hifi

Your article about character education left me greatly concerned. Your statements repeat much of character education myth. The truth is that character education is not at all what it's cracked up to be.

I am continually baffled at how character education - which on the surface of it sounds great - can win funding and accolades while never demonstrating evidence of either need or results. Is all that is required for adoption is a slick marketing campaign to the politicians and school boards in order to acquire popular support (complete with entreaties to emotional and fear issues and a healthy dose of language from pop psychology and a wink to Christian religion) and then you are done? Who could object to "character education", right?

Moreover, the phrase functions wonderfully as political catchword. Yet, even President Bush, asks that "the adoption of public programs should be results-based". In that view, the adoption of character education in our community should be seriously questioned.

Research on the subject and has yet to turn up one peer-reviewed study demonstrating any scientifically validated need for or result from character education programs. On the other hand, flaws in the "research" showing "correlations" are well documented. There is really no excuse for a reputable study to not have been conducted at this point - especially, when considering that character education has no basis in accepted educational theory in the first place. such a dearth of validity makes it hard to just give it the benefit of the doubt.

What's worse, the actual peer reviewed studies that have been done, show character education programs to be not only ineffectual, but "negatively correlated" with results!

Today's character education would seem to fall right in line with a string of similarly flawed and famously failed school programs: "religious education", "moral education", "values education"... However, not to be deterred by lack of results, character education programs abound, forging ahead – each trotting out entirely different lists of politically-entangled core values and means for implementing them! Their criticisms of each other are enlightening.

Certainly it is unfortunate for the entire field that there is no valid psychological definition of "character". The term has no clinical meaning; which probably also explains why there can be no way to measure if an individual has a deficit of it, or if a school program can improve it. If there was anything quantifiable, one might be able to judge the benefit of one approach over the other – or any benefit at all.

It is telling, perhaps, that the one thing they all agree on is that the end goal is the child or employee's compliance with authority and conformity with conservative values. Is that, now, how we wish to define the greatness of America's national "character" these days? What about the spirit of inquiry, independence and innovation that defines the true character of a great nation? On the "Magic school Bus" TV show, the class slogan is "Get Messy, Take Risks, Make Mistakes", just the opposite of the goals on character education lists.

Sure, on the surface of it, who wouldn't be in favor of something as grand sounding as character education? Yet, slick marketing aside, that is not enough to justify exposing our children to such an unknown, ideologically-driven quantity. As far as the schools go, even if character education could be proven to achieve its aims, public education has no business taking the culture wars to our children.

The best academic minds in the business recommend, instead, focusing on an even playing field for all people by correcting antagonistic factors in the social structure; and in the case of students, provide solid verifiable information, the critical thinking skills to separate the "angles" and hype from the truth, and then let them decide for themselves what kind of society they will create for themselves.

In sum, character education sure sounds good - if only it worked.

For references, please see http://members.cox.net/patriotismfora...

"Teachers and schools tend to mistake good behavior for good character. What they prize is docility, suggestibility; the child who will do what he is told; or even better, the child who will do what is wanted without even having to be told. They value most in children what children least value in themselves. small wonder that their effort to build character is such a failure; they don't know it when they see it."

-- How Children Fail, John Holt