WHAT'S WRONG WITH CHARACTER EDUCATION?

Michael Davis

Illinois Institute of Technology

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Biography

Michael Davis is Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions and

Professor of Philosophy, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. Among his recent publications

are: Ethics and the University (Routledge, 1999); Profession, Code, and Ethics (Ashgate, 2002);

and (with Andrew Stark) Conflict of Interest in the Professions (Oxford, 2001).
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Abstract

We can distinguish three sorts of "character education": 1) simple moral education (essentially,

Kohlbergian moral education in the classroom); 2) just-community education (a Deweyesque

practice emphasizing democratic decision-making outside the classroom); and 3) simple character

education (attempting to build character both in and outside of class one trait at a time by emphasize

good behavior). Simple moral education may have a modest effect on character; just-community

education probably has no greater effect, even though it has considerably higher risks and other

costs. But simple moral education suffers from three disadvantages that should lead us to reject it:

empirical (absence of evidence that it does what it claims); conceptual (a conflict between what

good character is and the way simple character education proposes to teach it); and moral (its failure

to do the right things for the right reasons).

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On January 23, 1997, President Clinton used a State of the Union address to "challenge all

our schools to teach character education, to teach good values and good citizenship." (Center for

the Advancement of Ethics and Character 2002). He thereby joined the U.S. Department of

Education, many state legislatures, and a long line of authors who have called upon the schools to

cure the moral problems of society (street crime, violence in the schools, drug use, teen

pregnancy, decline in civility, and so on) by molding the character of the next generation.1

Character education seems to have replaced apple pie and motherhood as the best example of

what no one should object to. While we now admit that apple pie may contribute to obesity,

diabetes, and heart disease, and motherhood to overpopulation, character education still seems to

threaten nothing worse than a good character—and who could be against that?

Yet, my title does not ask its question rhetorically. This paper really is about what is wrong

with character education—and, along the way, what is wrong with a certain conception of

character or virtue. My thinking on this subject began twenty months after the President’s speech

when my teenage son returned from his first day of high school. To graduate, he had (he

complained) to do forty hours of volunteer work in an “approved organization”. Long a boy scout

(and before that, a cub scout), he had no objection to volunteer work; he had happily done a good

deal of it over the years. What he objected to was such work being made a condition of

graduation: “How can they require people to volunteer?” I took his complaint to an assistant

principal. Her response was that the volunteer work was a state mandate, that volunteering would

“improve his character, developing in him the habit of public service”, and that he could not get

credit for work already done because “the more the better.” As I carried my son’s complaint up

the administrative hierarchy, I learned that the assistant principal’s reasoning was not an individual

peculiarity. Required volunteering was part of a larger effort at “character education”, one that
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seemed to rest on several fundamental mistakes. My parental concern grew into the critique of an

important movement.

I. Some useful distinctions

By "character" I mean the relatively settled general disposition of a person to do what is

morally good. 2 Character is (supposed to be) a pervasive feature of a person. We read a person's

character as much from what she does at home as from what she does at the office, as much from

what she does in a hurry as from what she does after long deliberation, as much from a word as a

deed. Rough synonyms for "character" so understood are "good character", "moral character",

"moral integrity", and "virtue".3

Character can be analyzed into a set of "traits"—that is, so many narrower dispositions or

virtues—courage, temperance, honesty, perseverance, responsibility, caring, and so on. But

character is not simply the sum of such traits. The traits must be organized in a certain way. So,

for example, while everyone would count courage as a trait of good character, courage in an evil

person does not seem to be a good trait. An evil person with courage is morally worse than he

would be without it. He may dare what a coward would not.

Our evaluation of character traits is so tied to our overall evaluation of character that we

often refuse to describe an evil person's trait by the name proper to the corresponding trait in a

good person. For example, many have described the terrorists who destroyed the World Trade

Center as "cowards" (or their act as "cowardly", this is, characteristic of a coward). The murder

of three thousand innocent people on behalf of a cause that could not excuse even one murder is

certainly morally wrong—but why call those who did it "cowards"? Yes, the terrorists had to
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sneak on board a plane, kill the unarmed pilots, and kill some unarmed passengers (and frighten

the rest) in order to achieve control, but even such stealth and brutality are not necessarily

cowardly. Deception is an art of war; brutality, an aspect of much we regard as courage. The

terrorists were always outnumbered; their only weapons were small box cutters; and what they

did to get control of the planes was the close-up, bloody killing humans find hardest to do. They

were as steadfast in carrying out their orders as Horatius at the bridge was in carrying out his.

Indeed, in at least one respect, they were more steadfast. Horatius only risked death; the

terrorists did what they did certain of it. If we do not regard them as courageous, that can only be

because our evaluation of any character trait, even such an uncontroversial trait as courage,

presupposes that the trait is part of a reasonably good character. Character traits are not so much

building blocks of good character--its "foundations" or "bases"—as expressions of it.4

By "character education", I mean any attempt a school makes to improve a student's

character, that is, to make more likely than otherwise that the student will do what she should—

not simply today but for many years to come. The long term—"many years"—is implicit in any

claim to be educating character. By definition, short-term effects are not part of character.

Character is a settled disposition. When someone we thought to have good character goes bad,

we are more likely to cite some pre-existing "flaw" (even if we never noticed it) than to admit that

her character (once flawless) had been "corrupted". Once formed, character endures. In this

respect, character seems to differ from both virtue and integrity; we are much more willing to

admit that they can suffer decay or corruption.

"Character education" can be used more broadly to include the attempt of institutions

other than schools to mold character. So, for example, we might speak of the army as engaged in

character education insofar as it teaches recruits obedience to orders, coolness under fire, and
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other military virtues, or of a government as engaged in character education insofar as it

encourages citizens to be law-abiding, responsible, and public-spirited.

Nonetheless, my subject will not be character education in this broad sense but recent

efforts to introduce "character education" (so called) into schools, especially primary and

secondary schools. We may distinguish three types: simple moral education; just-community

education; and simple character education. These are “ideal-types.” While all are varieties of

“moral education” (as distinguished from simple moral education), they do not exhaust the

category. Moral education might consist of nothing more than familiarizing students with moral

vocabulary or teaching them how to see moral issues in what they read. Such moral education is

not “character education” (as I shall use that term). To be character education, there must be an

explicit claim to mold character, a claim moral education as such does not make.

