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The
Case for Character Education in
Public Schools
By
Dr. Kevin Ryan
It may seem odd to
some that a case has to be made for developing
our children's characters in school. However,
having labored long in the educational
vineyard with teachers, district leaders,
and parents, and drawing on our own studies
and surveys as well as those of others,
we know that many teachers and administrators
are quite ambivalent about getting the
schools involved in character education.
In fact, many are vehemently opposed to
it. Thus the need to make a case.
The first argument in favor of character
education in the schools can be called
the argument from intellectual authorities.
Many of the world's great thinkers from
the West, and from the East, have been
strong advocates of giving conscious attention
to character formation and focusing our
human energies on living worthy lives.
Even a casual dipping into the writings
of Plato and Aristotle, as an example,
confirms their deep preoccupation with
questions such as "What is a good
and noble life?" "What do people
need to be truly happy?" and "What
do people need to keep from self-destruction?"
Broadly speaking, their answer to these
questions is to know what a good life
is and to work to conform oneself to that
ideal-an educational project.
Socrates long ago stated that the mission
of education is to help people become
both smart and good. In recent decades
the second part of that definition has
suffered in American schools and colleges.
In the midst of what has been called a
knowledge explosion, and faced with increasing
questions about what in this noisy, modern
world is the good, educators have blinked.
They have argued that, given this overload
of information, the best the schools can
do is to teach students how to access
it all. The focus, then, has turned to
process skills-reading, writing, and data
storage and retrieval. Although these
skills are important, this emphasis on
process has left to others the teaching
of our culture's core moral values.
Unfortunately,
that part of the educator's mission has
been taken up by some enormously talented
and persuasive "teachers"-the
popular media and the hard-sellers of
our consumer society. Meanwhile, educators
have too often left students adrift in
a swampy sea of moral relativism and ethical
anesthesia. In contrast, great educators
of the past, from the ancients to Maria
Montessori, knew that people need to learn
to be good and that their schooling must
therefore contribute to their becoming
so. Thomas Huxley wrote in the nineteenth
century, "Perhaps the most valuable
result of all education is the ability
to make yourself do the thing you have
to do, when it ought to be done, whether
you like it or not; it is the first lesson
that ought to be learned." This is
not all there is to character education,
but it is a good start-training our will.
Such demanding messages do not fit well
with the feel-good theories in vogue in
many school systems today, however.
The second argument in favor of character
education is that of our nation's founders.
This, too, is a reasoned argument from
authority. Those who carved out the United
States from the British crown risked their
lives, their families, and their fortunes
with their seditious rebellion. Most of
them were classically educated in philosophy
and political science, so they knew that
history's great thinkers had generally
held democracy in low regard. Democracy
contains within itself the seeds of its
own destruction, they had said: allowing
people to, in effect, be their own rulers
would lead to corruption such as mobacracy,
with the many preying on the few and political
leaders pandering to the citizenry's hunger
for bread. The founders' writings, particularly
those of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison,
John and Abigail Adams, and Benjamin Franklin,
are filled with admonitions that the new
republic must make education a high priority.
They stressed education not merely for
economic reasons but also because the
form of government they were adopting
was (and remains) at heart a moral compact
among people. To work as it should, democracy
demands a virtuous people. Jefferson wrote
about the need for education in order
to raise "the mass of people to the
high ground of moral responsibility necessary
for their own safety and orderly government"-to
give them the ability to participate in
a democratic society. The founders called
for schools where the citizens would learn
the civic virtues needed to maintain this
intriguing but fragile human invention
called democracy.
The third argument is the law-based argument.
In fact, however, this is more of a "reminder"
than an argument since most state codes
of education clearly direct schools to
teach the moral values that support democratic
life. Still, some educators are nervous
about character education because they
fear it may run contrary to students'
rights to free expression and religion,
and therefore schools could be sued for
their efforts. Visions of subpoena-waving
lawyers dance in their heads. There is
little or no basis for such worries. The
current nervousness among school administrators
appears to have resulted from community
uproars and a few suits in the 1970s over
value-free moral education programs. Still,
the state codes of education, which direct
the operations of our schools, overwhelmingly
support actively teaching the core moral
values that provide the social glue of
civic life. No state codes of education
or standards outlaw, forbid, or in any
way discourage character education.
Fourth is the vox populi argument. In
addition to the world's great thinkers,
our nation's founders, and the law, we
have another source of guidance in American
society: public opinion. We are clearly
the most polled people on the face of
the earth. We are polled about everything
from the popularity of TV personalities
to the sex lives of politicians. However
although polling can get out of hand,
it does give politicians and other decision-makers
a way to understand what we, the people,
are thinking.
For many years now, the Gallup organization
and other polling companies have been
asking the American people about our views
on the performance of the public schools
and related topics. Our answers do not
paint a pretty picture. Americans are
not pleased with American schools. Polls
reveal major dissatisfaction with the
lack of discipline in our classrooms.
Apparently, people believe the schools
are disordered and make relatively few
demands on our children. Against this
is the 90 percent or more of adults who
support our public schools' teaching honesty
(97 percent), democracy (93 percent),
acceptance of people of different races
and ethnic backgrounds (91 percent), patriotism
(91 percent), caring for friends and family
members (91 percent), moral courage (91
percent), and the Golden Rule (90 percent).
This voice of the people, added to the
support provided by the wisdom of the
past and our laws, should provide educators
with the confidence and public trust they
need to energetically engage in character
education.
The fifth and final argument in favor
of character education is the inevitability
argument. Simply stated, this argument
asserts that children cannot enter the
educational system at age four and stay
until age sixteen or seventeen without
having their character and their moral
values profoundly affected by the experience.
Children are impressionable, and the events
of life in school affect what they think,
feel, believe, and do. All sorts of questions
bubble up in children's lives: Who is
a good person and who isn't? What is a
worthy life? What should I do in this
or that situation? Sometimes their questions
are never even asked out loud. Clearly,
the answers children arrive at are heavily
influenced by their experiences in school,
with their teachers, their peers, and
the material they study.
We are witnessing the schools' reawakening
to what was historically one of their
most essential tasks, the formation of
character among the children in its care.
There are many signs of this reawakening
and many reasons for it. Among them is
our increasingly clear need to build a
society shaped by citizens who know, are
committed to, and can act on the key moral
values and principles on which our democracy
is based. Another reason is the frightening
statistics about crime, poor academic
achievement, promiscuity, substance abuse,
and sheer unhappiness among the young.
Another is the very real unpleasantness
of running schools without a positive
ethical environment. Schools that are
mere sites of training and information
transfer, where students know they are
simply compelled to attend, are barren
and sterile places. Teachers and administrators
who chose a career in education to help
young people get a good start in life
regularly report feeling burnt out and
disillusioned by the hassle and bureaucratic
drudgery of it all. The answer to these
ills is character education. EM
Kevin Ryan is president of the Center
for the Advancement of Ethics and Character
at Boston University and previously served
as the president of the Character Education
Partnership located in Washington, DC.
He is the co-author of Those Who
Can, Teach, Publisher, Houghton
Mifflin Company.
The above article is condensed from a
chapter in Dr. Ryan's new book Building
Character in Schools.
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