There is no single script for effective character education, but there are some important basic principles. This document presents eleven principles that schools and other groups can use to plan a character education effort and to evaluate available character education programs: (1) Promotes core ethical values and supportive performance values as…

A growing number of Americans believe that the public schools have a responsibility to include moral education in their curriculum; and, in fact, 31 states are currently offering courses aimed at teaching students some aspect of traditional values in the expectation of producing concerned citizens who will preserve our democarcy. Each moral…

This second edition merges new ideas in character education research with best practices in schools and districts. The book provides the most up-to-date and comprehensive framework for K-12 administrators, educators, and concerned citizens. It offers easy access to practical and proven methods supported by in-depth rationale. The book highlights…

Explains the anomalous character of approaches to moral education that focus on love and an ethic of care. Argues that if moral education is to foster generative love, education itself must be redefined and moral education as we know it must be transformed. (Author/DH)

Describes a program called the Character Education Curriculum developed by the American Institute for Character Education that is the most widely used plan for teaching the basic traits of character, conduct, and citizenship. (MD)

This paper recommends that the high school journalism curriculum assume a prominent position in the teaching of ethics in the public academy. The paper proposes to lay the foundation for strategies that will foster student journalists' skill and enthusiasm in covering controversial issues, while requiring them to justify their…

Through a feminist perspective of caring, this article examines the differences between masculine and feminine views on good and evil. Argues that analysis and articulation of the feminine view may contribute significantly to an understanding of moral issues and a reformulation of educational practices. (Author/DH)

Growing public concern with student discipline, increases in student suicide rates, homicides, and high pregnancy rates of teenage girls are causing educators to give renewed attention to the concept of "character development" in public education. (MD)

A New York camp's character education program is described. Implementing the program involves choosing which values to teach, making staff and campers aware of the program's importance, deciding where to teach the values, choosing and coaching the attributes that reflect each value, debriefing after activities, and keeping campers and staff…

This book was written to help parents integrate their values into family life and pass them on to their children. The book helps parents: (1) know their own values; (2) understand what their values mean to them; (3) live by their values; (4) model values in ways children can see and understand; (5) realize what a child must know and be able to do…

This book argues for much greater attention to ethical education and responds to skeptics who doubt its accomplishment in a pluralistic, secular society that is badly fragmented over values. The book seeks themes that unite rather than divide and provides a conceptual foundation for ethical education, broad enough for building consensus among…

Written for prospective and practicing K-12 teachers, this book examines values education. The authors' central concerns are twofold. The first is to help and encourage teachers develop their own rationale for values education. The second concern is to help teachers help students develop a rational foundation for their own values and learn the…

This article offers guidelines drawn from the last 200 years of ethical theory to aid educators in discerning between "uncontroversial" questions to which they can assume the correct answer is known and legitimately "controversial" questions requiring great care to be fair to the various points of view. (Author/DCS)

Drawing on and extending the work of Jean Piaget into the realm of sociomoral development, this book argues that constructivist education must involve more than the special activities with which it is commonly associated. Planning must also include provision for children's social and moral development, since children construct their moral…

Although most schools use some type of character-education program, a select number do an exceptional job in fostering their students' development of character, values, and ethical judgment. An overview of how these schools achieve this excellence is offered here. The text assesses the programs used by the schools, and each chapter summarizes…