The point of distinguishing just these three types is that they seem today to play a

predominant role in discussion of character education. The point of treating them as ideal-types

(rather than, say, as statistical nodes) is to emphasize their internal logic. Though, in practice,

character education is often a mix of these three, distinguishing them will allow us to see how

different are the arguments on which they rely—and also how different the factual, conceptual,

and moral issues they raise.5

II. The first two types of character education

What we may call "simple moral education" (or "moral development") resembles

education generally. Its focus is the classroom. It works by increasing student sensitivity to issues

(by, say, pointing out instances where we must choose between discomfort and deception), by
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adding to what students know (such as ways to avoid deception without causing others

discomfort), and by giving students a chance to apply what they know to "problems" (what should

you do if that happened to you?). The preferred method of simple moral education is guided

discussion of problems requiring students to identify issues, develop options, make reasoned

choice among the options, and defend the choices so made. Simple moral education tends to

focus on method (thinking problems through), not on any pre-set conclusion ("stealing is bad"). 6

I have no objection to this type of character education so long as the claims for it are

modest. Insofar as simple moral education improves the character of students, it does so by

enhancing their intellectual resources, especially their knowledge of moral issues, skill at

developing options, and ability to choose on the basis of publicly defensible reasons. The only

character trait it is likely to instill, if it instills any, is moral judgment, a kind of judiciousness.7

A second type of character education attempts to shape student character through a civic

apprenticeship. The school is turned into a "just community" in which (apart from matters of

pedagogy) students and teachers democratically make policy and carry it out. Students are

supposed to develop democratic virtues—tolerance, rationality, responsibility, concern for the

common good, and so on—by practicing them with the help of their teachers. The virtues are to

be learned as a practical whole, not trait by trait. The classroom is only one locale in which just-

community education goes on, perhaps not even the most important. John Dewey is the patron

saint of this type of character education. As a movement, just-community education is now almost

extinct.8 Why? There seem to be at least three reasons:

First, administering a school as a just community seems to require too much of both

teachers and students at a time when too much else is already required. Because democracy is not

“efficient”, schools prefer to centralize school-wide decisions in administrators and classroom

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decisions in individual teachers.

Second, letting students decide "for real" means letting them make mistakes, some serious,

perhaps even life threatening.9 Few schools today seem willing to take that risk. For most

schools, the watchword is not "experiments in living" but "safety".

Third, advocates of the just community as a means of character education must assume

that experience is the best teacher. But schools exist precisely because they have proved better

than experience at teaching much we want taught. Perhaps half of all formal instruction in the

United States now goes on within businesses—suggesting that, even for practical subjects, those

who pay the bills prefer the classroom to the hard school experience is said to keep. Today many

apprenticeship programs also include a good deal of classroom instruction. To justify the effort

and risk a just community requires, advocates of this type of character education must overcome

what is now a clear presumption in favor of the classroom over "the school of hard knocks".

Just-community advocates try to overcome that presumption primarily by abstract

argument. The argument merely restates the claim that experience is the best teacher. The little

empirical research just-community advocates have produced only shows that the practical

discussions of the just community work much as do the "academic" discussions of simple moral

education.10 We have no evidence that this type of character education works better than simple

moral education, much less that it works so much better that we are justified in ignoring the extra

effort and risk.

Though the just-community approach no longer seems a movement, many elements

associated with it do appear in schools, everything from student government in high school to

impromptu discussions in first grade about how to help two members of the class avoid getting

into arguments. What justifies calling these “elements of the just-community approach” are the
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arguments made in their behalf (for example, “participating in student government cultivates

democratic virtues”).

III. Simple character education

The third type, what I shall call "simple character education", treats character education as

more or less analogous to physical education. Aristotle is said to have summarized the essential

truth behind it: "We become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-

control, and courageous by performing courageous acts." (See, for example, Wynne 1991, p.

143.) We have only to go through the moral calisthenics to develop the appropriate moral

muscle.

"Moral calisthenics" may include listening to certain stories, repeating certain words (such

as the pledge of allegiance or the school creed), doing a certain amount of required public service,

or obeying strict rules. The emphasis on repetition is often explicit. So, for example, Thomas

Lickona (1998), p. 78, a long-time leader of the movement, says:

[The] bottom line is behavior… Virtues are not mere thoughts but have to develop by

performing virtuous actions. Acting on this principle, character educators seek to help

students to perform kind, courteous, and self-disciplined acts repeatedly—until it becomes

relatively easy for them to do so and relatively unnatural for them to do the opposite.

Inevitably, the moral calisthenics are said to include repeatedly seeing adults "model" good

conduct. Teachers might, for example, as part of improving the character of their students, be
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asked to "work diligently...[obey] school rules and policies; display goodwill and consideration

toward colleagues, pupils, and parents; ...[be] basically optimistic about their work; and take pride

in the school and their community." (Wynne 1991, p. 147)11

Simple character education shares with the just-community type a concern to teach

outside the classroom as well as within.12 It differs from the just-community type (and simple

moral education) in its concern to teach character by teaching specific traits. As William Bennett,

another long-time leader of the movement, put it:

If we want our children to possess the traits of character we most admire, we need to

teach them what those traits are and why they deserve both admiration and allegiance.

Children must learn to identify the forms and contents of those traits. (Bennett 1993, p.11)

It is no surprise, then, that Bennett's bestseller, The Book of Virtues, takes up one trait after

another.

A school that adopts simple character education will have a list of "character traits"

("virtues" or "values") to be taught and a program designed to teach them (more or less) one by

one. Or, to quote the movement’s most popular "position statement":

Character education holds, as a starting philosophical principle, that there are widely

shared, pivotally important core ethical values—such as caring, honesty, fairness,

responsibility, and respect for self and others—that form the basis of good character. A

school committed to character education explicitly names and publicly stands for these

values; promulgates them to all members of the school community; defines them in terms
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of behaviors that can be observed in the life of the school; models these values; studies and

discusses them; uses them as the basis for human relations in the school; celebrates their

manifestations in the school and community; and upholds them by making all school

members accountable to standards of conduct consistent with the core values. (Lickona et

al, 1997 , p. 29)

This everything-in—“holistic”—approach to curriculum and school administration seems designed

to compensate for the fragmentation of character that the trait-by-trait approach of simple

character education would otherwise produce. The approach is “holistic” only in systematically

subordinating every aspect of school to teaching character. It is the opposite of holistic insofar as

it treats character as a mere collection of traits rather than a unified whole.

Simple character education is sometimes criticized for being "mere training" rather than

"education". In one sense of "training"—that is, when "training" is understood as indoctrination,

a way of getting students to think or act in certain ways that works (more or less) by repetition

(as in "training one's hair") or by other means that bypass reason—the criticism is accurate but

uninformative. Since simple character education explicitly emphasizes habit, ritual, ceremonies,

strict discipline, and other means of instilling character traits that (more or less) bypass reason,

calling it "training" in this sense is not so much a criticism as a restatement. The question

becomes, "What's wrong with training [in this sense]?" 13

In two other senses of "training", however, character education certainly is not mere

training. Sometimes, when "training" is contrasted with "education", training is understood to be

"narrow" or merely "vocational" while education is broad, a preparation for citizenship or life.

When "mere training" is understood in this way, this criticism of simple character education is
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simply mistaken. There is nothing narrow or merely vocational about simple character education;

it is concerned with preparing students for life, not just for a job. While some of the character

traits on its list may be narrow or vocational ("promptness", for example), the list as a whole

never is.

