| Educating For Character:
A 12-Point Comprehensive Approach
We
become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising
self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage.
Aristotle
If
we want our children to possess the traits of character we most admire,
we need to teach them what those traits are.
William Bennett
- Among leading industrialized nations, the United
States has by far the highest murder rate for 15- to 24-year-old males
-- seven times higher than Canada's and 40 times higher than Japan's.
- From 1965 to 1990, the arrest rate for all juvenile
violent crime in the United States rose more than 300%. This trend cut
across gender: Among girls, for example, arrests for aggravated assault
more than tripled.
- From 1978 to 1988, according to FBI statistics, rape
arrests for 13- and 14-year-old males nearly doubled.
Staggering as these statistics are, they pale by comparison
to the stories of youth violence that daily fill the news:
A ninth-grader in Massachusetts lured a classmate into the
woods and then bludgeoned him to death with a baseball bat. He later told
friends the wanted to "see what it felt like to commit a murder."
A 13-year-old boy in a western New York village led a 4-year-old
boy into the woods, sodomized him with a stick, and strangled and beat
him to death.
A 5-year-old boy who watched Friday the 13th and Nightmare
on Elm Street on television, talked incessantly about the movie characters
and their gory exploits, then stabbed a 2 1/2-year-old girl 17 times with
a kitchen knife.
A group of young teenage boys and girls hung four cats by
their tails from a tree branch and then set fire to them. They later told
police that they "had nothing else to do."
Why this plague of youth violence, increasingly marked
by a near-total lack of conscience or remorse? There are clearly many
causes. Among them: the decline of the two biological-parent family, especially
the dramatic increase in fatherless families (the single strongest predictor
of juvenile crime); poor parenting in general, resulting in millions of
children growing up without even the most minimal sense of right and wrong;
the physical and sexual abuse of children (accompanied by increasing frequency
of older children sexually abusing younger children); the scourge of drugs;
the desire for money and material things (cited by teens on a recent PBS
special as a major motive for violent crime by youth); the desire for
"respect" that leads many young people to carry weapons and use them at
the slightest provocation; an across-the-board decline in respect for
the value and sanctity of life, born and preborn; the saturation of ever
more explicit violence in the media (television, movies, music, video
games); and, I would add, the neglect of values and character education
in our schools.
A Crisis of Character
To understand fully the problem of youth violence -- and to
know where to look for solutions -- we have to look at the bigger picture.
The surge of youthful violence is the most dramatic manifestation, but only
one sign, of a much larger problem: a national crisis of character.
Even top high school students," ran a recent Associated
Press story, "display a startling lack of responsibility about pregnancy,
AIDS, and drunken driving," and "78 percent admit to cheating in school."
The article went on to report the details of this sorry ethical profile
of academically successful American high school students (those with at
least a B average), as revealed by a nationwide survey carried out by
Who's Who Among American High School Students.
Other studies have turned up similarly discouraging results:
- In a survey cited by the Boston Globe, more than half
of ninth-graders in an affluent suburb said they saw nothing wrong with
stealing a compact disc or keeping money found in a lost wallet.
- Almost six of ten high school students say they have
used illegal drugs, not counting alcohol.
- 40% of ninth-graders, according to a 1992 Centers
for Disease Control report, say they have already had sexual intercourse.
According to a 1989 United Nations report, U.S. teens have the highest
abortion rate in the developed world.
- In a 1990 report titled The Age of Indifference, the
Times Mirror Center concluded: "Today's young Americans, aged 18 to
30, know less and care less about news and public affairs than any other
generation of Americans in the past 50 years."
- Students increasingly appear to be "morally illiterate,"
unable even to state the Golden Rule.
The Return of Character Education
In response to these cultural indicators of moral regression,
a character education movement is beginning to emerge across the country.
It is based on the belief that destructive and irresponsible youth behaviors
such as violence, dishonesty, drug abuse, and sexual promiscuity have a
common core: the absence of good character.
Good character can be defined as virtue, habits of moral
action such as Plato's cardinal virtues of justice, prudence, temperance,
and fortitude. In my own work as a psychologist and educator, I have found
it useful to define character as having three interrelated parts: moral
knowing, moral feeling, and moral action -- knowing the good, desiring
the good, and doing the good. When we think about the kind of character
we want for our children, it's clear that we want them to be able to judge
what is right, care deeply about what is right, and then do what they
believe to be right -- even in the face of pressure from without and temptation
from within. People obviously do not automatically develop good character.
