The Death of Character

...Though Moran doesn't say so exworld to teens and their inner world...

...the oddness of ture, empathy may lead a child to ex- then took a year's sabbatical, hoping to things, which should be obvious...

...I think education might more usefully devote tecting the innocence of the young...

...USA Today Hunter argues that even such stalwart conservatives as William Bennett and Gary Bauer adopt an inclusive strategy "A thoughtful, restrained when discussing the restoration of examination of an virtue...

...El retreats for "a few blissful, uninterrupted days of writing" to Blue Cloud Abbey Alan Wolfe is director of the Boisi Center in South Dakota...

...So he to provide an answer...

...a new moral majority, but, if one looks at the books their leaders write, Hunter I argues, they are as committed to psychological assumptions as any secular- "[T]he church itself could ist...

...faithfully describes the real-life experience of most teenagers...

...At least Gary HOW A NOVEL HAPPENS Bauer, who operates in the real world of politics, recognizes that the moral understandings of a diverse society will emerge from recollection into life...

...ideas embedded in classic works of theHere Moran brings his story full circle, ology, philosophy, and literature...

...So are communitarians who would not have asked for a more like to see a moral revival in America, fair-minded instrument for their challenge is more "political in nature than educational" and their ideas of its own indictment...

...Sex move sex education from health and P.E...

...They replaced lieves it must change its focus and di- tect themselves, not only against disthe old moral vocabulary with the lan- rection...

...A dead man speaking pathy will lose its meaning if it is ap- teacher and a Native American uprising...

...from a left-wing viewpoint, brings those But he becomes annoyed at his family's books to mind...

...More important, sex ed- tion integrated into a broader effort to and repeated heartbreaks that seem to ucators shifted the responsibility for sex- train youthful imagination, taste, and accompany the youthful sex-is-fun culual control from adults and the social judgment...

...The reason even determined moralists like Gary Bauer are doomed to fail, Winner of a Catholic Press *From the foreword by Hunter believes, is that any account of Association Book Award Andrew M. Greeley character is intimately tied to the moral culture of which it is a part...

...And our culture he finds hopelessly corrupt...

...But in the long run, even the most morally neutral sex educator could not contend with the amoral sex-is-fun culture created by ARE THINGS REALLY THIS BADI Madison Avenue and Hollywood...

...mented, as adult sexual images and mes- Alan Wolfe James Davison Hunter, a sociologist at sages became more broadly diffused the University of Virginia, thinks that throughout the culture by the popular mericans, we are frequent- all such efforts are futile...

...itself to the big and neglected topic of stead, they assumed that teenage sexual- Today's sexually liberated teenagers are love...

...He stands above the fray, telling cided one day in 1970 to start writing...

...Character is media, as adults became more adoles- ly told, no longer pay suffi- dead, he maintains, and the corpse cancent and adolescents became more like cient attention to those qual- not be revived...

...100 pp, short story, which Hassler incorporates of the audience to which they presume into the developing novel, giving it new to speak...

...Hassler recalls the week in Ocreceive all the Christmas presents she landscape paintings...

...didn't seem strange until I began to plied indiscriminately, Hunter writes: But after he had completed more than a write it down...

...If the state of our char- intrusions: "Now these are all basically acter is really so bad, and if efforts to r,, good people, and it is not their fault that reform it are so hopeless, what are we to r A their fuel pumps and noses leak, that their do...

...Unable launched devastating criticisms against to let the completed first draft "cool," Hasthe establishment without ever bother- sler begins rewriting immediately: "I ing to root their critiques in reality or enjoy working on a second draft better to offer any credible alternatives...

...Writing brings out the "In a materialistic and hedonistic cul- hundred pages, "the work died...

...learning...

...complete and mailed off to his editor, Nation, after All (Viking...

...tion to our country, to democratic institutions, to fellow citizens, to family - Cleveland Plain Dealer members, and finally to an ideal of human dignity...

...gists such as Lawrence Kohlberg and to remember another time when these There are not many strong institutions others (Hunter provides an extensive same institutions have been so over- pictured in Hogarth's Gin Lane...

...We learn how the oil-burning stove also recall scenes from The 1960s spawned a host of books, hero of Staggerford, Miles Pruitt, lost the later novels...

...It (800) 545-4703 is difficult to think of another age when the key socializing institutions for the ILL NU www.press.uillinoIs.edu cultivation of normative ideals and virCommonweal 2 3 June 2, 2000 Having misdiagnosed the American condition, Hunter has little to contribute to an effective remedy...

...a writer becomes aware of a character's everyone that because the Enlighten- He determined to finish a short story power and importance...

...Hassler begins immediately on Jemmy, a Commonweal 24 June 2, 2000...

...But as mitted to restoring firm Christian values, the boundaries between adolescence and or to seek to clothe the "naked public adulthood began to collapse, as adult su- square" with religious symbols or copies pervision and authority eroded and frag- of the Ten Commandments...

...Post-sex revolution, the boundaries separating teenagers from adults are increasingly difficult to draw, even more to enforce and sustain...

...in the history of religion Hunter points out the degree to which even the presumed opponents of the psychological regime share its central in America...

...for Religion and American Public Life at "He's been at it for six month s, and he With the manuscript of Staggerford Boston College...

...pleted some two dozen and had pub- dream in which a friend who has died The sin associated with standing lished six...

...tober 1975 which he spent writing alone wanted...

...By 1975 he had com- In another place Hassler describes a their bags...

...352 pp...

...It is difficult knuckles for even minor infractions...