"Training" may also be distinguished from "education" by its purpose. Education (it might

be said) aims at the student's good while training aims at some good other than the student's. So,

for example, we call what the military does with recruits "training" rather than "education" even

when what is taught is similar in both content and method to a college course; the recruits are

taught for the military's good, not their own. While advocates of simple character education have

much to say about the importance of good character for society, they seem (quite correctly) to

believe that good character is good for the student. They seem to favor teaching character in

primary and secondary schools (in large part at least) for the same reason they favor teaching

subjects like math or writing; the student will benefit (whoever else may benefit as well).

Simple character education nonetheless seems to me open to three criticisms that together

ought to make us avoid it: 1) the empirical (absence of evidence that it works); 2) the conceptual

(a conflict between what good character is and the way simple character education proposes to

teach it); and 3) the moral (its failure to do the right thing for the right reason).

IV. Empirical criticism

The empirical criticism has two parts. The first is that while all the scientific research

offered in defense of simple character education covers short periods, two or three years at most,

character is (by definition) an enduring feature of the person, a settled disposition, something that
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must exist over more than a small part of one’s life to exist at all.14 Simple character education

has nothing like the decades-long studies done on behalf of simple moral education. (See, for

example, Kohlberg 1981; Rest 1986; or Bebeau 1993.)

Simple moral education has those decades-long studies because it can measure success

using a paper-and-pencil test. It can measure success by a paper-and-pencil test because it claims

only to improve moral judgment (and to add to moral knowledge), making no claims about the

overall disposition we call "character". What advocates of simple character education (and

advocates of just-community education) treat as the great weakness of simple moral education, its

modest claim, is in fact a strength, allowing it to develop and carry out a rigorous program of

research sufficient to justify its methods.

Because simple character education's claim is much less modest, the research necessary to

support it is far more difficult. We seem to have no way to observe character directly. We must

judge character through acts (and other observable effects), acts sufficiently varied and collected

over a sufficiently long period to constitute a good indication of the underlying disposition.

Perhaps only a miniature social scientist perched on the shoulder of a former student day and

night, year after year, is likely to learn his true character. Only by many such individual long-term

studies, comparing students who had a simple character education against those who had no

formal character education (or one of the other types), could we get the data to confirm, or

disconfirm, the claim that simple character education works. Indeed, insofar as character is (as

some say) "what we do when we think no one is watching", the miniature social scientist might

have to be invisible as well as small (and to be carrying on her observations unethically, that is,

without the consent of the research subject). We can, then, understand why advocates of simple

character education would not want to wait for the empirical research necessary to confirm their
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long-term claim. Simple character education's emphasis on character as a whole makes unlikely

ever having even one respectable long-term study supporting it. That we can understand their

impatience to get on with the program is, of course, no reason to forget that, in effect, they are

flying at night without a reliable map or instruments of navigation.

The second part of the empirical criticism is that even the short-term research supposedly

supporting simple character education does not support it. For example, Edward Wynne, an

advocate of simple character education who seems to have done much of the research cited in its

behalf, summarizes his results this way:

Regrettably, the studies provided little information about the formal subject matter

presented to pupils and its potential content. Furthermore, analysis of comparative test

scores was considerably confounded by our inability to separate out and compare students

of like socioeconomic status and to distinguish schools that rigorously adhered to one

conceptual approach. One exploratory study, however, did report favorable statistical

relationships between pro-character focus and academic emphasis in some schools.

(Wynne 1991, p. 146)

All Wynne claims his data show is a positive correlation between schools that have an "academic

emphasis" (minimum homework requirement, parents committed to overseeing homework, and so

on) and those that have a "pro-character" emphasis (that is, character education of some sort).

He claims no causal relationship even between those two variables. He has no data showing the

effectiveness of simple character education in schools, much less in the lives of students after they

have left school. Wynne's studies are almost a decade old, yet today we have nothing better, no
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widely-accepted scientific study showing the short-term effectiveness of simple character

education in schools or out, none. 15

Schools that undertake simple character education often report better attendance, fewer

fights, and other good effects. Whether these are short-term or long-term effects, whether they

are the effects of simple character education as such or of other changes in program, we do not

know, since the schools do not attempt to sort such variables. But, even if these improvements

could be shown both to be the effect of simple character education as such and to endure many

years, they would still be effects on the school. The overall effect on students is a distinct

question. If, for example, a drop in in-school fights simply meant more fights on the way home,

the overall effect on student welfare might be zero or negative, even after allowing for the

improvement at school. Before simple character education can justly claim any responsibility for

overall benefit to students, it will have to have studies that control for such shifting of trouble (as

social scientists who study policing routinely do). And, having shown such benefit to students, the

advocates of simple character education would still lack evidence of benefit to character.

But—many advocates of simple character education say—we don't need such evidence.

Simple character education has the approval of the ages. There are (to quote Wynne again):

parallels [with] techniques proposed during 3000 years in the Torah, Plato's works, the

Roman Catholic Baltimore Catechism (1943), and the writings of Horace Mann. Cross-

cultural studies in anthropology can supply equivalent insights into how character is

formed in non-Western cultures. (Wynne 1991, p. 144)

To this omnibus appeal to authority, I have three responses: First, the societies in question
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seem not to have been noticeably better than ours at producing good character. So, their

testimony does not provide an argument for adopting their methods (since ours seem just as

good). Second, even if the societies in question were noticeably better at producing good

character than we are, the question would remain whether their use of simple character education

explains the difference. Those societies also seem to have engaged in simple moral education.

Maybe its use explains whatever success they had. How are we to tell? Third, the societies in

question may have had a different problem of teaching character than we have. They were

traditional societies attempting to preserve themselves unchanged. We are a society committed to

change. So, for example, ritual may not be as good a way for us to teach what we have to teach

as it was for them to teach what they had to teach.16 Here the ages speak no more clearly than did

the oracle at Delphi.

Advocates of simple character education also appeal to their own experience: we can see

that what we do works; we can see that the students are morally better—kinder, more

responsible, and so on. This appeal to personal experience suffers from at least two flaws. First,

what any teacher sees is how students act in the school today, not their character (how the student

will act over the next several decades). Parole boards long struggled to use conduct in prison to

predict what convicts would do in the first five years after they left prison. All such attempts

failed.17 Second, even if teachers kept in contact with students for decades, the resulting

anecdotes would not tell us much. It was on the basis of such anecdotal evidence (and

accompanying theory) that several centuries of physicians routinely bled, leeched, and poisoned

their patients. When, in the nineteenth century, physicians began to do systematic studies of their

“cures”, they discovered that many, indeed, most, were positively harmful. The average patient

was better off going to a homeopath or a Christian Science practitioner than to a physician.
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Centuries of clinical experience were simply wrong. Faith in experience is no substitute for

carefully designed research. (See, for example, Rothstein 1972, pp. 41-61)

What I have said so far seems to put simple character education in empirical limbo. In fact,

its scientific status is a bit worse. There is some research that, though old, is both relevant and

respectable. During the last wave of character education almost three-quarters of a century ago,

two researchers at Yale, Hugh Hartshorne and Mark May, attempted to determine whether the

character education of their day worked. They did by far the largest study of simple character

education we have. Typical of their results is the following:

children who belonged to certain unnamed organizations purporting to teach honesty

deceived about the same as children who did not belong. In one organization, length of

membership and rank achieved were positively correlated with deceptiveness. (Pietig

1997, p. 75, summarizing the results of Hartshorne and May, 1928).