Conscientious efforts must be made -- by schools, families, churches,
and communities -- to help young persons understand, internalize, and
act upon core ethical values such as respect, responsibility, honesty,
fairness, integrity, compassion, self-control, and moral courage.
Universal moral values such as these are not mere subjective
preferences (as values clarification had it), like taste in music or clothes;
rather, they have objective worth and a claim on our personal and collective
conscience. Moral values carry obligation; we must abide by them -- be
fair, honest, and respectful, for example, in our dealings with others
-- even when we'd rather not. The validity of these moral values and their
power to hold us accountable derive from the fact that they affirm our
human dignity and promote the good of the individual as well as the common
good. They meet the classical ethical tests of reversibility (Would you
want to be treated this way?) and universalizability (Would you want all
persons to act this way in a similar situation?). They are also consistent
with what we have historically understood to be the requirements of God,
as expressed, for example, in the Ten Commandments.
The past few years have seen a spate of books -- such as
Why Johnny Can't Tell Right From Wrong, Educating for Character, Reclaiming
Our Schools: A Handbook for Teaching Character, Academics, and Discipline,
and the number one best-selling The Book of Virtues -- offering
methods and materials for developing good character in young people. Two
national organizations, the Character Education Partnership and
the Character Counts Coalition, have recently formed to promote
character development nationwide. Congress is now drafting legislation
that would fund efforts to develop character education materials and teacher
training programs aimed at teaching core ethical values. July 1994 saw
more than 200 educators, youth leaders, and members of the federal government
come together for the first White House Conference on Character-Building
for a Democratic, Civil Society.
A Comprehensive Approach to Character Education
The family is the most important influence on a child's
character, and schools cannot fully compensate for family failure in this
area. But schools can do an enormous amount, far more than most schools
now do or even imagine they might try to do, to develop good character in
young people. And in the process, schools can also work with parents to
encourage and support them in their role as the primary moral teachers of
their children.
If schools wish to maximize their moral clout in the face
of the negative societal influences that surround children, they must
take a comprehensive approach. This approach views everything in the school
day as affecting values and character. The way sports are conducted, grades
are allotted, teachers behave, and corridors monitored all send moral
messages. If a school wants to instill values such as respect and responsibility,
the messages have to be consistent.
In short, the school itself must embody good character.
It must be a civil, just, and caring community that practices the values
it preaches. It must be a community that helps students form caring attachments
to adults and to each other. These attachments will nurture a student's
desire to learn and to be a good person.
My work with teachers and schools over the past 25
years has led me to develop a model of comprehensive character education
that includes 12 classroom and schoolwide strategies. In Educating
for Character, I describe each of these strategies in detail and provide
supporting research. Let me briefly illustrate each of these 12 components
here.
1. The teacher as caregiver, moral
model, and moral mentor. This first strategy calls upon the teacher
to teach morality by treating students with love and respect. It also
calls upon the teacher to set a good example in many ways (by being well-prepared,
for example), to directly teach and encourage moral behavior, and to correct
disrespectful or irresponsible behavior through individual guidance and
group discussion.
For example:
Teacher Molly Angelini makes courtesy an important value
in her fifth-grade classroom. She models courtesy in how she speaks to
her students. She requires students to apologize in writing if they call
a classmate a name. She teaches them to say, "Pardon me?" instead of "What?"
when they wish something repeated. When they go to lunch, she teaches
them to greet the cafeteria workers by name and thank them when they put
the food on their tray. And she teaches her children that all these behaviors
are not mechanical gestures but meaningful ways of respecting other people.
2.
Creating a moral community. Students need caring relationships
with adults, but they also need caring relationships with each other.
When students are part of a caring classroom community, they feel valued
as persons. When they are challenged to practice respect and care in their
everyday peer relations, these values begin to become part of their characters.
For example:
Hal Urban, who teaches high school history and psychology,
does three simple things at the start of each class that take only five
minutes but go a long way toward developing a cohesive classroom community
based on mutual respect and support. First, he asks, "Who has good
news?" After the sharing of good news, he asks, "Would anyone like
to affirm anyone else?" Students become more and more comfortable
doing that. Finally, he asks students to take a seat different from the
one they had in the previous class and take a minute to get to know their
new neighbor. At the end of the semester, on course evaluations, students
say that one thing they will remember about the course ten years from
now is the way Mr. Urban began each class.