...I teaching in high schools acters as "the first bonewoman in all of could not find any theorist or activist of A and colleges in northern world literature," does not gainsay her character education of whom he ap- Minnesota, Jon Hassler de- mythic quality, nor the insight into how proves...

...plicitly, I think he is suggesting that sex educators no longer saw their role as pro- into English and history classes...

...If I had my choice I would Death of Character, although not written write nothing but second (or later) drafts...

...Moran doesn't advocate tossing sex Commonweal 22 June 2, 2000 Psychologists do not speak about sin, tuous habit have been so reluctant to tend much school at all, and the ones Satan, or evil...

...Sex educators saw themselves as or compile collections of moral stories, The Death of Character part of the larger professionalized re- hoping to persuade Americans to change Moral Education in an Age form movement to protect and guide their ways...

...fter almost two decades of of Staggerford's most mysterious charNone of this matters to Hunter...

...Some of back to the early decades of the twentieth those who share this concern write books century...

...are easily co-opted by their opponents...

...Once upon a time, compared to other times and other al strategy of moral understanding and and not long ago, children did not at- places, neither does it rank very low...

...The than a first...

...important document...

...On the big thermometer the complex network of institutions, tion worse than those we have now may that measures moral health, America ideas, ideals, and interests whose col- be difficult for Hunter, but it does not these days may not rank very high, but lective purpose is to propagate a gener- seem that hard to me...

...ucators tried to accommodate the libera- education out of the schools, but he be- thy person to marry, and how to protionist spirit of the times...

...Wanting to Staggerford and North of Hope had begun odd that he should be telling me this make the point that a virtue such as em- a novel about a thirty-five-year-old after his death...

...Through the ideas of psycholo- sanction," Hunter writes...

...move schools toward an appreciation Hassler's whimsical comment on one of the need to think about character...

...The cabin and its child's anguish as significant as he can...

...It was list), a new "regime" has taken over the whelmed by the influence of other pow- pretty hard to keep the family together way our schools treat the students who erful forces in society...

...Indeed, though Moran only hints at this, we may be witnessing the formation of something entirely new in human history: an autonomous teenage world, operating according to its own rules and assumptions, claiming the same sexual freedoms, rights, and privacy as adults, and recruiting parents as friends, confidantes, and helpmates in its sexual pursuits...

...They talk about develop- communicate to children their stan- they attended did not teach Homer as ment, maturity, and cognitive compe- dards and the god-terms that give them much as they smacked kids over the tence...

...Conservative also learn the derivation of Hassler's Christians who use therapeutic lan- My Sta99erford most famous character, the pre-Vatican guage are doing what all successful re- Journal II parochial school teacher, Miss Agatha ligious movements have done, which Jon Hassler McGee...

...Others go even further...

...the epic poets of ancient Greece, the Old seeking to identify character's assassin, Today, Moran says, the twentieth-cen- and New Testaments and the religious "the vocabulary of the psychologist tury concept of adolescence no longer traditions they spawned, and the great frames virtually all public discussion...

...Those who are fed up with impetus...

...ment happened, they might as well pack every two weeks...

...More to the point, the sex revolution challenged the very idea of adolescence...

...And not just mainstream institutions...

...They Without Good and Evil young people through the increasingly seek to require states to emphasize charJames Davison Hunter perilous passage between childhood and acter education in schools, to formulate Basic Books, $25...

...in mining towns when fathers died in attend them...

...They cast themselves as the new curricula, to elect politicians comguardians of youthful innocence...

...In 1974, the future author of speaks to him: "It did not strike me as above the fray is arrogance...

...Conservative Christians may think they are at the cutting edge of This new paperback edition includes an updated introduction...

...We necessarily be diverse...

...thankfully now unreadable, which wife he never had and how characters We learn the joys of revising...

...His most recent book is One still can't think of a pseudonym...

...adulthood...

...He true aspect of things...

...He would like to see sex educa- ease, but against the cruelty, deception, guage of choice...

...Agatha had figured in an early is to develop an awareness of the needs Balantute Books, $14...

...I just hope that if my child As both the record of a year in a nov- in a cabin near Park Rapids, Minnesota: comes across a crying classmate, he elist's life and a glimpse into a well- "It has to rank as one of the best weeks would have the character to make that loved writer's mind, this journal is an of my life," he says...

...Their duty was to pro- how to sustain relationships of mutual Barbara Dafoe Whitehead is the author of mote a dialogue with students and to help affection and respect, how to find a wor- The Divorce Culture (Alfred A. Knopf...

...James Hunter cannot be bothered toes and tax forms need attention...

...In short, he would like to ture...

...They argue, not for the specific virtues of specific traditions, but for, in explosive subject that in Bauer's words, "a common body of eth- less skilled hands could ical knowledge that, even if it has a religious origin, serves the purpose of easily have been exploited maintaining and strengthening devo- and sensationalized...

...By regime, I simply mean The task of imagining a moral condi- their thirties...

...When it comes to the A adults, the entire rationale for sex edu- ities of character praised by moral life of children," writes Hunter, cation began to crumble...

...D ity was healthy, normal, and a matter of more confused than ever before about individual choice...

...them make responsible decisions...

...assumptions...

...values clarification" and other absur- There are also more general remarks dities of the 1960s are doing their best to Ed Block about fiction writing and inspiration...

...perience nothing more significant than support himself, his wife, and three chil- The novelist's love of solitude is also the anguish of another child who didn't dren on his half-pay and the sale of his evident...

...The psychological regime, "overwhelmingly therapeutic and selfreferencing," now "pervades all of the mainstream institutions that mediate "The greatest scandal moral understanding to children...

...In- he is onto something important here...