Smart & Good High Schools - The Flippen Group

CHAPTER 1: The Call to Characterlence—to doing our best work; the moral challengesdemand a greater commitment to ethics—to doing theright thing.Concern for character, as we noted at the beginning ofthe chapter, has made a dramatic comeback in ourschools. In a recent opinion poll by Public Agenda, Americanadults ranked “not learning about values” as themost important problem facing today’s youth. The pastdecade has seen a spate of character education books andmaterials; the founding of the Journal of Research in CharacterEducation; federal and state funding of character education;the emergence of national character educationorganizations; and an explosion of grassroots charactereducation initiatives.The purpose of character education, as we have alsonoted, is two-fold. One aim is to reduce the negativebehaviors that hurt our children and hurt society. Charactereducators hold that the troubling behaviors weobserve in youth—and many of the adults who set theexample for youth—have a common core: namely, theabsence of good character. Developing good character,unlike piecemeal reforms, strikes beneath the symptomsto the root of the problems and therefore offers the besthope for improvement in all areas. Recent research onyouth development finds, in fact, that well-designed character-buildinginterventions have been effective in reducinga range of negative youth behaviors. 51But the second purpose of educating for character is, ultimately,even more important: to prepare young peoplefor a flourishing and fulfilling life. In recent years, thepositive psychology movement has emphasized the importanceof “asset building”—identifying and developingthose human strengths that enable us to become all weare capable of being.It is this broader purpose of character education thatmost deeply informs our report. We believe that highschools should—indeed, can—provide an education thatlasts a lifetime. We can help our young acquire thestrengths of character—we offer eight—that will enablethem to build a positive and productive future for themselvesand a better world for us all. The current Campaignfor the Civic Mission of Schools 52 —building on thereport The Civic Mission of Schools 53 —is both a reminder ofschools’ historic mission in this area and an example ofcharacter education’s positive mission to develop theresponsible citizens demanded by a democratic society.Character education helps studentsdevelop the assets that contributeto a flourishing life.We turn now to a deeper consideration of how charactershould be defined. How we define character will shapehow we educate for character. How we go about educatingfor character will, in turn, affect the depth of theimpact we have on the character and lives of students, thecharacter of schools, and ultimately, the character of ourwhole society.14Smart & Good High Schools