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November 1993 | Volume 51 | Number 3 Character Education Pages 6-11
Thomas Lickona
Concern over the moral condition of American society is prompting a reevaluation of the school's role in teaching values.
To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
—Theodore Roosevelt
Increasing numbers of people across the ideological spectrum believe that our society is in deep moral trouble. The disheartening signs are everywhere: the breakdown of the family; the deterioration of civility in everyday life; rampant greed at a time when one in five children is poor; an omnipresent sexual culture that fills our television and movie screens with sleaze, beckoning the young toward sexual activity at ever earlier ages; the enormous betrayal of children through sexual abuse; and the 1992 report of the National Research Council that says the United States is now the most violent of all industrialized nations.
As we become more aware of this societal crisis, the feeling grows that schools cannot be ethical bystanders. As a result, character education is making a comeback in American schools.
Character education is as old as education itself. Down through history, education has had two great goals: to help people become smart and to help them become good.
Acting on that belief, schools in the earliest days of our republic tackled character education head on—through discipline, the teacher's example, and the daily school curriculum. The Bible was the public school's sourcebook for both moral and religious instruction. When struggles eventually arose over whose Bible to use and which doctrines to teach, William McGuffey stepped onto the stage in 1836 to offer his McGuffey Readers, ultimately to sell more than 100 million copies.
McGuffey retained many favorite Biblical stories but added poems, exhortations, and heroic tales. While children practiced their reading or arithmetic, they also learned lessons about honesty, love of neighbor, kindness to animals, hard work, thriftiness, patriotism, and courage.
In the 20th century, the consensus supporting character education began to crumble under the blows of several powerful forces.
Darwinism introduced a new metaphor—evolution—that led people to see all things, including morality, as being in flux.
The philosophy of logical positivism, arriving at American universities from Europe, asserted a radical distinction between facts (which could be scientifically proven) and values (which positivism held were mere expressions of feeling, not objective truth). As a result of positivism, morality was relativized and privatized—made to seem a matter of personal “value judgment,” not a subject for public debate and transmission through the schools.
In the 1960s, a worldwide rise in personalism celebrated the worth, autonomy, and subjectivity of the person, emphasizing individual rights and freedom over responsibility. Personalism rightly protested societal oppression and injustice, but it also delegitimized moral authority, eroded belief in objective moral norms, turned people inward toward self-fulfillment, weakened social commitments (for example, to marriage and parenting), and fueled the socially destabilizing sexual revolution.
Finally, the rapidly intensifying pluralism of American society (Whose values should we teach?) and the increasing secularization of the public arena (Won't moral education violate the separation of church and state?), became two more barriers to achieving the moral consensus indispensable for character education in the public schools. Public schools retreated from their once central role as moral and character educators.
The 1970s saw a return of values education, but in new forms: values clarification and Kohlberg's moral dilemma discussions. In different ways, both expressed the individualist spirit of the age. Values clarification said, don't impose values; help students choose their values freely. Kohlberg said, develop students' powers of moral reasoning so they can judge which values are better than others.
Each approach made contributions, but each had problems. Values clarification, though rich in methodology, failed to distinguish between personal preferences (truly a matter of free choice) and moral values (a matter of obligation). Kohlberg focused on moral reasoning, which is necessary but not sufficient for good character, and underestimated the school's role as a moral socializer.
In the 1990s we are seeing the beginnings of a new character education movement, one which restores “good character” to its historical place as the central desirable outcome of the school's moral enterprise. No one knows yet how broad or deep this movement is; we have no studies to tell us what percentage of schools are making what kind of effort. But something significant is afoot.
In July 1992, the Josephson Institute of Ethics called together more than 30 educational leaders representing state school boards, teachers' unions, universities, ethics centers, youth organizations, and religious groups. This diverse assemblage drafted the Aspen Declaration on Character Education, setting forth eight principles of character education.1
The Character Education Partnership was launched in March 1993, as a national coalition committed to putting character development at the top of the nation's educational agenda. Members include representatives from business, labor, government, youth, parents, faith communities, and the media. (See box, p.8.)
The last two years have seen the publication of a spate of books—such as Moral, Character, and Civic Education in the Elementary School, Why Johnny Can't Tell Right From Wrong, and Reclaiming Our Schools: A Handbook on Teaching Character, Academics, and Discipline—that make the case for character education and describe promising programs around the country. A new periodical, the Journal of Character Education, is devoted entirely to covering the field.2
Why this groundswell of interest in character education? There are at least three causes:
If current trends continue, less than half of children born today will live continuously with their own mother and father throughout childhood.... An increasing number of children will experience family break-up two or even three times during childhood.
Across the nation, principals report a dramatic rise in the aggressive, acting-out behavior characteristic of children, especially boys, who are living in single-parent families. Moreover, teachers find that many children are so upset and preoccupied by the explosive drama of their own family lives that they are unable to concentrate on such mundane matters as multiplication tables.
In the face of a deteriorating social fabric, what must character education do to develop good character in the young?
First, it must have an adequate theory of what good character is, one which gives schools a clear idea of their goals. Character must be broadly conceived to encompass the cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects of morality. Good character consists of knowing the good, desiring the good, and doing the good. Schools must help children understand the core values, adopt or commit to them, and then act upon them in their own lives.
The cognitive side of character includes at least six specific moral qualities: awareness of the moral dimensions of the situation at hand, knowing moral values and what they require of us in concrete cases, perspective-taking, moral reasoning, thoughtful decision-making, and moral self-knowledge. All these powers of rational moral thought are required for full moral maturity and citizenship in a democratic society.
