Moral and Character Education: The Connection

It is not surprising that character development of children and youth is about educating them in moral and ethical matters.  Nothing new here.  From Colonial times through the 20th Century, moral education “was deep in the very fabric of our schools.”

Following WWII, a variety of cultural and social changes caused the public to question moral education initiatives because of religious connotations.  A shift began in the late sixties amid the widespread concern over students’ poor academic achievement, anti-social behaviors, and other cultural factors – a shift from moral education to character education.

Character development of the young expanded to include the teaching and learning of moral and civic virtues, the formation of good habits and eliminating poor ones, the beginning of interest in children’s social and emotional skill development, and greater attention to the culture of schools and the climates of classrooms.

Even with the name change from moral to character education, moral and ethical content retain its place under the character education “umbrella” as the following quotes illustrate.

Edward Wynne, a professor at the University of Illinois wrote:

We can assume that renewed attention to character development will be good for pupils, their families, educators, and the nation. For, in the end, the welfare and the very existence of our society does not so much depend on the IQs of its inhabitants, as on their character.

Professor Larry Nucci (Handbook of Moral and Character Education) says:

If we don’t teach kids moral reasoning skills, including how to challenge appropriately (non-moral) conventional issues, we may be engaging in immoral education.

Thomas Lickona, developmental psychologist and a professor of education, reports:

If schools wish to maximize their moral clout, making a lasting difference in students’ character…they need a comprehensive, holistic approach (one where schools) look at themselves through a moral lens and consider how virtually everything that goes on there affects the values and character of students.

Many ethicist remind us that “school is unavoidable a moral enterprise” infused in school codes, regulations, requirements, traditions, expected behaviors, styles of teaching, with curricula and extra-curricular offerings.

Moral (character) education, then, encompasses deliberate efforts to help the young learn, practice, and apply moral virtues and character habits that will help them individually live good lives – and at the same time become productive, contributing citizens.

In this view, moral education should contribute not only to the students as individuals, but also to the social cohesion of a community. (http://education.stateuniversity.com/)

In our first book on character education (2001), Mary Williams and I wrote:

The public has come to appreciate the importance of the young learning about human achievement, ethical principles, and the moral values that underpin democratic, civilized life….

Paraphrasing our colleague, Professor Kevin Ryan, we continued:
Character education has reintroduced one important aspect of moral development…namely, socialization—helping the young learn how to live cooperatively, caringly, and civilly.
This is a good place for a reminder and a conclusion that calls for further study.

Lickona and Davidson have made the case that there are two types of character—“moral character” and “performance character.”

They write that “moral character [values/virtues and ethics] is necessary for successful interpersonal relationships and ethical behavior.”  The characteristics of moral character encompass such virtues as integrity, caring, respect, generosity, responsibility, cooperation, and the like.

The companion to moral character is “performance character – a needed characteristic for reaching one’s potential in school, the workplace, or any area of endeavor.”  Performance virtues include diligence, perseverance, ingenuity, self -discipline, grit, optimism, and more.

American Journalist Sydney J. Harris once noted that “the whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.”

 

Contact us: character@sandiego.edu

Fifty Shades of Gray

Did the title get your attention?

Not to worry –this blog is different than the popular movie. Note that the word “gray.” It is not “Grey” as in the movie title. March, in many places, is a “gray” overcast month where one wishes for an early Spring. To brighten up the month of March, consider these “gems” for the teaching and learning of character strengths and traits.

Engagement

  • Gallup Students Poll
    • “Sixty-three percent of students in America are engaged…highly involved with and enthusiastic about school.” (p72)
  • The Engagement Slide
    • “Student engagement peaks during elementary school, decreases through middle school and early high school, plateaus a little, and then increases through the rest of high school….”(p.72)
  • Students polled suggest 4 ways to keep them engaged (p.73)
    1. “Elementary schools prepare them for the rigors of the work in secondary schools.
    2. Teachers get to know them
    3. Adults praise and recognize them for good schoolwork
    4. All schools commit to building the strengths of each student.”
  • “Teachers who are engaged in their work tend to have students who are engaged in learning.” (p.73)

Shane J. Lopez, “Giving Students a Voice.” Kappan, October 2011, pp.72-73

Emotions 

Emotions have many variations: joy, contentment, serenity, frustration, sadness, sorrow, guilt, etc. If you break them down into their simplest elements, there are only two important categories; one sends positive messages and the other sends negative messages.

If you are mindful (conscious) of your emotions, you realize that they are affected by your thoughts, your self-talk, and by reactions prompted by your senses. (For example, HEARING a compliment prompts a good feeling; HEARING criticism prompts a negative one. SEEING someone smile at you prompts a nice feeling; SEEING a sad scene in a film prompts tears.)

It is normal for negative emotions to emerge in difficult situations. A negative emotional reaction to another person’s comments indicates that the other person is prompting (directing) your emotions. In such cases, redirect your thinking so positive emotions will be forthcoming.

