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White House, Congress, Miss America push teaching core values in schools
Sunday, March 18, 2001
By Karen MacPherson, Post-Gazette National Bureau
WASHINGTON -- In his "State of the Union" message, Josiah Bartlet, the liberal president on NBC's popular TV program "The West Wing," made a pitch for more school programs promoting good character.
In the real White House, the conservative President Bush has proposed tripling -- to $25 million -- the federal money sent to schools each year to create "character education" programs. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators and congressmen wants to push that figure to $50 million.
Character education also is the top priority of Angela Perez Baraquio, the reigning Miss America. When she won the title last year, Baraquio announced that she would spend her one-year reign traveling around the country to highlight the need for school and community programs that focus on core values such as respect, responsibility and caring for others. She'll speak on the topic at the University of Pittsburgh later this month.
From Hollywood to Washington to Miss America, character education is hot. Not surprisingly, supporters are thrilled.
But they also are wary of over-hyping a movement that most believe is a long-term effort. Character education, they stress, is not an instant cure-all to difficult problems such as school shootings and student drug abuse.
"I get nervous when Hollywood embraces something close to my heart," said Henry Huffman, founder and director of the Character Education Institute at California University of Pennsylvania. "Character education is a long-term commitment. I see it as a way of life, not a single program.
"It's not something you do to kids. Instead, we focus on a comprehensive approach to make sure that adults understand that they also need to look at their own behavior as models for kids."
Andrea Grenadier, spokeswoman for the Character Education Partnership, a Washington, D.C.-based research and advocacy group, noted, "There are a lot of character education programs out there right now. A lot of them are very good, and some are absolute garbage."
Grenadier added: "When we are talking about character education, we're not talking about an add-on program. We are talking about something that is infused in the school culture and spread throughout the curriculum."
While the idea of character education programs enjoys wide public and political support, there are some naysayers. One of the problem critics cite is how to determine what values should be taught.
Some conservative religious groups, for example, contend that character education is a parents' job and has no place in public schools, which may not share parents' values. Some liberals, on the other hand, contend that some character education programs are an improper effort to promote faith-based values in public schools.
One of the leading critics is Alfie Kohn, a high-profile Massachusetts educator and author of "Punished by Rewards: The Trouble With Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise and Other Bribes."
"What goes by the name of character education nowadays is, for the most part, a collection of exhortations ... designed to make children work harder and do what they're told," Kohn said. "Even when other values are also promoted -- caring or fairness, say -- the preferred method of instruction is tantamount to indoctrination."
American school curricula have long included lessons on character and values, but the emphasis on such lessons has waxed and waned over the decades. The current interest in character education began in the early 1990s and has been fueled in recent years by outrage over school violence, juvenile crime and drug abuse.
The federal government jumped into the character education effort in 1995, giving its first set of grants to states and school districts looking to implement programs stressing core values for students. Since then, the U.S. Department of Education has sent $28 million to 36 states and the District of Columbia to develop pilot character education programs.
In addition, more than a dozen states now mandate or encourage through legislation character education in their public schools.
One of the most popular and well-known character education initiatives nationally is Character Counts!, founded in 1993 by a group organized by California attorney and ethicist Michael Josephson. A million children in more than 1,000 schools use the Character Counts! program, which is based on the "six pillars of character" -- trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship.
The group contends that these "six pillars" transcend divisions of race, creed, politics, gender and wealth. In addition, Character Counts! officials stress that they provide ideas, materials and training, but local school and community officials actually determine how the program is put together.
"We don't just give them a piece of paper and say, 'Here's the plan.' We give them a blank piece of paper and say, 'Write the plan.' And they can because they've been to our training and seen our materials," said Tom DeCair, a Character Counts! spokesman.
Last year, Character Counts! put together a spin-off program called Character Counts Sports, which emphasizes the six pillars and sportsmanship in amateur athletics in communities and on college campuses.
"The program is growing like crazy, way beyond any of our expectations," DeCair said. "There is obviously a desperate hunger for it."
Another popular character education program was created in 1986 by Pittsburgh attorney Eleanore Childs. The program, called "Heartwood," is based on using stories to help children understand basic moral tenets such as courage, loyalty, justice, respect, hope, honesty and love.
Primarily aimed at elementary school students, the Heartwood program is used in more than 500 schools in 38 states, and is now being marketed through Scholastic Inc., one of the giants in the education publishing field.
The Mt. Lebanon school district in Pittsburgh's South Hills has used the Heartwood program for a number of years, spurred by the Character Education Institute's Huffman, who was once the district's assistant superintendent. Last fall, the Character Education Partnership selected the Mt. Lebanon School District as one of 10 winners in its annual "National Schools of Character" competition.
"These schools have discovered that the soul of a complete education begins with character education. And they are proving that, when infused in the curricula, qualities of caring, responsibility, respect and honesty are forging hearts as well as minds for a stronger society," said partnership Chairman Sanford McDonnell.
With the spotlight of public interest on character education programs, proponents say they'd like to see more efforts to evaluate their effectiveness. Some studies have been done, but there is much more to do to ensure that public money is rewarded with results, supporters say.
For that reason, character education activists are backing legislation by Reps. Bob Clement, R-Tenn., and Lamar Smith, R-Texas, which would create federal grants for research of character education programs.
"It's one way to use new money wisely," said Jacques Benninga, director of the Bonner Center for Character Education at California State University in Fresno. "We really need to look at these programs and see what effect they are having on children."