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The teaching of life skills such as integrity, responsibility, compassion, justice etc. doesn’t necessarily have to be an “add on” to what a teacher or schools already do. Perhaps the recognition of these values as being an integral part of developing the whole person is the only thing that needs doing. Strictly by our actions as teachers, colleagues, adults, members of the school community we model character education on a daily basis. Children are very observant and intuitive when it comes to recognizing both good and bad behaviour in themselves and others. They sense when adults do things because it is part of their fabric and when they do things for other reasons. They know when fairness and justice are practiced. They know when staff members work collaboratively and when they do not. I don’t know that schools can’t play a role in character education when we as teachers spend as much or more waking time with children than their parents/guardians do.

I think that the life skills mentioned above should be an “add on” because this way students can dissect the skill and understand what it looks like. We can’t rely on modeling alone; there needs to be discussion. I agree that students are very observant, but what is it that they are observing. We need to be more intentional.

Education is the dissemination of knowledge. Fullan (2001) states that “Knowledge is people. Information becomes knowledge only when it takes on a “social life. (Brown & Duguid, 2000)….It only becomes valuable in a social context.” (Fullan, M., 2001, p.78) Education is about teaching our children to become critical and discerning learners so that they become effective citizens of tomorrow. I believe that schools and school leaders need to play an integral role in teaching the life long “life skills”. There is a moral imperative and sense of urgency that all children receive the best trajectory that life and education can provide for them. Character education is grounded in policy of “Choices into Action” (1999), which is a foundation documents which states that “In brief, in order to prepare students adequately for the future, research and public opinion demand that schools:  teach career awareness early and throughout students’ education;  ensure that students have the skills they need to set and achieve their learning goals now and in the future;  teach students the skills to make transitions throughout their lives, to work and/or further education and training;  Prepare students to live in an increasingly diverse society by helping them develop the ability to interact positively and work effectively in a range of settings.’ (http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/discussi/choices.pdf) The expectation of this policy document emphasized that career education is the responsibility of every curriculum area from K to 12 to ensure that every child has a positive pathway to success. Unfortunately due to labour strife and political stigma in the early 2000, this document came under scrutiny and was lost in the Teacher Advisor Program. However, with the advent of the Student Success Initiatives in 2003, due to high failure rates and increase early leaver data, there has been resurgence in the policy’s implementation under the guise of “Character Education”. Is it our responsibility as educators to ensure that every student have a successful pathway? The mandate of the new school effectiveness framework demonstrates that schools in partnership with community and parents are to work collectively to support student success for all students. If transmitting knowledge only becomes “valuable in a social context”, we as educational leaders need to recognize that our roots and foundations are grounded in insuring that all students become critical thinkers and effective citizens for the future. Knowledge can be “googled”. It is how students use the knowledge and what they discern from what they have learned that will impact the future. Citizenship is about character, integrity and moral responsibility. I believe we need to work in partnership and in harmony with all stakeholders in order to build a better future for all.

I find this question very interesting especially with regard to my own children. I know we frequently discuss students with home situations that not only don’t contribute to the child’s academic success but have a negative impact on their personal development. What job do we hold in helping to mold our students into contributing, polite and respectful citizens? At times I believe we are the sole providers of this aspect of their lives. However, my own son (in gr. 10) came home recently and was quite disturbed after a conversation with a teacher that he knows quite well (he has taught him in gr. 9 and 10 and coached him on 3 teams). I guess my (perfectly charming!) son was not performing up to the teacher’s standards in a particular class and was evaluated on an oral evaluation quite harshly and, what my son felt, unfairly. Feeling very comfortable with this teacher, he chose to discuss it with him. His questioned why he was being marked differently than other classmates. We were quite taken by the teacher’s response and I’m still thinking it over trying to decide on my thoughts on his comment. He said that he marked my son differently because he knew that he came from a stable home where he had had a good upbringing (all due to his dad’s great efforts!). He said that he marks students from more difficult homelives differently because he (the teacher) feels responsible to teach them more about life skills and socializing as they are not receiving this at home. He clearly said that he has two different marking schemes for his students dependent on their current home situation. Needless-to-say, my son had quite an opinion on this (however, he has an opinion on everything at 15) but I must say I do agree with him. But then again I’m mixed! Any thoughts by anyone?

For me it is one of the major dilemmas facing today’s school leaders—particularily with the emphasis on the importance of SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT through the use of paper and pencil testing.

Niagara

Recorded history shows that for centuries, societies have acknowledged the need for general education to also develop character in children and young people. Horace Mann, one of the most well-known reformers of education practices in the mid-1800s, advocated that character development in schools is as important as academic pursuits.

The concept of “it takes a village to raise a child” is never more important than in the context of developing character. Character education has always been a responsibility shared among parents, teachers, and members of the community. Character education teaches children how to live and work together as families, friends, and neighbours, and teaches them how important it is to be a contributing and responsible citizen of the world. Developing character at a young age helps students to care about and develop core values such as respect, awareness, fairness, justice, and responsibility for self and others.

In public schools, character education must be developed using a comprehensive approach that provides multiple opportunities for students to understand, develop, and discuss positive social behaviours. To successfully implement a successful character education program, schools should concentrate on several important goals:

Bring people together to gather ideas and develop a strategy. Include staff, parents, students, and interested members of the community in helping to identify and define the character elements that should be most strongly emphasized in any character development program. Having a strong partnership between parents and teachers is vital to the success of the program, so that students hear a consistent message from all people involved in their lives.