In developing a moral classroom community, teachers also
need to promote kindness and prevent cruelty. In Kansas, the STOP Violence
Coalition (9307 W. 74th St., Merriam, KS 66204) publishes a book of activities
called Kindness is Contagious...Catch It! that gives many practical
strategies for promoting considerate actions and reducing the verbal peer
abuse that causes conflicts, breeds disrespect, and quickly undermines
positive classroom relations.
3.
Moral discipline. Moral discipline means using the creation and
enforcement of rules as opportunities to foster moral reasoning, self-control,
voluntary compliance with rules, and a generalized respect for others.
For example:
Kim McConnel, on the first day of school, puts her sixth-graders
in groups of four. She asks each group to write down, on a large sheet
of paper, classroom rules that will help them:
- Get our work done
- Feel safe
- Be glad we're here.
When they are finished, the small groups tape their lists
of suggested rules on the blackboard. Drawing from all the lists, the teacher
helps the class come up a list that will serve as "our class rules."
Regardless of whether students help to create the rules,
the teacher using moral discipline ensures that students understand the
moral basis of the classroom rules. A high school mathematics teacher
explains his approach:
"I tell my students that I have only two rules: (1)
Everybody respects each other; and (2) Come prepared for
class every day -- which is a form of respect for me, your classmates,
and yourself. If you violate one of these rules, I will stop and point
out the rule. You will need to apologize to the person you were disrespectful
toward."
With moral discipline, consequences for rule-breaking seek
to teach a moral lesson (for example, why the offense was wrong); require
the student, whenever possible, to make reparation; and develop the student's
self-control and willingness to follow the rule in the future.
4.
Creating a democratic classroom environment. This means involving
students, on a regular basis, in shared decision-making that increases
their responsibility for making the class a good place to be and to learn.
The chief means of creating a democratic classroom is the class meeting.
This is a meeting of the whole class emphasizing interactive discussion
and problem-solving. The class meeting contributes to character development
by providing a forum where students' thoughts are heard and valued and
by providing a support structure for understanding, internalizing, and
practicing respect and responsibility.
For example:
Carl Fospero, a 20-year-old graduate student in education,
was called to take over an unruly class (Introductory Spanish) of high
school students whose regular teacher had suddenly died. In the month
that followed the teacher's death, the students -- a low-achieving group
with a history of behavior problems -- had become uncontrollable. They
went through four substitute teachers in four weeks.
When Carl Fospero came into the class, the first thing he
did was to ask every student to take out a sheet of paper and write him
a letter, responding to two questions: "What are your feelings about
the class? How can we make it better?"
Students complained that other substitute teacher had been
"throwing worksheets at them"; they couldn't keep up with the material;
they didn't understand Spanish; they often felt embarrassed when they
didn't know an answer, and so on.
Carl Fospero read portions of the students' letters aloud,
using them as a springboard for a discussion of how to improve the course.
They decided to slow down the pace of instruction to make sure no one
got lost. They decided to make time during each class for cooperative
learning -- such as conversational Spanish between partners -- which students
found less threatening. Teacher Fospero said he also wanted to try some
new things they hadn't done before, such as writing a play in Spanish
and performing and videotaping it. The class also started to write and
publish a class newspaper -- in Spanish. They used their class meetings
to plan these new projects, assign responsibilities, and monitor progress
and problems.
Students' behavior and learning improved dramatically. Teacher
Fospero had achieved this by applying a widely known but much-neglected
educational principle: Involve students in making decisions about -- and
sharing responsibility for -- the life of the classroom. The class meeting
has been used effectively with students as young as kindergarten.
5.
Teaching values through the curriculum. There are countless opportunities
for teachers to use the ethically rich content of academic subjects --
such as literature, history, and science -- as a vehicle for teaching
values and examining moral questions. Here the teacher's question is,
what are the natural intersections between the curriculum I wish to cover
and the values I wish to teach?
There are outstanding published programs that illustrate
how to do this. One is the Heartwood Ethics Curriculum. This award-winning
program uses multicultural children's literature to foster seven character
attributes affirmed by cultures around the world: courage, loyalty, justice,
respect, hope, honesty, and love. Heartwood makes it clear that multiculturalism
doesn't have to mean "multi-morality"; rather it can lead us to discover
the universal values that underlie cultural differences and that express
our common humanity.
