Character Education

“Can We Teach Character? An Aristotelian Answer” by Edwin M. Hartman is an incredibly well written article on whether, as the title states, character can be taught. I will attempt to critique this article and illustrate points that may have been excluded, but the article is extremely well rounded. The purpose of the article is to determine whether teaching ethics is worth the time taken, whether students will actually act better as a result. Hartman translates Aristotle’s thoughts well, and overall it is a beautiful piece of writing.

At Poe Middle School, my mentor Ms. Adams interact with her co-workers, students and parents by stressing the "core value of respect, integrity, cooperation and care for one another.” Every time she walks down the hallway and hears students disrespecting each other, putting each other down or using foul language, she stops them and corrects their behavior. When there was a situation in the classroom between a teachers and a student, Ms. Adams cooperates with teacher request. She has built relationships with her teachers and they trust her. Ms. Adams’s students know she cares for them because she frequently ask them about their siblings or family members. I would improve this strategy by having daily announcements about each of these core values. I would choose one for the week and would expect to see students, faculty and staff practice it throughout the week. The next week the school would practice another core value for the week. We would do this all year long.

Character development is an interesting concept that Hasan Minhaj played with in his piece “Prom. He not only used physically his character, but also the environment and symbols around to better strengthen and break bonds between people.

How are characters and their ways of thinking shaped by the consequences of Discovery? Refer to your prescribed text and at least ONE other related text.

Out of all of the stories that the class has read this far there have been two that expressed the importance of moral lessons. So what is a moral lesson? Well a moral, according to Dictionary.com is, “of, relating to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong; ethical”. And a lesson according to Dictionary.com is, “Something to be learned or studied.” If you put the two definitions together you get that a moral lesson is a lesson learned from doing something wrong. The first story that teaches a moral lesson is The Coquette by Hannah Webster Foster which contains a various amount of literary devices as well that help communicate the moral lessons taught. Both authors wrote a story

All societies in the world have benchmarks for what it means to be a good citizen. Moral behavior and doing the right thing is not just a Christian principle, it is the cornerstone for most societies on the planet. “Character is an acquired human quality derived from learned practices that achieve intrinsic outcomes, devoid of external rewards (Marshall with Caldwell & Foster, 2011). Being of good character requires doing the right thing, even when no one is looking and without be rewarded. There is no society that rewards laziness. Treating people with respect and dignity is an idea that dates back long before the birth of Jesus Christ. “The word character comes from a Greek word, which means to engrave” (Wilhelm with Firmin, 2008). When something is engraved the cut is difficult to fill. When one has positive character traits engraved in their personality, they are prepared to contribute to society. Citizens need to be responsible because without responsibility and accountability all societies will be in a constant state of chaos. Without loyalty people do not have a framework of living a life that is bigger than oneself. Stories of the importance of telling the truth are told in virtually every language on the planet. If people did not possess courage, no one would take risks for fear of failure. For every invention that has changed the world, there were countless failures before the inventor found success. Being

This article written by Marvin W. Berkowitz focuses on answering three questions regarding character education. The questions are “what is character education,” “does character education work,” and “what is effective character education?” The ratio of discussion per question is roughly 1:3:6, respectively. Berkowitz informs the readers that character education is truly a complex topic and concept, and Berkowitz classifies character education as rocket science (even using scientific descriptors). By stating that character education complicated, educators are comforted in case they have had failed attempts at establishing a productive character education program in their classrooms. The simple way to view character education is a blend of pro-social

Character development is highly important element of any story. Whether the character is good or bad, character development is needed to create a story more interesting, relatable, and adds new dimension

Values are instilled for children such as love, guidance, care, motivation, morals, religion, education, traditions, marriage, consequences, and communication. These values are intended to teach children and as a source of guidance for life. The way a child is raised and the values they are taught shapes their personality.

During your time in kindergarten you learn the academic basics, but more importantly you start learning the essentials to base your morals, values, and ethics. You learn to respect, responsibility, trustworthiness, fairness, and caring. Building on these values will stay with you from kindergarten through adulthood. Learning values and ethics begins in kindergarten, but continues throughout the years of your life.

Author of, Not Just Read and Write but Wright and Wrong, Townsend, suggests that character/values should be taught in the school system. Townsend makes many well thought out points in their discussion as to why they believe character/values would be an asset to the adolescents of today. Some key points that stand out in Townsend’s discussion would be the survey conducted for People for the American Way, which asked over one thousand Americans between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four, what goals they would consider to be most important. Three times the amount chose career success over community service, to be the top priority. (Townsend 1)

In education,besides skill,knowledge and development of relations, there must also be the inculcation of moral values and the evaluation of one 's abilities. Moral values vary slightly from one culture to another,but there are essential similarities like caring for the needy and providing for the poor,being humble etc. These moral values cannot be taught on the Internet. There is no textbook on morals anywhere where one can just gain moral values by reading it. Besides,learning the basic moral principles,one must also

“Beyond aesthetic sensitivity, the study of literature leads to inductive insights in such areas as psychology, philosophy, history, and sociology; and it provides data on such topics as human nature, sin, and the meaning and purpose of human existence” (Knight, 2006, p. 230). As Knight so clearly states, the secondary English classroom is rife with opportunities for teaching biblical-based values and helping students develop their characters as Christian young men and women. By examining literary characters, historical figures, writing samples, and by expressing themselves through the use of language, students encounter many opportunities to reflect upon and discuss a plethora of values. Van Brummelen (2002) lists an extensive amount of values grouped into twelve categories: spiritual, moral, political/legal, economic, social, language/communication, analytic/logical, aesthetic, psychological, physical health, biological and physical, and mathematical. Out of these categories, the easiest values to integrate with English are drawn from the spiritual, moral, social, and language/communication categories. Specifically, three values that can be taught in conjunction with secondary English for the character development of students are integrity, clarity, and devotion. While this list is far from exhaustive, it is a good base to show how easily values can be integrated into English instruction.

The most common place children learn family values is when they are spending time with their family. Family is the first group of people a child comes into contact with so the child’s family is ultimately the people who teach them the most. Children also learn their values through seeing what their family values most, and through learning life lessons and overcoming them. Once they get sent off to preschool, teachers are in charge of being their role model. If they are taught no values, then they could possibly come into class and show their peers negative behavior and their peers might be influenced. From the articles I read, one topic that was very interesting to me was the fact that you have to set a good example in order for them to follow along. I think that is interesting because for the first few years of their life children learn by seeing things around them. So if their family repeatedly does something wrong, it influences the child. I also thought that it was interesting that the same article talked about how children used to be treated before they knew anything about child development. Recently, we do not have that “protected” age anymore because of social media. Children are being exposed to things they should not be exposed to. Finally, I read 2 articles about family values that both had the same ideas and also had different details within the main idea. One article was entitled “Family Values; What Children Learn From Parents”

As well as clarifying your own values, it is important to recognise a wide variety of common values which can be taught across the school curriculum (Haydon 2006). Values are very important in the theory of education as well as the practical and physical elements of schools which are linked in with the idea of intercultural education. Values in intercultural education cater for a growing cultural diversity in all societies (Halstead and Taylor 1996). Defining values may be difficult because people have different views on the actual meaning of what “values” are. There are different types of values. These are intrinsic, extrinsic, moral and non-moral values. Intrinsic values are those which have inherent worth, while extrinsic values are those that have an instrumental worth. Moral values are standard accepted principles of life while non-moral values are things that we desire. This is linked in with the idea of moral philosophy. Accomplishing a systematic understanding of the nature of morality and what it requires from individuals is the main idea of moral philosophy (Rachels and Rachels