' Mr. Hundert: Molding Someone's Character

How do we mold someone’s character? In the movie, Mr. Hundert believes that it is his ultimate responsibility as an educator to mold the characters of his students. He asks his students, "How will history remember you?" and teaches his students "Great ambition and conquest without contribution is without significance." He encourages his students to walk with the great men who have walked before them. In the classroom, like in the movie, we were taught a lot of information, ideas, religion, culture, science, mathematics, philosophy, principles, to include history and the life’s of great men like Aristotle, Aristophanes, Socrates, Plato, Cicero, national heroes and others whose life during their time exemplified the highest standard of statesmanship, of civic virtue, character and conviction. This are the people that we will look up to or to become our model, not only to admire but as an inspiration and as guide in
Benedictus School for Boys, is theoretically to mold them into leaders. Hundert tells them "a man's character is his fate". But more truth is contained in the words of a U.S. senator whose son is in trouble at the school: "You, sir, will not mold my son! I will mold him." The troubled student is Sedgewick Bell, smart, but interrupts the class and disrespects the teacher. Despite all of the molding and shaping St. Benedictus has performed on its students, the other boys of course idolize Sedgewick. Roger Ebert, a film critic states, “Strange how, among the young, there is nothing sillier than a man who wants you to think hard and do well, and nothing more attractive than a contemporary who celebrates irony and ignorance.” In the movie, although the entire class may be engaging in pranks with Sedgwick, they are also impacted by Mr. Hundert and continue to excel academically, a scene shows, that the students were actually absorbing Mr. Hundert’s lessons and learning as everyone besides Sedgwick can recite the forty