In any situation where you feel bad, change your thinking because the emotion always follows cognition.

PROMOTING RESPONSIBILITY & LEARNING– Volume 15 Number 2, February 2015

http://MarvinMarshall.Com

Empathy  “Empathy Formula” (E = EC²)

The first the first stage of becoming empathetic is “cognitive empathy,” or the act of knowing how another person feels. The second is “emotional empathy,” or the capacity to physically feel the emotions of another. As with cognitive empathy, however, emotional empathy can have troublesome consequences if applied in isolation. The third and final part of the formula — “compassionate empathy”, which is what occurs when we combine the previous two in the name of acting upon what we think and feel.

What would happen if schools were more mindful of this Empathy Formula? Instead of offering disconnected but well-intentioned efforts to help children think, feel or act, would adults start to help children think, feel and act? Would communities be increasingly populated with people who were neither narcissistic nor emotionally empty? And would the most pressing problems of our day — from energy to education to enlivening our civic life — be analyzed, internalized, and diffused by a new generation of changemakers?  

Sam Chaltain, “The Empathy Formula,” Huffington Post, 12-18-2012

Moral & Performance Character

This question was posed to Paul Tough, author of “How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character.”

Can you explain how they’re different and why that difference is important?

This is a distinction that was made in a paper by the Character Education Partnership. I found it valuable when I was reporting on the character-education collaboration between the KIPP schools in New York City and the Riverdale Country School, which I wrote about in 2011 in the New York Times Magazine, and which I write about in more depth in “How Children Succeed.”

Briefly, “moral character” refers to traits related to values and ethics: honesty, piety, chastity, generosity. “Performance character” refers to traits related to personal effectiveness: self-control, persistence, grit, optimism. These traits are very similar to what economists like James Heckman refer to as non-cognitive skills.

I think both categories are valuable, but I think they they’re clearly very different. And one big problem with the word character is that it has these two meanings. Which means that when any two people have a conversation about “character education,” they are often talking about two very different things.

When educators who care about character are able to be more specific about which character traits they’re trying to develop in their students, that benefits everyone.

Larry Feriazzo, September 3, 2012, Education Week: Teacher.

Blue Skies for You to Celebrate

Beware the Gray Clouds

Friday the 13th & The Ides of March

The Skill of Question-Asking

“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question; I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”  —A. Einstein

Ask yourself these two questions:

  1. Does question-asking apply to the teaching and learning of positive character strengths and ethical decision-making?
  2. What resources could help you and your students appreciate the importance of developing question-asking skills?

The answer to the first question is “yes” and here is one reason.

The word CHARACTER has two Cs in it; one stands for CHOICE and the other for CONSEQUENCES. Living a life of good character doesn’t happen by CHANCE, nor does it happen by CIRCUMSTANCES.  It happens by CHOICES.  There is another very important “C” that should be considered – CONSCIENCE.

If character is necessary to inform our “choices” and “consequences,” (conscience) then children and youth need to learn and practice the skills of question asking.

In his paper “The Art and Architecture of Powerful Questions,” Eric Vogt reminds us that:

  • Questions are a prerequisite to learning.
  • Questions are a window into creativity and insight. 
  • Questions motivate fresh thinking.
  • Questions challenge outdated assumptions.
  • Questions lead us to the future.

http://www.javeriana.edu.co/decisiones/PowerfulQuestions.PDF

“Asking the right questions takes as much skill as giving the right answers.”  Robert Half

Here are four teaching suggestions that help answer the second question.

  1. Give Me Five: 5-W’s & the H
    • This strategy is applicable for deconstructing subject matter content, current events, and relationships.  A relationship example:
      • There is a fight on the playground.  Five students are involved and are sent to the office (which means the principal or her delegate has to deal with the problem.)  They are given a GMF sheet with a diagram of an open hand, each finger has question on it, and so does the palm.  The five students are separated, given the sheet, and told to write about the incident:
        • Who was involved? (thumb question)
        • Where? (finger question)
        • When? (finger question)
        • What happened? (finger question)
        • Why? (finger question)
        • How? (Resolution) (palm question)

The students have 10-15 minutes to complete the GMF sheet.  They return to the office for a “debriefing” to discuss the first five questions.  Then the How question:  “How are the five of you going to solve this problem?”  “What’s the solution and the consequences?”

