0.1 Character education: a critical analysis; robert tatman, stacey  (Page 12/16)

According to Leming (1993b), “Several studies have shown that schools that seem to have an impact on student character will respect students, encourage student participation in the life of the school, expect students to behave responsibly, and give them the opportunity to do so” (p. 67). Matthews and Riley (1995) determined that effective character education involves students in formulating program agenda, utilizes peer interaction, and capitalizes on support from parents and the community. The importance of the school’s community to effective ethics education is posited by the same authors, Matthews and Riley (1995), who advised how to avoid failure: We ensure failure if we teach ethics without using a community context to illustrate, nurture, and support ethical development. Without grounding ethics within the particular community and cultural context of the learner, ethics remain abstract, outside the scope of experiences of the learner, and ultimately irrelevant. (p. 17)

One large suburban district evaluated the impact of character education implementation on one middle school. Teachers reported significant gains in several areas including gains in academic work habits, care exhibited toward building staff, and increased participation in volunteer and citizenship projects (Brooks&Freedman, 2002). Convincing evidence, therefore, demonstrates that schools’ character education efforts do positively impact academic achievement, student behavior, and students’ school-related behavior.

Goals for character education

In lieu of the three aforementioned benefits that justify character education’s inclusion in school programs, specific goals are now outlined for character education programming and planning. Character education is everything that a school does that influences the character of their students, and includes the school’s deliberate effort to help people understand, care about, and act upon core ethical values (Lickona, 1991a). In terms of the character expectations that people have on their own children, Lickona (1991a) understood that parents want their children 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” (p. 8).

Goals for students

The goal of character education, according to Schulman and Mekler (1994), should be that students do not exhibit character because they are being rewarded, but because they initiate a character trait on their own with the reward being a feeling of goodness as evidenced emotionally or in some aspect of their psyche. Those persons demonstrating effective character development are motivated by intrinsic reward not external benefit or reward. Noddings (2005) referenced a 1918 National Education Association report, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education , that cited the great goals of education as including the seven topics of health, core academics, home, vocation, citizenship, worthy use of leisure, and ethical character – all meant to, “guide our instructional decisions” (p. 10). According to Noddings (2005), these goals are “meant to broaden our thinking – to remind us to ask why we have chosen certain curriculums, pedagogical methods, classroom arrangements, and learning objectives” (p. 10). That is, “Students are whole persons – not mere collections of attributes, some to be addressed in one place and others to be addressed elsewhere” (Noddings, 2005, p. 10). Thus, for Noddings (2005), “schools must be concerned with the total development of children” (p. 11), and should not only focus on the fundamentals like reading and math.