Tamara Fyke 
Table of Contents
In this follow-up article to Out of Darkness, a Return to the Basics – Part 1, I examine character education in the aftermath of the tragic events of January 6, 2021. Moving forward and healing requires a concerted effort to take responsibility as adults and equally teach virtue and character development to children who need our guidance. Let’s discuss SEL Exploring Character Education.
There are twenty-four character traits identified for moral development. Seven of these – Choice, Self-awareness, Self-control, Purpose, Creativity, Organization, and Moderation, are foundational capacities essential for virtue development. The virtues are divided into two categories: 1. Responsibility, which deals with a relationship to self, and 2—respect, which deals with relationships with others.
The responsibility virtues are courage, honesty, humility, perseverance, and dependability. The respect virtues are Kindness, caring, courtesy, gratitude, Patience, fairness, generosity, cooperation, and forgiveness. These traits are arranged in a hierarchical order of development.
The highest-order trait is the total of all the foundational capacities, virtues, and supportive factors working together. It correlates with Kohlberg’s Stage 5 and is entitled Love In A Big World.
Teaching character
According to William Kilpatrick, the most effective method of teaching character is to follow the classical and Judeo-Christian traditions of instruction, dialogue, heroes, and stories. The education communicates what virtue is, and this instruction does not include moral dilemmas. Plato argued that a person is not equipped to reason through ethical dilemmas until he is first taught what virtue is. He added that only after age thirty was a person old enough to contemplate ethical dilemmas.
Kilpatrick asserts that children “need to build the kind of character that will allow them to act well in the clear-cut situations they face daily” (88). Therefore, speculating about hypothetical moral dilemmas is not beneficial to children, and in fact, it only causes moral confusion.
The dialogue about virtue is a purposeful dialogue with a teacher. Parents are children’s first teachers, and it is a discussion that leads to a further understanding of virtue, not an argument or debate. Such dialogue, as Lickona suggests, “combines good examples and direct moral teaching by giving importance to moral issues by taking time to discuss them when they arise and by offering personal moral commentary that helps students understand why behaviors such as cheating, stealing, bullying, and name-calling are hurtful and wrong” (80).
Storytelling and the role of the hero
Heroes and stories go hand in hand. Every hero has a story, and every level has a hero. Flannery O’Connor says, “A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate” (Kilpatrick 132). Learning from heroes and stories makes virtue more precise and more accurate.
Bruno Bettleheim states, “After his relationship with his parents, literature best conveys meaning to the child. Why? Because they teach that a struggle against severe difficulties in life is unavoidable and is an intrinsic part of human existence. But that if one does not shy away, but steadfastly meets unexpected and often unjust hardships, one master all obstacles and at the end emerges victorious” (Kilpatrick 192). We want our lives to have meaning, and stories help us see that our lives are worth living. Therefore, children need to read and be told both fiction, and non-fiction, personal and mythic stories that communicate life’s value and meaning.
The teacher plays a vital role as a storyteller. Not only is she a communicator of the virtues through the stories she tells or reads, but she is also a role model of those virtues. The students look to her as an example, a mentor, for how to apply the virtues to everyday life.
Living up to the students’ expectations can be a seemingly impossible task. However, by sharing personal stories of how she has lived these virtues or failed to live them, the teacher is humanized in her students’ eyes, and a stronger bond develops between them. By bonding with students, the teacher meets primary emotional needs that may or may not be fulfilled at home. As Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs suggests, these immediate emotional needs must be met for children to be ready and able to learn. This bonding has many additional benefits, such as the child looking forward to being at school and developing a nurturing environment.
The use of interdisciplinary activities
Interdisciplinary activities help teach character as well. These activities can be directly related to the story through which virtue is taught, or they can be a broader application of integrity across the curriculum. Story-related activities include an art project, a language arts assignment, and a drama skit or role-play. Exercises with more general applications involve applying the learning of virtue to another subject, such as a current events report or a research project.
For example, when studying the Civil Rights Movement, talk about the Courage of Rosa Parks. History and Social Studies are subjects that easily lend themselves to discussions about virtue. Similar applications can be made for almost every issue. In Music, discuss the lives of great composers and the character traits that made them great, Mozart’s Imagination or Beethoven’s Perseverance. In Science, dialogue about the Patience of scientists led to inventions, such as Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone.