For each of the seven attributes, the Heartwood program
provides six children's books (folk tales, hero stories, legends, and
modern classics from different cultures) along with interdisciplinary
activities that develop children's understanding of the particular value
and how to apply it. When the class finishes studying a particular character
attribute, all the children, at a moment of their own choosing, look in
the classroom mirror and ask themselves if they have shown that attribute
(for example, "How have I shown courage?", "How have I been a respectful
person?"). Then the child goes to his or her Heartwood Journal and writes
a personal answer to that question. This encourages children to act upon
the ethical insights emerging from their reading and discussion of the
value-laden literature.
Facing History and Ourselves is another much-acclaimed
curriculum, initially developed for eighth-graders and later adapted to
high school and college levels as well. This 8-week social studies curriculum
uses history, films, and guest lectures (including talks by death camp
survivors) to investigate the Nazi and Armenian Holocausts. Along the
way, it has students look within themselves to examine the universal human
tendency toward prejudice, scapegoating, and even hatred.
An experimental study of this curriculum found that Facing
History students were significantly superior in their understanding of
how individuals' decisions are affected by their society and in the complexity
of their reasoning about issues such as leadership, exclusion, and conflict
resolution.
6.
Cooperative learning. Whereas curriculum-based values education
teaches values and develops character through the subject matter content,
cooperative learning does this through the instructional process. It says
to the teacher: "Take what you would normally teach, teach it through
cooperative learning for at least part of every day, and you will be teaching
values and academics at the same time."
Cooperative learning, which can be done in pair or small
groups, contributes to character in many ways. It teaches students the
value of cooperation; builds community in the classroom (reducing conflict,
the research shows, and fostering friendships across racial and ethnic
lines); and teaches basic life skills such as communicating and working
together.
For example:
In a sixth-grade classroom in Montreal, Quebec, a teacher
faced the most divisive group she had ever taught. The class was torn
apart by racial conflict; blacks and whites exchanged insults and physically
assaulted each other during recess and after school.
The school psychologist observed the class and recommended
that the teacher set up structured cooperative learning groups. Put together
children who have trouble getting along, he said. Give them joint assignments
and projects with roles for all members. Monitor them closely. Most important,
stick with the groups even if they don't seem to be working in the beginning.
The teacher started having students work together -- usually
in threes or fours -- in all subjects for part of each day. They worked
on math problems in groups, researched social studies questions in groups,
practiced reading to each other in groups, and so on.
"It took them two months to really make this work," the
teacher said, "but they finally got it together. Moreover, their test
scores went up." Mastering the skills of cooperative learning is a gradual,
developmental process for both teacher and students, but the academic
and character development benefits -- documented at all grade levels --
justify the effort.
7.
Develop the "conscience of craft." The literature on moral and
character education often treats moral learning and academic learning
as separate spheres. But academic work and learning have moral meaning.
Work is one of the most basic ways we affect the lives of others and contribute
to the human community. Moreover, when students are not working to the
best of their ability in school, they are learning bad moral habits --laziness,
lack of self-discipline, indifference to standards, evasion of responsibility
-- that will likely carry over into their adult lives. Teachers who develop
students' capacity for disciplined work typically combine high expectations
and high support.
For example:
Anne Ritter is the kind of teacher who believes that every
child can learn. As a new teacher in her school, she taught a class of
first-graders, 85 percent of whom came from families below the poverty
line. She astonished fellow teachers by getting 90 percent of her class
up to grade level in reading and math. Her comment: "It's the job."
When I visited her classroom, a list of classroom rules
was writ large and posted in the front. The first rule was: "Always
do your best in everything." On the wall was a sign: A PERSON WILL
SELF-DESTRUCT WITHOUT A GOAL. The "value of the month," featured on
the class bulletin board, was AMBITION, defined as "hard work
directed toward a worthwhile goal."
8.
Encouraging moral reflection. This strategy focuses on developing
the several qualities that make up the cognitive side of character: being
morally aware; understanding objectively worthwhile moral values; being
able to take the perspective of others; being able to reason morally;
being able to make thoughtful moral decisions; and having moral self-knowledge,
including the capacity for self-criticism.
