Character Education in America's Schools.

Abstract

Abstract education in American schools is experiencing a revival. Although the teaching of character waned from the 1960s through the 1980s, the rise in violent crime and a general feeling by the public that American children suffered a crisis in morals led to a resurgence of character education programs across the nation, with most states either mandating or supporting such education. Today, many schools are engaged in formal programs such as Character Counts! or the Heartwood Institute's An Ethics Curriculum for Children. Other school systems use individually tailored programs. At the heart of most programs lie core principles such as honesty, respect, self-discipline, and perseverance. Parental and community involvement are also common components of the various programs. The Internet hosts numerous sites featuring character education ranging from bibliographies to web sites designed specifically for interactive use by children. Enormous responsibility is placed on teachers to provide an effective character education curriculum, but formal training in character education is limited. Key Words: character education, values clarification, literature-based character education, character traits, life principle words, ethics curriculum, values statements Overview and History of Education in America's Schools education has become the fastest growing school reform movement in the United States, according to Edgington (2002). Indeed, a perusal of the literature shows a growing concern with the issue of character education. The World Wide Web has a proliferation of sites devoted to the teaching of character education, from the United States Department of Education's calls for grant applications to sites with lessons plans for teachers to those designed to be accessed by parents of preschool and elementary school children (Marshall, 2003). Brown (2001) reports that 15 states mandate character education and 27 states receive grants from the U.S. Department of Education for issues related to character education. Some form of character education is believed to be taught in each of the 50 states (Clouse, 2001). The Education Partnership (2002) states that in June 2002, 14 states mandated character education through legislation, 14 states encouraged character education through legislation, 10 states supported character education but had no current legislation, and 11 states received federal grants to develop character education programs in their schools. What is character education? Edgington (2002) states that the nature of character education itself is very subjective yet also quotes Thomas Lickona, Character Education is the deliberate effort to cultivate (p. 113). Edgington further defines virtue as the set of core values on which a society must depend to persevere. education is not new. In fact, schools have been traditionally believed to be a cornerstone of character education from the earliest days of our country (Clouse, 2001; Edgington; Grater, 2002; Kristjansson, 2002; Leming, 2000; Milson, 2002; Milson & Mehlig, 2002). Clouse asserts that character education has been taught from time immemorial, then further states, Character education is based on the universally accepted premise that adults know better than children what is proper and are therefore responsible for the acculturation of the children within their care (p. 23). However, the history of character education in the 20th century has gone through several incarnations, falling out of favor in the 1960s through the 1980s. However, an increased interest in character education correlated with a rise in teen criminal acts both in and out of school (Minchew, 2002) and to the perception that irresponsible and destructive behavior is increasing (Williams, Yanchar, Jensen, & Lewis, 2003). In the early days of our country, the teaching of character education was uncomplicated by separation of church and state issues. …

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