What then are we entitled to conclude from the empirical evidence? Concerning short-

term effects, we can only say that simple character education has either no short-term effect on

character or the wrong one. While having the wrong short-term effect does suggest having the

wrong long-term effect too, we now have nothing more than that suggestion. There is now no

reason to believe that simple character education does what it claims to do. For all we know, it is

a waste of time—or worse. That is the empirical criticism of simple character education.

V. Conceptual criticism
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The guiding idea in simple character education seems to be that there is a direct

connection between what we tell students, let them see, show them, or make them do, and what

they learn. So, for example, Wynne and Ryan 1993, p. 57, say, "Character centers on conduct. It

focuses on the regular display of desirable traits in pupils." Because "ceremonies are an important

means of stressing school values", Wynne also said, "assemblies, daily classroom flag salutes,

awards assemblies, and occasions for 'appreciation' [should be] standard events." (Wynne 1991,

p. 148) They should, that is, because such events are ways to instill those "school values" (and the

corresponding character traits). Similarly, if we want a student to get into the habit of

volunteering, we need only make him volunteer—again and again. Input equals output. In fact,

the relation between conduct and character is not so simple. Let me illustrate with an anecdote

from my own childhood.

But because I have just criticized anecdotal evidence, I should first explain how what I am

about to do differs from what I just criticized. The anecdotal evidence I criticized was offered in

defense of a general claim (“In character education, input equals output”). The move from

anecdote to general claim is risky, rather like the move from “These swans are white” to “All

swans are white”. My anecdote is not offered to prove a general claim but to throw doubt on such

a claim (by suggesting the complexity of what simple character education treats as simple). Here

(I am in effect saying) is a black swan: what do you think now of your claim that all swans are

white? No more white swans (no other anecdotes) can dispose of the doubt this one black swan

raises.

My elementary school had a daily flag salute. Until I was eleven, I don't recall paying

much attention to it. It was just one of those empty routines the school seemed to have a

weakness for. Then, one day, as the class rose to say the pledge of allegiance, I had a revelation: I
 20
was about to commit a double sin. To stand before the flag in the attitude of prayer violated the

First Commandment. I was, in effect, worshipping another god. To say "under God", as starting

that day we were supposed to do, violated the Third Commandment. I was using God's name in

vain. Since I did not want to stand out, I stood silent, putting my hand some place that would not

catch anyone's eye and thought about God rather than the flag. And so I continued to stand each

morning for several years. 18

Though the school's daily flag salute was (presumably) intended to teach patriotism, what

I concluded from it was that my school didn't take the Ten Commandments seriously—and that I

might have to choose between religion and country.

A year or so later, I learned from an insert that came with a flag my parents bought that

the pledge of allegiance had been written in 1892—by staff at a children's magazine—and that

saying it in school was an innovation of the early twentieth century. I then began to wonder what

the point of saluting the flag could be when the republic had survived for more than a century

without it. What had worshipping a piece of cloth to do with love of country? If character

consists of the enduring marks experience cuts into the soul (as etymology suggests), then

saluting the flag may have shaped my character, so marking me that I became a philosopher.

What it didn't do was make me patriotic (the character trait presumably aimed at); indeed, it got in

the way of a patriotism otherwise already ingrained.

Do I then think that Aristotle was mistaken about how character develops? No, what I

think is that we do not understand Aristotle’s claim about character development well enough to

decide whether he is mistaken. The claim looks empirical. But an empirical claim for which

Aristotle remains the main authority must be very odd. By now we should have better evidence

than Aristotle had, especially given the many people who seem to accept the claim as a basic truth
 21
of moral education. That is one reason to think we do not understand Aristotle’s claim. Here is

another: if we treat it as empirical, we can easily identify evidence against it. Consider, for

example, those many soldiers who, having courageously endured days or weeks of bombardment,

"break". Thereafter, they cannot endure even the noises the rest of us hardly notice. They are

continually in a panic. It is as if practice had used up their courage instead of increasing it (much

as firing a weapon wears it out instead of increasing its strength). For such reasons as these, I

think we need to refine Aristotle’s claim about how character develops before we can say whether

it is false—or true.

The truth of Aristotle's claim is, however, beside the point. All we need conclude here is

something I think Aristotle (and Dewey) would accept: simple character education has an overly

simple conception of what practicing character is. We do not develop character by merely

repeating certain behaviors even if we can develop muscle that way. The analogy with calisthenics

is misleading. 19

So, I am pretty sure Aristotle would not have advised a teacher, upon noticing my silence,

to force me to salute the flag. I could not have been taught patriotism by being made to repeat the

outward acts that people generally consider patriotic. The just act is not the act that looks like

what a just person would do but the act arising from the principles a just person would consider.

Self-control is not inaction in response to desire but acting on a reasonable evaluation that the

desire in question should not be satisfied at all or at least should not be satisfied at the time in the

way open. Courage is not responding to danger without showing fear; it is acting against fear for

the right reasons. And so on. Character is not a set of "traits" or independent habits but, if it is

anything, a generalized tendency to deliberate in a certain way (at length when there is time,

quickly when there is not)—with deliberation ending in action.

 22
That way of deliberating is inseparable from moral judgment. Consider patriotism again.

Love of country should not lead us to serve our country when it asks us to do wrong. A person

of good character does not commit murder, even for love of country. Love of country

unrestrained by moral judgment is a sort of fanaticism (the proper name of which is "nationalism",

"jingoism", or "chauvinism"), a vice, not a virtue. Rather than Stephen Decatur's ambiguous toast

of 1816: “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be right; but our

country, right or wrong”, I prefer Carl Schurz's less-often quoted speech in the United States

Senate (1872): “Our country, right or wrong! When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be

put right.” While I doubt that Captain Decatur would have disagreed with General Schurz,

Schurz's gloss on patriotism is less open to abuse.

If traits of character have this common moral core, then—even in the primary grades—

teaching character should include something more than "instilling habits". We cannot count on the

behavior we teach (or, at least, think we are teaching) being the behavior learned. We certainly

cannot count on what we teach being generalized in the way we would wish or applied as we

would expect in novel situations unless we help students understand how to think through novel

situations.20 If Bennett meant what he said when he described character education as, in effect,

show-and-tell about one trait after another, he misunderstood the enterprise. Simple character

education rests on a simple conceptual error. Dividing the teaching of character into the teaching

of individual traits ("behaviors") divides the traits from character, reducing them, in effect, to

morally neutral qualities of personality. In this respect, simple character education is not character

education at all.21 What then is it?