Bringing this knowing side of character to maturity is one
of the most difficult challenges of character education. It requires clear
ethical thinking by the teacher as well as a sophisticated set of teaching
skills. Teachers can foster moral reflection through reading, research,
essay writing, journal-keeping, discussion, and debate. At the secondary
level, a promising approach to developing moral reflection through controversial
issues is called "structured academic controversy." Developed by cooperative
learning experts David and Roger Johnson, this approach defines controversies
as "problems to be solved rather than win-lose situations."
The teacher assigns students to groups of four, composed
of two, two-person "advocacy teams." Within each group, one team is assigned
the responsibility of advocating one position (for example, that there
should be more government regulation of hazardous waste disposal), the
other team the task of arguing the opposite position (that there should
be less regulation), both teams using background information supplied
by the teacher.
In the course of the week, each team must do a position-switch
and argue for the position it originally opposed. Finally, the four group
members synthesize what they see as the best information and reasoning
from both sides into a consensus solution and write and submit a group
report. Following that, each student takes an individual test, which holds
everyone accountable for learning the information and arguments on both
sides of the issue.
Ten years of research on the academic controversy process
finds that students gain in their perspective-taking abilities and demonstrate
greater mastery of the subject matter than is true with either debate
or individualistic learning formats.
9. Teaching
conflict resolution. Teaching students how to resolve conflicts
without force or intimidation is a vitally important part of character
education for two reasons: (1) conflicts not settled fairly will prevent
or erode a moral community in the classroom; and (2) without conflict
resolution skills, students will be morally handicapped in their interpersonal
relationships now and later in life, and may end up contributing to violence
in school and society.
There are a great many ways to teach conflict resolution
skills in the classroom. Susan Skinner, a kindergarten teacher at Heathwood
Hall Episcopal School in Columbia, South Carolina, uses two methods she
finds effective. When two children have a conflict, she stops the action
and uses it as a teachable moment. She invites two other children (not
the ones involved in the dispute) to come to the front of the class to
role-play a positive solution to the conflict. She then asks the whole
class for their suggestions. Finally, the two children who were involved
in the conflict are invited to act out a positive solution that draws
on what they have just seen and heard.
When one child has hurt another, teacher Skinner teaches
a reconciliation ritual. She instructs the offending child to say, "I
am very sorry -- will you please forgive me?" If the victim judges
the apology sincere, that child is instructed to respond, "I do forgive
you."
These behavior patterns have the best chance of becoming
part of a child's character when they are learned early and practiced
often. But effective training is still possible at the adolescent level,
where the stakes are even higher because conflicts more easily explode
into deadly violence.
Dr. Deborah Prothrow-Smith, a Harvard professor and physician,
has developed a 10-week mini-course that teaches teenagers what causes
violent conflict and how to avoid it. Says one 18-year-old who took the
course at a Boston high school: "I had my share of fights, and I learned
how to avoid them by talking things out. Otherwise I could lose my life
over something really stupid like stepping on someone's shoe and not wanting
to say, Excuse me.'"
Schoolwide Strategies for Character Education
The preceding examples demonstrate that it is clearly
possible for the individual teacher, acting within the classroom, to foster
good character. But teachers feel more secure, and their efforts are greatly
enhanced, if the whole school -- and ideally the community as well -- is
working to promulgate, model, teach, celebrate, and enforce high standards
of respect and responsibility.
A comprehensive approach therefore calls upon schools to
implement three schoolwide strategies. These are:
1.
Creating a positive moral culture in the school — developing
a total moral environment or schoolwide ethos (through the leadership
of the principal, schoolwide discipline, a schoolwide sense of community,
meaningful student government, a respectful and cooperative moral community
among adults, and making time at all levels to discuss moral concerns)
that supports the values taught in classrooms;
2.
Fostering caring beyond the classroom — using positive role models
to inspire altruistic behavior and providing opportunities at every grade
level to perform acts of school and community service; and
3.
Recruiting parents and the community as partners in character education
— letting parents know that the school considers them their child's first
and most important moral teacher; giving parents specific ways they can
support the values the school is trying to teach; and seeking the help
of the community (including churches, businesses, local government, and
the media) in promoting respect and responsibility.
A more detailed look at the 12-Point
Comprehensive Approach to Character Education.
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