The way in which a society can transmit "character" from one generation to the next

Very thought-provoking article by Libby Purves in today's Times about the way in which a society can transmit "character" from one generation to the next.

Character means consistency of behaviour, and integrity means that all the elements of a personality are integrated one with another.

However I think Libby Purves is expecting too much if she is hoping that teachers are going to instill good characters into future generations.  Teachers are too often lacking in estimable character themselves (lazy, hypocritical, bullying, dishonest even with themselves, uncaring, self-important - I am basing this on the teachers I encountered at my own "bog-standard" comp).  Joan McVittie, Head of Woodside High School in White Hart Lane in north London, openly said on the Today programme in September 2011 that she ignored the law as it related to school assemblies, hardly an example of good character for the young people in her care.

Good character can primarily be transmitted in families, but traditional family structures are no longer as ubiquitous as they once were and the new forms of family life are often too transitory for children to be brought up consistently.

Good character can also be refined through the institutions (formal and informal, major and minor), but many (perhaps most) of these have become corrupt.

Society needs some kind of catharsis to purge it of corruption, bad character and lack of integrity (the Second World War was an accidental catharsis that established good character for the following forty or fifty years and echoes still today as the standard we wish people to aspire too).