VI. Moral criticism

 23

That brings me to the third criticism of simple character education, that it is morally

flawed because it does not do the right thing for the right reason (and so, may sometimes do the

wrong thing). I regard this as the most serious criticism of all. Let me begin with "modeling". By

that term, I do not mean just any use of example, say, pointing out cunning or courage in the

Iliad. I do not even mean pointing out one’s own conduct to illustrate some point about good (or

bad) conduct. These are not examples of modeling (as I want to use that term here) but of

exhibiting already existing examples. By “modeling” I mean teaching by deliberate example, that

is, by behaving in a certain way in order to serve as an example.

Simple character education says that teachers should teach various character traits in part

at least by modeling them both in their individual practice and in the operation of the school.

Teachers should, for example, treat students (and each other) with respect because so treating

them is modeling the appropriate character trait. Treating students with respect is a means to an

end; one acts in that way in order to teach respect. This means-end reasoning implies that, if the

modeling were shown to have no effect on the development of the students' character, teachers

would no longer have enough reason to treat students with respect. This implication follows from

the way the means-end reasoning is used. That students deserve to be treated with respect just

because they are what they are could not be reason enough to treat them with respect—or,

presumably, teachers (being morally decent people) would not need teaching character as a reason

to do the act; they would have been doing it all along (with good and sufficient reason). The call

to model would be pointless.

Advocates of simple character education cannot avoid this conclusion by restricting

"modeling" to merely calling attention (before, during, or after the act) to the fact that one will be,
 24
is, or has just been behaving properly, the kind of framing or highlighting that constitutes much of

teaching. Such framing of good conduct is exhibiting (or "celebrating") rather than "modeling". If

“modeling” means anything, it must mean acting better (or at least differently) than one would

otherwise because being seen so to act is part of improving the character of students. Simple

character education is a movement for change in education, not an explanation of what teachers

would (or should) do even if not engaged in character education.

The moral mistake in this should now be obvious. Teachers should not teach students to

treat others with respect because treating others with respect is useful (a means to some external

end); they should teach students to treat others with respect because the respect is deserved. But,

if teachers treat students as if they do not in fact deserve the respect the teachers are showing

them, the teachers are not exhibiting what they want to exhibit (treating others with the respect);

they are exhibiting something else, something morally bad—how to dissemble respect when

dissembling it is useful. Treating with respect cannot be modeled because—unlike, say, “good

stance” in calisthenics or good reasoning in mathematics—treating-with-respect includes an

intention or motive that cannot be staged. Hence, for this trait at least, teaching good character by

modeling is impossible.

Much the same is true of most of the traits simple character education undertakes to teach.

Because "modeling" stresses appearance (“behavior” rather than reasoning), it does not easily lend

itself to teaching the judgment necessary for good character. Indeed, insofar as learning to appear

what one is not is (off stage) learning to be a hypocrite, attempting to teach character by modeling

the appropriate behavior would seem to be teaching hypocrisy, just the opposite of what

advocates of simple character education intend.22 Of course, teachers, especially in the primary

grades, do a good deal of exaggeration and pretending; the classroom is cousin to the stage. But
 25
pointing out that kinship to defend against the charge of teaching hypocrisy amounts to pleading

that one was, in effect, only teaching play-acting. Only the appearance of the trait remains.

Teachers generally “frame” their exaggeration and pretence, that is, alert students by facial

expression, tone of voice, or even express warning that what is about to happen, is happening, or

just has happened is staged for their benefit. A teacher doing simple character education might

frame her conduct in that way, but such a frame would still drain the conduct of the trait it was to

illustrate. She would not be teaching hypocrisy, since she would not be dissembling, but she would

still fail to exhibit the trait in action. She cannot exhibit the trait unless she is being herself. “On

stage”, she can only imitate it—or, rather, its effects. Whether imitating its effects can instill the

trait is an empirical question about which I remain agnostic. My point now is conceptual: In

general, imitating the effects of a certain trait is not, and cannot be, exhibiting them (or

exemplifying the trait). Since modeling is (supposed to be) teaching by deliberately created

example, imitation is not modeling. Teachers who alert their students that they are merely

“modeling” a trait are not modeling it.

That modeling amounts to teaching hypocrisy or play-acting (according to simple

character education’s own input-output theory) is a severe criticism, but it is not the moral

criticism that concerns me. If, to continue our example, teachers treat students with respect only

(or primarily) in order to show students what the character trait is (as simple character education

seems to say they should), they are not treating students with respect for the right reason—and

so, not treating them with respect at all. The teachers are merely "going through the motions". In

the morally appropriate sense, they are treating students with a profound disrespect. That, it

seems to me, is morally worse than teaching hypocrisy.

Character education has been offered as a reason for doing many things that should be
 26
done anyway, everything from writing clear disciplinary rules to stopping children from running in

the halls. I am not against any of the good things as such. What I am against is confusion about

the reasons for doing them. Part of teaching character, insofar as it can be taught by example,

must be acting as a person of good character would act. Part of acting as a person of good

character would act is acting for the right reasons. Teaching character is never (as such) the right

reason to do what morality requires already; that it is morally required is. Insofar as simple

character education suggests otherwise, it is morally bad (as well as confused).

Advocates of simple character education might respond that they are not advocating

hypocrisy, play-acting, or disrespect; they are merely advocating killing-two-birds-with-one-stone.

Of course, one should show students respect for the right reasons, but one can show that respect

both because the students deserve it and because showing respect will teach them good character.

We can have more than enough reason to do an act. We can model respect.

While I admit that a teacher can treat students with respect because they deserve it while

supposing that what she is doing is also teaching good character, I deny that this admission can

save modeling from the criticism just made. One's reasons for treating a student with respect

cannot be over-determined in the way one's reasons for throwing a stone can be. The "two birds"

of simple character education are not independent in the way two ordinary birds are. The

modeling (or rather exhibiting) of (true) respect presupposes that the respect is shown for the

right reason. Behavior is not enough. Unless the second "bird" is irrelevant to throwing the stone

at the first, one cannot hit the first (and so, cannot hit the second either). Simple character

education must either give up modeling (deliberating trying to display the trait) as a method or

give up the claim for a simple correspondence between what is displayed and what is learned.

Modeling seems too central to simple character education, or at least to its rhetoric, for its
 27
advocates to give it up. But, if they do not give up modeling, they will have to give up the claim,

equally central, that a student will (generally) only learn a specific trait from seeing it in conduct

(whether in actual conduct, fictional conduct, or historical reports). Advocates of simple character

education will have to develop a much more complicated view, one allowing good character to be

learned from hypocrites.

I have pointed out several ways in which simple character education seems to come into

conflict with respect for persons. This conflict is not a mere point of theory. It has serious

consequences in schools adopting simple character education.