People can be very smart about matters of right and wrong, however, and still choose the wrong. Moral education that is merely intellectual misses the crucial emotional side of character, which serves as the bridge between judgment and action. The emotional side includes at least the following qualities: conscience (the felt obligation to do what one judges to be right), self-respect, empathy, loving the good, self-control, and humility (a willingness to both recognize and correct our moral failings).
At times, we know what we should do, feel strongly that we should do it, yet still fail to translate moral judgment and feeling into effective moral behavior. Moral action, the third part of character, draws upon three additional moral qualities: competence (skills such as listening, communicating, and cooperating), will (which mobilizes our judgment and energy), and moral habit (a reliable inner disposition to respond to situations in a morally good way).
Once we have a comprehensive concept of character, we need a comprehensive approach to developing it. This approach tells schools to look at themselves through a moral lens and consider how virtually everything that goes on there affects the values and character of students. Then, plan how to use all phases of classroom and school life as deliberate tools of character development.
If schools wish to maximize their moral clout, make a lasting difference in students' character, and engage and develop all three parts of character (knowing, feeling, and behavior), they need a comprehensive, holistic approach. Having a comprehensive approach includes asking, Do present school practices support, neglect, or contradict the school's professed values and character education aims?
In classroom practice, a comprehensive approach to character education calls upon the individual teacher to:
Besides making full use of the moral life of classrooms, a comprehensive approach calls upon the school as a whole to:
Whether character education will take hold in American schools remains to be seen. Among the factors that will determine the movement's long-range success are:
“Character is destiny,” wrote the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. As we confront the causes of our deepest societal problems, whether in our intimate relationships or public institutions, questions of character loom large. As we close out a turbulent century and ready our schools for the next, educating for character is a moral imperative if we care about the future of our society and our children.
Many ASCD members are demonstrating an interest in character development through participation in the new Character Education Partnership, Inc. A nonprofit, nonpartisan organization incorporated in February 1993, the Partnership is a broad coalition of educators, business people, faith community leaders, and others who seek to develop civic virtue and moral character in our youth.
The Partnership, the result of a meeting funded by The Johnson Foundation and sponsored by ASCD with Princeton Project 55, brought together key national education organizations to recommit themselves to character education. The Partnership believes that character education is an essential element of successful school reform because it helps reduce negative student behavior, improve academic performance, and prepare young people to be responsible citizens.
The Partnership is beginning to provide services that include a clearinghouse on character education materials, an annual conference, and materials and expertise on how to develop a consensus on core values at the community level.
ASCD is a charter member of the Partnership, holds a seat on its Board of Directors and Executive Committee, and is currently leasing the Partnership office space as part of ASCD's efforts to collaborate with other organizations toward mutual goals.
ASCD's own interest in character education dates back to an emphasis on values in the 1950s. In the late 1980s, ASCD began publishing books and articles on character education, including How to Plan a Program for Moral Education, by Merrill Harmin, and the May 1993 Update focused on character education programs. The 1993 ASCD Annual Conference included a strand on moral issues, and the 1994 conference will have a strand on values and beliefs. ASCD has also supported moral education through its resolutions.
For more information, contact John Martin, Executive Director, The Character Education Partnership, at (703) 549-9110; or Diane Berreth, Deputy Executive Director, ASCD, at (703) 549-9110, ext. 305, 1250 N. Pitt St., Alexandria, VA 22314-1453.
—Diane Berreth
Benninga, J.S., ed. (1991). Moral, Character, and Civic Education in the Elementary School. New York: Teachers College Press.
Hewlett, S. (1991). When the Bough Breaks: The Cost of Neglecting Our Children. New York: Basic Books.
Kikuchi, J. (Fall 1988). “Rhode Island Develops Successful Intervention Program for Adolescents.” National Coalition Against Sexual Assault Newsletter.
National Research Council. (1992). Understanding and Preventing Violence. Washington, D.C.: National Research Council.
Whitehead, B. D. (April 1993) “Dan Quayle Was Right.” The Atlantic 271: 47–84.
Wynne, E. A., and K. Ryan. (1992). Reclaiming Our Schools: A Handbook on Teaching Character, Academics, and Discipline. New York: Merrill.
1 For a copy of the Aspen Declaration and the issue of Ethics magazine reporting on the conference, write the Josephson Institute of Ethics, 310 Washington Blvd., Suite 104, Marina del Rey, CA 90292.
2 For information write Mark Kann, Editor, The Journal of Character Education, Jefferson Center for Character Education, 202 S. Lake Ave., Suite 240, Pasadena, CA 91101.
3 For documentation of these youth trends, see T. Lickona, (1991), Educating for Character:How Our Schools Can Teach Respect and Responsibility (New York: Bantam Books).
4 Facing History and Ourselves is an 8-week Holocaust curriculum for 8th graders. Write Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation, 25 Kennard Rd., Brookline, MA 02146.
5 The Heartwood Ethics Curriculum for Children uses multicultural children's literature to teach universal values. Write The Heartwood Institute, 12300 Perry Highway, Wexford, PA 15090.
Thomas Lickona is a developmental psychologist and Professor, Education Department, State University of New York at Cortland, Cortland, NY 13045. He is author of Educating for Character: How Our Schools Can Teach Respect and Responsibility (New York: Bantam Books, 1991.)
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