HONOR, INTEGRITY, AND CIVILITY
“Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.”
Thursday, May 8, 2025
The question of how to inculcate moral virtue in the characters of the young has occupied the minds of moralists in every age. Moral instruction by precept, where the rules of right conduct are authoritatively dictated, has been an enduring approach, but long experience has shown that except in the relatively few cases of unusually tractable young people, its efficacy has never been great; bare rules of behavior being, in the words of one moralist, like instructions written in the sand on a beach and swept away by the first waves of youthful impulse or thoughtless indulgence that wash over them, and thus lost to the purpose for which they were intended. And this approach fails in even greater measure when the preceptor does not practice what he teaches.
Most, therefore, aver that the power of personal example is more effective than mere formal instruction. Sir Philip Sidney wrote of Alexander the Great that he “received more bravery of mind from the pattern of Achilles, than by hearing the definition of fortitude.” And from Albert Einstein we have that, “the example of great and pure characters is the only thing that can produce fine ideas and noble deeds.”
The spokespersons representing the W&L of today claim, with notable frequency and show of pride, a devoted campus allegiance to the values of “honor, integrity, and civility.” But it is a fair question whether these values are presumed to be maintained “by precept,” or rather derive their force and vitality from the examples of persons in whose lives the values have been palpably manifest.
There can be little doubt that for past generations of W&L students the latter was the case during their student days, the virtues of “honor, integrity, and civility” having taken root in the campus culture of W&L from the powerful influences of George Washington and Robert E. Lee, with Lee imposing the “code of the gentleman” as the standard of moral conduct expected of Washington College students, on and off the campus.
But in recent years the W&L administration and Board of Trustees have acted to remove from sight and to suppress the influence of George Washington and Robert E. Lee, as by taking Lee’s name off the Chapel, by blocking the Valentine Recumbent Statue of Lee from view by Chapel audiences, by scrubbing the images of both men from W&L diplomas, and by sequestering other campus memorabilia relating to the two men in a new museum, outside the main flow of campus life.
It appears, then, that the acclaimed campus values of “honor, integrity, and civility” have been cut loose from their roots in Lee’s and Washington’s examples, and now float about the campus untethered, orphaned as it were, as only the nice sounding but impotent residue of the moral heritage bequeathed to the school by its namesakes, and which must now be supposed to rely for its maintenance on “instruction by precept.”
These observations raise the fear that W&L’s traditional success at endowing its students with high moral character is in danger of withering away, like a plant torn from the soil that nourished it; this being the consequence of rushing heedlessly into alignment with an ill-conceived woke ideology now rejected by the majority of Americans, with the result that the most valuable and distinctive component of a W&L education is being lost. What IS most valuable is stated by George Washington himself in a December 5, 1790, letter to his young nephew, George Steptoe Washington, in which he writes that “a good moral character is the first essential in a man … It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned but virtuous.”
It will be by restoring the reputations of George Washington and Robert E. Lee to their true value and dignity on the W&L campus that we can again claim for “honor, integrity, and civility” their former strength and authenticity, and it is toward this end that TGR is advancing and presses on with unrelenting vigor.
To learn more about The Redoubt’s emphasis on honor, integrity, and civility, check out our updated “About Us” page and stay tuned for next week’s podcast about the Honor System’s vitality.
Respectfully,
Kenneth G. Everett, ‘64