History of Character Education

Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato believed the true purpose of education was to train good and virtuous citizens who will contribute to society. Both the Republic and Aristotle's Ethics concern themselves with the question of how a good person should live (Arthur, 2014).

One of our Founding Fathers, Franklin took a strong position regarding the need to teach morality in public schools. He pushed the need for morals to be taught within the context of history. He felt students needed to learn about the character within their families, society and themselves (Watz, 2011).

James Urged that teachers should only be selected for the role if they had strong characters as he considered that the example set by them was crucial. He stated, "Example is allowed to be stronger than precept and children especially are much readier to copy what they see than what they hear"(Arthur, 2014).

Colonial schools taught values based on Christian principles. In 1776, school textbooks were exclusively limited to morals and religious content (Arthur, 2014).

Horace Mann was known as an educational reformer. He was a strong supporter of universal education (education should be universal and free to all students in society). He felt that character should be a pivotal element of public education, and teachers need to be educated on how to teach morality. One of the surprising parts of Mann's philosophy is that he felt females should be educated especially in character to benefit children (Watz, 2011).

John Dewey believed that the child's moral character should develop naturally in the school environment. He criticized the separate acquisitions of knowledge and character growth (Mulkey, 1997).

Moral maturity requires character education that exhibits direct teaching and guidance. Philip Vincent suggests "rules and procedures for character education" School should identify the virtues that need to be developed to form character traits in students. These should be transformed into rules which are expectations for appropriate behavior.
The virtue of "respect" becomes a rule to treat all human beings with respect (Arthur, 2014).

President Clinton discussed the importance of character education, and brought it to the forefront of education by tripling the funding allotted to it in public schools (Watz, 2011).

The home is the primary shaper of character whilst the school is only a secondary shaper. Teachers are clearly already involved in the formation of the character of their students simply by being a part of the school community (Arthur, 2014).

References

Arthur, J. (2014). Traditional approaches to character education in Britain and America. In L.Nucci, D. Narvaez, & T. Krettenauer (Eds.), Handbook of Moral and Character Education (pp. 43-60). New York: Routledge.

Mulkey, Y. (1997). The history of character education. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 68(9), 35.

Watz, M. (2018). A historical analysis of character education. Journal of Inquiry and Action in Education, 4(2). (2018). Retrieved May 26, 2019,