According to simple character education, teaching character is a "holistic" enterprise (in

the everything-in sense). The school itself, and everyone in it, is supposed to model the canonical

character traits. Such "holism" easily drifts into "totalitarianism" as every aspect of school life is

subordinated to the grand vision and both administrators and teachers come to think of

themselves as (in the words of Josef Stalin) "engineers of the human soul". Simple character

education certainly seems to tempt decent people to do what they would otherwise regard as

wrong. For example, a number of the handbooks on best practice advise schools to develop ways

to "catch students doing something right". (Murphy 1998, p. 142) This "catching" may be

anything from annual ceremonies formally awarding students who have shown extraordinary

kindness or good citizenship during the year to a mere "teachable moment", for example, pointing

to little Susie when she is spotted helping Trevor open the cloakroom door. What empirical

evidence we have suggests that giving formal awards for good deeds tends to focus children on

the (extrinsic) award, not the (intrinsic) reason for the good deed, over time reducing the

likelihood of similar good deeds. Simple character education's moral confusion (its emphasis on

display) sometimes leads it to choose methods hostile to healthy moral development.

 28
That is bad enough, but now consider what a school might be doing to little Susie in the

name of character education. If she is a shy child, she may respond to the sudden attention with

embarrassment, her face reddening as she realizes that she has been "caught". Advocates of

simple character education may try to excuse the school with the old saw, "we must be cruel to be

kind". But, given what we know about children, we do not have even that excuse.

Embarrassment is, if anything, an incentive—for both Susie and at least some of her classmates—

to discontinue the conduct in question. Catching Susie in a good deed is unredeemed cruelty.

Or consider my son again. After three and a half years of postponing the “required

volunteering”, he did what he had to do to graduate, serving as one of the school’s math tutors.

He did the work without pay and well, thereby satisfying the requirement, but he did no volunteer

work. While he “displayed” the appropriate conduct, what he experienced was a deprivation of

liberty. The tutoring was no more voluntary than a detention. Since we have no research showing

that those forty hours of forced labor should improve his character, we have yet another example

of the unredeemed cruelty to which simple character education seems to lead. Or, rather, we

would have that had my son not learned something important from the experience, perhaps

enough to redeem it: adults in general, and large organizations in particular, are capable of great

stupidity. If the school wanted him to volunteer for something, it should have politely explained

why it needed him. That is how one should recruit volunteers. And that was how the school got

him to join the crew, math, and football teams.23

VII. Conclusion

I would therefore make three recommendations for schools doing character education
 29
(and, indeed, any sort of moral education):

1. Do the right thing for the right reason. For example, school rules should be clear not

because clarity is necessary to "teach school values" (although it may be necessary for that) but

because students, teachers, and parents are entitled to have the rules in a form easy to follow.

Because other considerations often have moral priority, we must recognize, as neither the just

community nor simple character education does, that character education cannot be the umbrella

under which all, or even most, school activities are to come. Much that goes on in school is

morally too important to be treated as means to something else.

2. Be modest. Claim no more for character education than the evidence justifies. If there

is one character trait that schools should exhibit, it is respect for truth. That is so whether or not

exhibiting the trait has any effect on anyone's character.

3. Be careful. Because doing good tends to blind us to doing wrong, schools should not

institute any specific "character-building" practice unless there is both a) considerable reliable

scientific evidence that it works and b) a sustained evaluation of the harm it might do. Care does

not rule out experimentation. But care does mean that experiments in schools (“pilot programs”)

should be undertaken with at least as much precaution, monitoring, and follow-up as internal

review boards in universities (IRBs) routinely impose on any research involving human subjects.

Whenever schools lack sufficient evidence to know the effect an educational program will have on

students, the program is an experiment; the students are, in effect, research subjects. Any such

experiment should have a set duration, a limited application, and a design likely to produce

reliable, informative data important enough to compensate for what the experiment replaces.

There should be no risk of harm (that is, no risk beyond what is unavoidable in an ordinary

school). Standards for permissible research should be especially strict if the subjects cannot
 30
consent, either because they are too young or because their participation is not voluntary.

My three recommendations amount, I think, to a clear condemnation of simple character

education. That is in part because simple character education, however mixed with other types,

remains defined by its grand claim to mold character, using methods for which it does not have,

and is unlikely ever to have, empirical justification. Simple character education also stands

condemned because its emphasis on appearance seems to doom it not only to doing the right

things for the wrong reason but also to doing many things that are just morally wrong. But, most

important, simple character education stands condemned because the same lack of empirical

justification that makes its grand claims immodest make any program of simple character

education an experiment on human subjects too young to consent and (in most public schools) in

a poor position to refuse. As an experiment, no program of simple character education can pass

an ordinary IRB review. Without some hard-to-imagine breakthrough, there is no reason to

believe that any program of simple character education will ever be able to produce reliable,

informative data about how it develops character.

At this point, advocates of simple character education may respond that students in high

school differ developmentally from pupils in elementary school and that, even in elementary

school, the upper grades differ developmentally from the lower. From this they might conclude

that, while my critique may have some force for relatively mature students (such as my son), it

totally misunderstands the lower grades. Young children cannot be reached by reason (the primary

mode of instruction in simple moral education). They need a strong hand, a clear direction,

repetition, role models, and so on. They need to be told what is right and what is wrong. However

inappropriate simple character education may be for high school, it is the only workable type of

moral education for the lower grades.

 31
That there are developmental differences between children is common ground between

almost everyone in moral education today. But developmental differences give simple character

education no right to treat young children as exceptions to my three recommendations. Simple

character education has no more evidence that it improves the character of young children than it

has that it improves the character of older children. Young children subject to those methods are

therefore as much research subjects as the older ones are (as long as the methods are defended as

means of improving character). Once we begin to think of simple character education as an

experiment in which school children are involuntary subjects, we are, I think, likely to say that the

youngest children, being the most vulnerable, are the least appropriate subjects of simple character

education, not the most appropriate.

Though my three recommendations seem to condemn simple character education, they do

not do the same for either simple moral education or just-community education. Neither simple

moral education nor the just community recommends doing the right thing for the wrong reason.

Each can be defended without immodest claims. Each can be undertaken in ways no longer

experimental. The two are not even necessarily rivals. Because simple moral education operates

(primarily) through academic discussion and the just-community approach (in its modest form)

through practical discussions, the two approaches can co-exist. Yet, the just-community approach

(even so modified) does face one obstacle that simple moral education does not. While academic

discussion is generally free of unusual risk, the practical discussions of the just community may

not be. The just-community approach can be justified only when its practical discussions either a)

can be shown to be more or less risk free or b) can offer something to character that neither

simple moral education nor a risk-free version of its practical discussions can.

Those who now advocate, administer, or teach in simple character education programs
 32
may respond that these recommendations are appropriate when a program is under consideration

for adoption but not once it is in place. Existing programs should not be subject to the searching

examination proper for new programs. Existence has its privileges. To this last defense of simple

character education, I have three replies:

First, I acknowledge that existing programs long in place deserve the benefit of the doubt.