Palm Question Thumbnail

  1. KAACCE – Bloom’s Taxonomy : Have your students memorize this acronym KAACSE (pronounce is as Kay-Sea) and what each letter means:
    • Knowledge – questions that have students list, define, tell, label, show, name, relate, recall
    • Comprehension – questions that compare, contrast, explain, rephrase, classify, interpret, outline, infer
    • Application – questions that solve, select, plan, choose, construct, experiment, organize, build
    • Analysis – questions that separate, compare, contrast, dissect, examine, infer, simplify, test for
    • Synthesis – questions create, construct, combine, design, adapt, modify, predict, and improve
    • Evaluation –questions that judge, criticize, conclude, assess, appraise, estimate, deduct, prove/disprove
  1. Teach your students Arthur Costa’s Levels of Questioning.  http://mrkash.com/costa.html
Level One
Defining Describing
Identifying Listing
Naming Observing
Reciting Scanning
Level Two
Analyzing Comparing
Contrasting Grouping
Inferring Sequencing
Synthesizing
Level Three
Applying a principle Evaluating
Hypothesizing Imagining
Judging Predicting
Speculating

 

  1. The staff at the “Right Question Institute” recommends that teachers use a 6-step process called the Question Formulation Technique (QFT), summarized as follows:
    1. Teachers design a question focus
    2. Students produce questions
    3. Students improve their questions
    4. Students prioritize their questions
    5. Students and teachers decide on next steps
    6. Students reflect on what they have learned

“Teaching this skill in every classroom can help successful students to go deeper in their thinking and encourage struggling students to develop a new thirst for learning.”  http://rightquestion.org/education/

You will discover that question–asking is teachable, easily modeled, relevant to the Common Core Standards, applicable to 21st Century skills, and a life-long skill effective in gathering and processing information, solving problems, and making decisions (hopefully ethical ones) both professionally and personally.

To conclude – a few questions for you:

  • Why did you read this blog?
  • What did you learn?
  • How does this help you with the Cs in question one?
  • How can you use the information in your classroom with your students?

“In school, we’re rewarded for having the answer, not for asking a good question.”  — Richard Saul Wurman

Peace Education

“If we are to reach real peace in this world … we shall have to begin with the children.” –Mahatma Gandhi

Happy New Year!

Let’s talk about peace education, another program that is found under the “Character Education Umbrella.”

Peace education programs encompass the virtues that underscore good character and citizenship.  The objectives are to help:

  • students learn alternatives to violence, and adults and students to create a school and home environment that is peaceful and conducive to nonviolent attitudes and behaviors;
  • students learn skills including identifying bias, problem solving, sharing and co-operation, shared decision-making, analysis and critical thinking;
  • enhance students self esteem enabling them to imagine life beyond the present;
  • the young recognize and express their feelings in ways that are not aggressive or destructive; using conflict resolution strategies, being empathic and engaging in nonviolent action in relation to problems both personal and societal; and
  • students understand the nature of violence, examine the causes of conflict, stress the benefits of non-violence, and how to handle conflict.

Rhonda Jeffries and Ian Harris note that peace education efforts improves school climate, address the acts of violence in a student’s school and community, and helps create a school and home atmosphere that is peaceful and conducive to nonviolent attitudes and behaviors. The authors report that peace education efforts help students learn alternatives to violence, nurture in students the seeds of compassion rather than hatred, competition, and revenge.

(“Cooling the Climate Using Peace Education in an Urban Middle School,” Middle School Journal, November 1998.)

Here is useful framework for program implementation:

Seven Phases of Planning a Peaceable School

Phase        Activity                                    Question

  1.             Develop a focus                     What is a peaceable school?
  2.             Specify needs                         What are the concerns?
  3.             Reaffirm commitment          Why should we take action?
  4.             Identify principles                  What do we want to do?
  5.             Design a model                      How do we get there?
  6.             Select an approach                What strategies do we use?
  7.             Implement plan                      Are we ready to get started?

I would add a Phase 8:  Evaluate progress / What happened after you implemented the plan?

A typical peace education curriculum and its instructional strategies focus on conflict resolution and problem solving that are personal, community, national, and global.  The intent is to offer students alternatives to violence, and assist both adults and students to create school and home environments that are peaceful and conducive to nonviolent attitudes and behaviors.

Some strategies used by teachers and other school personnel include:

  • peer mediation programs,
  • posters,
  • encouraging students to assume leadership roles, using special teachable moments,
  • keeping the peace message before all school personnel,
  • creating ways of teaching peace in subject matter areas with units and,
  • lessons that incorporate peace themes.

“Peace is woven into the day-to-day fabric of school life primarily through instructional methods such as cooperative learning and constructive controversy and conflict resolution programs such as ‘Teaching Students to Be Peacemakers.’ Through developing and maintaining peaceful relations with diverse schoolmates, students actually experience what they need to establish in society as a whole once they become adults.” (Johnson and Johnson, 2006).

“The pedagogy used in peace education is cooperative, participatory and active, including case-studies, storytelling, role-plays, empathy activities, negotiation and mediation practice, journaling, reflection circles, and alternative futures exercises. The learning objective of peace education aims to transform conflict through dialogue and nonviolence, and particularly where peace education affects youth conflict is transformed across generations.” (Kevin Kester, 2008)

“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality…..”  Martin Luther King, Jr. (Remembrance: 1-19-2015) 

Readers interested in a list of web sites about peace education are invited to send an email to character @sandiego.edu.