Not only can associations with virtue be made across disciplines, but the application of virtue can also be made to every place and situation at school, on the bus, in the hallways, in the bathrooms, in the cafeteria, on the playground, and even in the faculty room. For this to happen, teachers must deliberately discuss the application of the virtue in various scenarios throughout the school day before, during, and after everyday life moral conflicts. Teachers must seize teachable moments. This requires much time and effort from the teacher, but it is time and effort well invested.
Consistent behavior code, correction, and community
The teacher cannot convey these important lessons alone. A school-wide commitment to virtue must be established. This commitment requires three C’s: Consistent Behavior Code, Correction, and Community. A Consistent Behavior Code is a clear set of expectations for students and teachers that remain constant from teacher to teacher. The expectations and rules can be explained in terms of the virtues studied in the classroom. An example of a government is, “I will listen when someone else is talking because I am respectful of others.” To achieve consistency, teachers must discuss the rules and expectations and work together to enforce them.
Correction is a discipline that is appropriate for the offense, and it does not belittle the student in any way by using sarcasm or embarrassment. A correction is a tool for learning when adequately administered by teachers. It should not be looked at to control the classroom or remove a problem child. Instead, it must be viewed as a catalyst for a personal discussion about the Consistent Behavior Code and how the student in the classroom can uphold that Code.
Community is a sense of belonging. To develop a sense of community, schools need a vision that gives purpose and ceremonies through which the students, staff, and parents connect. Kilpatrick notes that the academics, character, pride, symbol, and ritual of the classroom and school are interrelated. As Wynn and Ryan put it, “Public, collective activities have teaching power because we are properly impressed with values to which large numbers of persons display dramatic, conspicuous allegiance or respect” (232-233). The community can be achieved through quality leadership and a commitment to virtue.
Through Consistent Behavior Codes, Correction, and Community, the school provides opportunities that invite students to practice good habits. In Ethics, Aristotle says:
“The moral virtues are engendered in us neither by nor contrary to nature; we are constituted by nature to receive them, but their full development is due to habit. It is a matter of no little importance what sort of habits we form from the earliest age. It makes a vast difference, or all the difference in the world (Damon 26-27).”
These opportunities can range from the expectation of raising a hand in class to being called upon to do school service projects for the town. However, character education aims not merely to institute good habits; it shapes the heart.
Shaping the heart
To shape the heart, the educator must acknowledge and teach that every human has a choice, the opportunity, and the power to choose what he does and says. The educator must also recognize and conduct that negative behaviors produce negative consequences and that positive behaviors have positive outcomes. Instruction of virtue and the institution of good habits creates an appetite to do good in children. It empowers students to live productively beyond the classroom. It teaches them how to think through what they do and say at home, in the neighborhood, and wherever they are.
It also prepares them to live purposefully now and in the future by helping them realize the importance of their choices. As Heraclitus said, the character is destiny. Schools teach students about Kindness and expect them to use their hands to help, not hurt; the aim is for them to apply this morality not only with their classmates at school but also with siblings at home and friends in their neighborhood. Of course, school personnel is not at home or in the area to enforce such behavior. However, if educators have done their job and are teaching to the child’s heart, they will make a positive choice even when no one is looking. Applied morality is not a habit; it is a thoughtful choice.
Character education benefits the school and the individual.
Approaching character education in this manner benefits the school and the individual. The school becomes a warm and nurturing environment where high expectations are held, and students participate in meaningful ways. As Hawkins and Catalano have stated, these three elements move children from risk to resiliency. In addition, these resilient children possess integrity with wholeness or completeness. They possess nobility, the strength of character, and the wisdom to discern what to do and when to do it. Therefore, the older generation is obligated to teach the younger generation character to equip them to function within civil society, prepare them for life’s challenges, and instruct them how to live with purpose.
- Damon, William, Editor. Bringing in a New Era in Character Education. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2002.
- Kilpatrick, William K. Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right From Wrong. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.
- Lewis, C.S. The Abolition of Man. 1943.
- Lickona, Thomas. Educating for Character: How Our Schools Can Teach Respect and Responsibility. New York: Bantam Books, 1991.
- Ryan, Kevin and Karen E. Bohlin. Building Character in Schools: Practical Ways to Bring Moral Instruction to Life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1999.
- Chicago Tribune – As teachers discuss the Capitol riot with their classes, students want to know ‘why this happened.’
- Harvard Gazette – Lessons from teaching in COVID times
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EdCircuit Staff