They should not be discontinued without good reason (great age providing a weak epistemic

warrant). But the programs we are talking about have not been in place for a long time, that is,

for centuries or even decades. Few are even a decade old. They do not deserve the benefit of the

doubt deriving from great age.

Second, the programs in question are not that firmly in place even now. There must be

constant effort to keep teachers from sliding into simple moral education, value clarification, the

just-community approach, or doing nothing about moral education. The mixture of type that has

defeated attempts by Wynne and others to study even the short-term effects of simple character

education may in part be the byproduct of teachers trying simple character education and not

liking the immediate results.

Third, the history of education is in part the history of fads. One characteristic of a fad is

that practice gets well ahead of research. When the research arrives with bad news about

effectiveness, the fad ends. That happened to moral education early in the twentieth century.

Everything seems in place for it to happen again early in the twenty-first—with this difference:

Early in the twentieth century, we had nothing that we knew worked. This time around, we do

have something that we know works, the probing academic discussions of simple moral education

(and the just community's practical equivalent). But, if we fail to distinguish between what we

know and what we do not, there is a good chance that what we know works will be thrown out
 33
with what the public learns does not. We will enter another period when schools are officially

silent about morality. That, I think, is a disaster we can avoid if, but only if, we apply the three

recommendations I have made to existing programs as well as to new ones. There is never a bad

time to separate the sheep from the goats.

24
 34
NOTES

Work on this paper began during my tenure as Visiting Fellow at the Center for Applied

Philosophy and Public Ethics, Charles Sturt University, Canberra, Australia, July 1-August 10,

2001. The first version was presented as the Lincoln Visiting Scholar Lecture, Lincoln Center for

Applied Ethics, Arizona State University, Tempe, October 6, 2001; a second version was

presented to the Humanities Colloquium, Illinois Institute of Technology, November 30, 2001; a

third, at an Ethics Lecture of the Program in Ethics in Education and Community, University of

South Florida, St. Petersburg, February 6, 2002; and a fourth, at the Annual Meeting of the

Association for Practical and Profession Ethics, Cincinnati, Ohio, March 1, 2002. I should like to

thank all those present, as well as Elliot Cohen, Randall Curren, Michael Pritchard, Don Scheid,

and three of this journal’s anonymous reviewers, for suggesting many of the improvements made

here between then and now.

1
. Among recent examples of this extensive literature (in addition to works cited later), see

Berkowitz (1998b); Dalton and Watson (1997); DeRoche and Williams (1998); Gough (1998); Koehler

and Royer (2001); Nash (1997); Ryan and Bohlin (1999); and Wiley (1998).

2
. This definition emphasizes conduct rather than emotion or feeling not only because that is what

“character education” advocates emphasize but because conduct seems to have an epistemic priority

over emotion or feeling: we are unlikely to think someone to have a good character if her conduct is not

good. We are likely to become suspicious of the authenticity of the feelings of someone who, having all

the right feelings, acts badly. Equally, we are likely to count as having a good character someone who

always acts well even if she admits to all the wrong feelings (though here too we are likely to be

suspicious of the feelings). The right emotions and feelings, insofar as necessary for good character,

seem to be necessary as part of the mechanism (the disposition) by which humans move to action. A

hard subject, but not one to worry about here.

3
. While I expected that most discussions of character education would begin with a definition of

"character", I found few that did--except among critics. What I have found instead, and even this not

often, is either a) a brief etymology of "character" (from the Greek word for "mark") or b) a definition

of "character education" that seems to equate it with its methods or to conflate it with "values

education" and "moral education". Character education does not seem to be a subject that invites

clarity. Nor am I the first critic to notice the rarity of definition. See, for example, Berkowitz (1998a).

4
. That character is not modular would explain both why the list of good character traits varies so

much from one school district to the next and why no list seems complete. Because character does not

consist of traits, it cannot be defined by any list of traits. What the unity of character does not explain is

why people sometimes move so quickly from a single bad act (destroying the World Trade Center) to a
character judgment ("cowards"). After all, we sometimes refuse to make such an inference, dismissing

the bad act as "out of character". The bad act does not reflect the person's character at all; it is a sort of

moral accident. The expression "out of character" seems to have a theatrical origin. To act "out of

character" is to ignore the script (the words, gestures, and so on assigned to a particular "character"). Is

character like a script (a certain set of "marks" constituting a character, a role)? If the bad act is part of

the script, the act is "in character"; if not in the script, "out of character"? The character-script analogy

is suggestive. But among its suggestions are some hard questions: If we have no access to the script

itself, how do we tell the difference between an act revealing bad character and one merely out of

character? Is character more like a theory (an inference from what the actor does to what the script must

be)? How then do we tell the difference between acts hanging together without an underlying disposition

(a play without a script) and one hanging together because of an underlying disposition?

5
See, for example, Bennett and Delattre (1979). The various approaches are so mixed and muted

there that no one interested in moral education is likely to find much, if anything, to disagree with. We

are left to wonder what all the controversy is about.

6
. There are at least three differences between what I am calling "simple moral education" and what

used to be called "values clarification": a) values clarification fails to distinguish clearly between simply

being clear about what one believes and critically examining one's beliefs; b) values clarification made

the rhetorical mistake of using the language of moral relativism to defend its method; and c), in

consequence, its practitioners tended to discourage the clash of opinion in class (encouraging mere

awareness of differences in opinion instead). What made values clarification attractive to educators in

the liberal 1970s doomed it in the conservative 1980s. That its method was unlikely to aid moral

development seems to have played little or no part in its demise.

7
. The point of that hedging “if” is to allow for at least three other possibilities. First, simple moral

education may improve character generally without instilling any particular trait (depending on what gets

counted as a trait). Second, simple character education may improve a particular trait (such as moral

judgment) but not instill it, since it was there already, in its unimproved form. Third (and most likely),

the endurance of the trait may depend to a large extend on the life awaiting the student after graduation.

The wrong social conditions may cause the trait to become inactive, to atrophy, and eventually to

disappear, assuring that (whatever the trait was) it did not become a trait of his character. Insofar as I

do character education at the college level, I do a modest form of simple moral education (and hope the

future does not undo what I have done). See, for example, Davis (1999).

8
. Perhaps the main exception to this claim is the recent return in popularity of the honor system

(or honor code). Honor systems are, however, still largely restricted to colleges and not all that common

even there; they also do not seem to be part of any larger just-community movement in education.

9
. Consider a just-community school that let the students decide whether their outing would be

subject to a "no drugs or guns" rule. This example comes from Wynne (1991), p. 142. While crediting

the New York Times for it, Wynne gives no date or page reference.