Give students examples to follow. Train teachers and other school staff on how to integrate character education into other areas of the school and learning experiences. Provide opportunities for adults to serve as role models of exemplary character traits and social behaviours.

Be committed. Take a leadership role in ensuring that the entire community is involved in designing and implementing a character development program. Everyone must work together and remain committed to making character education an integral part of all educational agendas.

There is a wealth of information and support available to educators, parents, and members of the community that can help them to learn the importance of helping students to develop firm character ideals at a young age. Not only is character education vital to a student’s success in school, it is vital to the accomplishment of future goals in life. As important as character education is, I do not believe however, that it should be replacing parenting responsibilities.

I agree, Sonya, that parents are the first and most important teachers of any child. As parents, we have a moral responsibility to teach our children values, morals and respect for others. However, we do know that this is not the case in every home.

The education system takes a leadership role with respect to character education but to be successful, parents and the community need to be involved. It can not come from the classroom alone. The qualities of character develop through family, school, church (for those who still attend) and community influences as well as experiences and choices.

It does “take a village to raise a child”.

I would suggest that we have always been doing character education and always will do character education. The recent push just means there is an upswing in the societal concern for children’s behaviour. People believe the family unit is falling apart and that schools are needed to fill the gap. People believe children behave more poorly than in the past, so the schools better do something about it. But schools have always been trying to do something about it, and I don’t buy the argument that a push to standardized education has made us forget about it. There is a cyclical nature to what is emphasized at any particular moment, and character education will be less spoken about in five to ten years, but it will be back again after that. In fact, it will have been there all along.

Learning begins in the home. Parents are a child’s first teacher therefore they lay the foundation upon which the child’s character will develop. There are many experiences that are going to contribute to this development. Schools will never replace parents but should supplement character devleopment experiences and reinforce positive behaviour. A reality in my school is that many of my students do not have positive role models at home or in the community. I know of a significant number of students whose mothers are rarely home as they work multiple jobs to support the family. There is also a large gang presence in the area around my school. For this group of students if the school didn’t teach, model, and nuture positive social behaviour they wouldn’t receive it anywhere else. I’d like to think that at my school character development is as important as student achievement. We try to embed “I CARE” into everything we do with I CARE being an acronym for Integrity, Communication, Accountability, Respect, and Empathy. Personally I don’t think that you can separate character development from our moral purpose as educators.

I don’t think school character education programs are replacing parenting responsibilities. I believe we are formalizing something that has been happening for many years in our classrooms. Bringing a formality to it will intensify the process and will make it more explicit to students, staff and parents. I personally think it’s a great way of connecting our instruction to character education. I believe that as we change the way we instruct students and look more at critical thinking, we can easily tie in many character attributes of great leaders around the world. I believe students need to explicitly be taught about what makes people successful and character is key to success. I also think that for character education to become a way of life, rewards are not always the way to go. In some schools this is successful, but in others I find that students must be intrinsically motivated to achieve. When I first got to my school, there were little rewards (stickers, small tokens) for everything and I found that students were not appreciating these items. We have taken on charitable work with Free the Children and have created many leadership opportunities throughout the school. Over the past two years, I have seen more students come forward with proposals to give back to the community including food drives, coat drives, bake sales to raise money for animals shelters etc. I still see many students in our area that are self absorbed and somewhat material, but my hope is that the seed we plant will provide them with a strong background they will need to carry on and be successful and caring adults.

Hi Superstar4,

This is a valuable question that is quite thought provoking. I believe that if we as administrators and educators value educating all aspects of the child, then we must ensure that our students are being immersed in language that promotes teaching them life skills, such as integtrity, responsibility, hard work, etc. Students need to be taught these skills, and we administrators and educators must see this task as a joint responsibility between school and community (home.) Just as teaching students Math and Language is vital to development, so too, must they learn the values that will be necessary to carry them through life. I believe that many initiatives, strategies, and programs that are being introduced at the school level, provide students with opportunities to develop these necessary skills. I also think that curriculum must be integrated, and there are any number of ways of infusing life skils into our everyday practices. If students are immersed in and are taught to value these skills, then that is the greatest benefit. I see this issue as not “adding on” to what we are already to being doing, but simply doing the duty of an educator, which is to develop all aspects of the child.

I think it is unfair to say we are replacing the roles of parents. However, I think that schools compliment those people buy either introducing student to proper character traits or simply reinforcing these things. I think that one of the most important jobs a teacher can do is to drive home the proper way to act with people in society. It is too bad that this has fallen off the wayside for many teachers. It seems to be that “back in the day” when participation marks were handed out we could reward students for their actions. However, now such a emphasis is placed on math and literacy (very important) we forget about the other parts of education.

From what I have read in your replies, it seems that most people agree that character education has always been a focus of schools and now there are specific programs underway to aim that focus. Parents are supposed to be the number one provider of morality in their children but that is not always the case and as educators we have a duty to provide that example at school. We all agree that it “takes a village to raise a child” and as teachers, our example is what they see most (since they spend the most time with us!).

Thanks everyone for your enthusiastic and thoughtful replies. School is clearly not just about academics and whether we are talking about public or Catholic schools, character education is vital.