Character, the Old-Fashioned Way
Bennett, William J. & DELATTRE, EDWIN J.
Character, the Old-Fashioned Way Kids don't need a federal program to form character. BY WILLIAM J. BENNETT & EDWIN J. DELATTRE "TO EDUCATE A PERSON in mind and not in morals is to educate a...
...But if character education is understood to occur inexorably through the ordinary workings of schools, then the salient question is not whether schools have an influence on character, but what kind of influence it is—i.e., what qualities of character a school is helping to form...
...These initiatives are to be replicated and made available to the public, and research is to be conducted to assess their effectiveness...
...Character education is reduced to a mere set piece—a lesson with its accompanying video and work-sheet—which fulfills the school's "character component...
...After Columbine and too many similar incidents, however, such words ring hollow...
...And then there is research into the effectiveness of character education...
...But if character education is understood to occur through the ordinary workings of a school, then there is nothing special to disseminate...
...No seperate curriculum is required...
...The first is elective, the second ineluctable...
...The clarification of values, not the imposition of them, was the task of schools...
...The education of character is once again recognized as a fundamental responsibility of our schools...
...There are, of course, occasions for teaching about character...
...secretary of education, is co-director of Empower America and chairman of K12.com, an Internet-based elementary and secondary education program...
...Schools are helping to cultivate moral sensibilities, to shape character, every day...
...All of this is high-minded and well-intentioned—and utterly wrongheaded...
...To conceive of character education as an initiative is to suggest it is a responsibility a school chooses to take on...
...A century ago Teddy Roosevelt reminded Americans of this ancient truth, and sometime in the past half-century we started to forget it...
...In general, a rule serves not only to require or prohibit a particular type of action, but also, in so doing, to engender the relevant habit of feeling and action, i.e., the relevant virtue...
...But the problem is not simply that the particular program adopted by a school may be facile and shallow...
...Congress can best serve the renewal of character education in America by practicing what it preaches, exhibiting the moral virtues at work in the work that it does...
...They see how the adults in the school address one another, the students, and their parents...
...Students must be left free, it was said, to choose their own morals...
...it is, at the same time, edu-cating—that is to say, forming—character...
...Indeed, one might say that only if one has become generous—only if one is moved by what moves a generous person—can one truly understand generosity...
...What is needed, rather, is reflection and conversation among teachers and administrators on the qualities of character to be cultivated, and on the ways in which the quotidian practices of the school contribute to or impede that end...
...And they learn, too, from the assignments they are given and the evaluations they receive...
...And then there are all the rules, formal and informal, that teachers and schools establish and apply...
...Edwin J. Delattre is dean of the School of Education and professor of philosophy at Boston University...
...And it is forming character, not teaching about it, that makes the critical difference...
...They see with what care (or lack thereof) the school building and grounds are maintained...
...Some programs in character education are, of course, better than others...
...That is not a lesson we want students to absorb...
...To answer this question, one must look closely at the particular ways a school goes about its daily business, apart from any formal programs of character education...
...The lure of federal money to create such programs in schools will only distract from the necessary work of moral examination and judgment...
...Students notice whether teachers go about their work conscientiously or lazily or begrudgingly...
...In its explicit code of conduct and in its shared understandings, a school is not only establishing the conditions of education...
...Indeed, insofar as character lessons are grafted onto the course load, and have no meaningful connection to the core curriculum, they make ethical concerns appear artificial—something reserved for particular occasions, rather than part of the warp and woof of everyday life...
...Translated into the conduct of adults, it becomes the attitude of the individual who writes out large checks to charities in the evening, after spending the day trampling over other human beings—for after all, business is business...
...This is to confuse teaching about William J. Bennett, the former U.S...
...A school that educates character well does so because it is steadily attentive to the ways in which its practices contribute to the formation of character—and other schools would do well to pay heed to this example...
...Meanwhile, life in the school goes on as before, quietly influencing character—for better or for worse—in ways unexam-ined...
...The problem is the very notion of a "program" as the means of engaging in character education...
...Learning about generosity, for example, does not make one generous, does not engender the habit of feeling that issues in generous actions...
...feeling, thought, and action are being cultivated: Character is being formed...
...With initiatives comes "dissemination...
...If character education takes the form of a special curriculum, then, the thinking goes, it can be efficiently packaged and transmitted from one school to another...
...This helps teachers and administrators recognize the significance of their practices for the formation of character, and modify those practices—or retain them, with conviction—accordingly...
...Teaching about character can take the form of specific curricula and methods...
...forming character occurs quietly and steadily through the ordinary workings of schools...
...To answer that question, we must make judgments about the kind of people we want them to become and the kind of schooling this requires...
...After all, citizens of all ages are watching and learning...
...The subjects of such research are character education programs, and the question is whether particular programs have an impact on character...
...Students notice whether teachers go about their work conscientiously or lazily, enthusiastically or begrudgingly...
...Curricula and methods are to be devised, along with professional development for teachers...
...The quality of character education depends on the quality of those judgments, and on our steadfastness in acting on them...
...But these will arise on their own, through the study of literature and history, and through incidents in the everyday life of the school—in the classroom, on the playing fields, in the cafeteria, and in the hallways...
...character with forming character...
...Several pieces of legislation pending in Congress, including the education package now in conference committee, embrace a mechanized, three-point plan: "initiatives," "dissemination," and "research...
...Dissemination of character education programs can easily become a false substitute for the ethical constancy and intelligence that create and sustain the ethos of a school...
...This is especially true in schools...
...How, though, should schools educate character...
...Formal programs in character education are no substitute for this...
...Ultimately, research cannot tell us how to educate our children morally...
...BY WILLIAM J. BENNETT & EDWIN J. DELATTRE "TO EDUCATE A PERSON in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society...
...In all these ways, habits of Schools cultivate moral sensibilities every day...
...But that example cannot be captured in a set program, to be passed on to other schools...
Vol. 6 • August 2001 • No. 46
