0.1 Character education: a critical analysis; robert tatman, stacey  (Page 3/16)

Smart and Good High Schools , a national study of American high schools, concluded, first, that a national consensus exist in America regarding the need for character which they define as doing our best work, doing the right thing, and living a life of purpose (Lickona&Davidson, 2005). Secondly, the report surmised that Smart and Good High Schools educate for character that includes both performance character and moral character. According to Lickona and Davidson (2005), the report’s significance is evidenced at various levels including the distinction between performance character and moral character, its focus on the utilization of all aspects of school life for both performance and moral character, and the creation of a school’s ethical learning community.

The ethical learning community, intended to develop collective responsibility for excellence and ethics, incorporates students, parents, the wider community, faculty, and staff. These constituents are to support and challenge each other in the dual areas of performance and character development, that is, the encouragement for everyone to do their best work and be their best ethical self. Subsumed under the faculty and staff component of the ethical learning community is the professional ethical learning community where faculty, staff, and administrators focus on continuous self-development and ongoing improvement of those practices needed to develop both performance and moral character (Lickona&Davidson, 2005).

Fullan (2001) noted that moral purpose is on the ascent in both schools and businesses, and indicated that the “best teachers integrate the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual aspects of teaching to create powerful learning communities” (p. 27). Lickona (1993) claimed that character education was making a comeback in American schools with a growing consensus that “schools cannot be ethical bystanders” (p. 6). For Houston (1998), promoting both civility and goodness constitutes the essential work of public school leaders.

From a historical perspective, character education is as old as education itself, and comprises one of the two great goals of schools: helping people become smart and helping them become good (Lickona, 1993). Lickona observed that the early 1990s birthed the “beginnings of a new character education movement, one which restores ‘good character’ to its historical place as the central desirable outcome of the school’s moral enterprise” (p. 7). For Covey (1990) the purpose of character education is “to achieve a better balance between the development of character and intellect” (p. 92). Covey expounded on the danger of instilling knowledge without character noting that it does not make good instructional sense to focus on purely intellectual development without also focusing on a student’s internal character development. Covey warned: “As dangerous as a little knowledge is, even more dangerous is much knowledge without a strong principled character…Yet all too often in the academic world, that’s exactly what we do by not focusing on the character development of young people” (p. 89).