10
. See, for example, Wasserman (1980); or Lickona and Paradise (1980). Recent work on “care”

seems to divide into a) an analogue or modification of the just community (“the caring community”) or

b) an aspect of simple character education (where “caring” is treated as one character trait among

others). See, for example, Noddings (2002), which seems to me to belong to the “caring community”

approach. Indeed, the book downplays “character” enough to count as part of general moral education

(rather than character education of any sort). The connection of her work to Dewey’s is, of course,

explicit—and, though he had little to say about caring, it is hard to find much he should object to.
11
. Wynne’s views have not changed. See, for example, Wynne (1997). Compare Lickona et al

(1997), p. 29: “Schools committed to character education look at themselves through a moral lens and

see how virtually everything that goes on in a school effects the values and character of students. An

intentional and proactive approach plans deliberate ways to develop character, rather than simply

waiting for opportunities to occur. A comprehensive approach uses all aspects of schooling—the

teacher's example, the discipline policy, the academic curriculum (including the drug, alcohol, and sex

education curriculum), the instructional process, the assessment of learning, the management of the

school environment, relationships with parents, and so on—as opportunities for character development.

‘Stand alone’ character education programs can be useful first steps or helpful elements of an ongoing

effort but must not be considered a substitute for a holistic approach that integrates character

development into every aspect of school life."

12
. This claim is a bit misleading. Different advocates of simple character education seem to

emphasize quite different methods. Some, such as William Bennett, seem to have nothing more

interesting in mind than getting up in front of a class and telling students about, say, what was wrong

with Achilles sulking in his tent. Bennett expects to shape character by improving "moral literacy"

(understood more or less as knowledge of morally-relevant literature). But most advocates seem more

interested in the general organization of the school. Compare Bennett (1991) with Wynne (1991).

Much of what Bennett and Wynne recommend might also be done as part of (what I have called) simple

moral education. But, for our purposes, what is important is not the overlap between the methods but

the differences, especially the differences in conceptualization and defense.

13
Some defenders of character education are quite explicit about downgrading the role of reason.

See, for example, Duncan (1997), p. 120: “my contention is that the best aspects of the movement can
be found in the move away from rationality and in particular, in the emphasis of narrative, community,

and activity.”

14
. There is, of course, a problem of degree: how long is long enough? Since we are inclined to be

charitable, we will doubtless agree that someone who dies after seeming to exhibit a certain character

trait over a few months or weeks had the trait. But if that person does not die, but ceases to exhibit the

trait after a few weeks, months, or even years (without some disaster unhinging him), we would, I think,

deny that he ever had it. Whether we should persevere in denying that he ever had it depends on

whether we think we have another (independent) way to establish the underlying disposition. My

impression is that we have no other way.

15
. See, for example, Lickona (1991), pp. 28-30, a section entitled "What the Research Shows". It

has only two footnotes. One refers to a 1980 paper on using the Holocaust in moral education. The

other, a 1989 paper, describes "The Child Development Project". Neither paper was published in a peer-

reviewed journal (meaning there is reason to doubt its research). Neither is cited in later works on

character education (meaning that even simple character education advocates were not impressed). In

any case, the papers seem to support simple moral or just-community education, not simple character

education. That seems to be the pattern (where any research is cited at all). Much of the evidence

offered for simple character education is simply evidence that the simple moral education component of

character education works. For a recent example of this misuse of evidence, see Murphy (1998), pp.

181-201. Compare Bebeau et al (1999), p. 20: "the character education agenda appears to have little

research capability in place to find out what works with whom under what circumstances...the research

base to date is amazingly sparse."

16
. Does the character-script analogy explain the emphasis of simple character education on
repeated display of certain behaviors? Perhaps. "Practice makes perfect" sounds like good advice for

actors. How else would one learn one's lines for a play? But the character-script analogy also suggests a

criticism of simple character education corresponding to my third response to its advocates' appeal to

authority: we are not characters in someone else's play. We must live (more or less) ex tempore. Any

conception of education that seeks to teach a script for life (to hardwire certain conduct) seems radically

deficient in its understanding of human beings.

17
See, for example, Martinson (1979). Especially edifying is the long list of reforms that seemed to

work in pilot but failed when institutionalized.

18
Since I wrote this, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals

surprised almost everyone by declaring “under God” in the pledge a violation of the First Amendment.

See Newdow v. U.S. Congress (June 26, 2002). But (I am sorry to report) they did not take into account

any of what worried me almost fifty years ago.

19
We may, of course, be able to save the calisthenics analogy from this counter-example by refining

it. After all, there is in calisthenics the concept of “over-training” that corresponds roughly to the

soldier’s “breaking” under prolonged bombardment. Such refinements in the analogy will, however, save

the analogy only by moving it away from what Aristotle actually said, forcing a re-examination of the

methods simple character education actually uses. Advocates of simple character would, for example,

have to consider how they would know when they had reached the point of “over-training”. When is

“more” no longer “better”?

20
. For a good example of how simple moral education might be done with relatively young

children, see Pritchard (2000). I have talked to several elementary school teachers, including one
teacher of kindergarten, who do much the same thing.

21
. I am far from the first to make either the empirical or the conceptual criticism. For a good early

example of both, see Pritchard (1988). Yet these criticisms remain unanswered (and generally not cited).

Why? One possibility is that the advocates of simple character education think the criticism misses an

obvious (Aristotelian) point, that is, that good character is part of what constitutes a good life. By

showing how individual character traits contribute to a good life, not as means only but as part of its

substance, they should make the traits more attractive, inclining students to try to do the right thing.

While this abstract argument is valid as far as it goes, it does not address either objection. The empirical

argument is that, as a matter of fact, the method produces no (significant) result—even though, in

theory, it should. The conceptual argument is that the traits cannot be described as part of a good life

without including moral judgment in the description. Without good moral judgment, one cannot live the

good life—or have any good character traits.

22
. For people who claim to draw on the wisdom of the ages, the advocates of modeling seem

surprisingly indifferent to some well-known advice on this point from one of the obvious models: See

Matthew 6: 5-6, "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray

standing in the synagogues and the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men.... But when

thou prayest, enter into thy closet..." The risk of emphasizing (external) behavior over conduct-guided-

by-the-right-reasons is an old theme in most religions. It is also a theme in many classrooms: remember

the “teacher’s pet” ridiculing the teacher behind her back?

.
23
I am not claiming that students cannot benefit from required unpaid work in volunteer

organizations. For a student without experience of such organizations, a few hours of work in one may

impart important information about what the organizations do and how to participate, breaking down
the wall of ignorance that kept the student from volunteering years ago. But such an effect is on intellect

(knowledge), not character as such. It is rather like what one learns from experiments in a chemistry,

physics, or biology lab. An argument based on the importance of familiarizing students with certain

institutions would not be open to the criticism I have made here, even if students with previous

experience of such organizations were required to do what would benefit only those who lacked the

experience. Refusing to grant exceptions for those with previous experience might be defended by, say,

pointing to the difficulty of distributing exceptions fairly.

24

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