways that made mistakes in a performance more likely. If I happened to get the piece right on an occasion (as I often did in the practice session right before the lesson), it was mostly luck. The bad patterns were deep within. The pressure of performance brought them to the surface.
“You need to slow down,” she said. “Slow every part of your practice down. Practice at a tempo where you can play each note and each phrase perfectly: no wrong notes, no wrong fingerings, no flaws in musicality. When you think you’re ready to speed up, resist that urge and play it again slowly. Practice doesn’t make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect.” Then, she asked me to play the right hand by itself at the slowest pace you could imagine.
Not long after that, I quit formal piano lessons. It’s the only “W” on my undergraduate transcript. My eighteen-year-old ego couldn’t recover from the laughter. But she wasn’t wrong (even if she was wrong to laugh in my general direction). I was not practicing well; I needed help.
Virtue development and guided practicing
There is an important lesson in this story for understanding how we develop courage (or any virtue). I cannot become courageous without practicing courage in the face of threats. I have to do that — no one else can do it for me. But unguided practicing is risky — I may develop patterns that ultimately inhibit the expression of virtuous courage. I might practice in ways that make it more likely for me to act in reckless or cowardly ways. If I get it right on an occasion, especially when there are relatively few pressures, this is not an indication that I’ll get it right when pressure mounts. In all likelihood, increased pressure will surface patterns that make virtuous performance more difficult.
Unguided practicing is risky — I may develop patterns that ultimately inhibit the expression of virtuous courage. I might practice in ways that make it more likely for me to act in reckless or cowardly ways.
I need guidance in my practice. I need someone to help me to slow down (or whatever the appropriate analog is in this case). I need others who are more mature than I am to help me see what it means to practice courage well. I need them to guide me with patience and, perhaps, some appropriate laughter at faltering attempts so that I develop the sensitivities, patterns of attention, feelings, thoughts, and motivations that enable me to respond appropriately to the real threats I will inevitably face. This is the only way I will develop patterns and tendencies to act with genuine courage in defense of the good.
I need guidance in my practice… I need others who are more mature than I am to help me see what it means to practice courage well.
It may be true that we “become brave by doing brave things,” but the simplicity of the expression hides the difficulty of the task. If guided practicing is crucial even in contexts of skill development where there are controlled environments that enable routines for practice, how much more important is it in the development of traits that dispose a person to respond well in novel circumstances or in contexts where one cannot practice specific routines. Unguided practicing is not sufficient to form us for virtuous courage. We need instructors to help shape our patterns of training and to teach us how to practice well.
Unguided practicing is not sufficient to form us for virtuous courage. We need instructors to help shape our patterns of training and to teach us how to practice well.
Unlike formal piano instruction, there is no way to quit. To be human is to face threats — and we need help to face them with courage. To be formed in the virtue of courage, we need guided practicing. Habituation in virtue is not a simple, individual affair; it is a social practice.
This is the first reflection of a multi-part series focusing on social dimensions of character formation. If you have thoughts, questions, or comments about this or future parts of this series, reach out to our Director of Collective Learning, Aaron D. Cobb, at to carry on the conversation.
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