Theory, Research, and Practice in the Early Twentieth Century Character Education Movement

At its 1922 meeting, the Religious Education Association passed a resolution that endorsed a research study to find out “How is religion being taught to young people and with what effect?” (Hartshorne & May, 1928-1930, vol 1, p. v). Two years later, the Institute of Social and Religious Research (established and funded by John D. Rockefeller in 1922), at the request of the Religious Education Association, agreed to fund a research inquiry based on this question. It was decided to house the Inquiry under the recently established Division of Educational Psychology of the Institute of Educational Research at Teachers College, Columbia University. Edwin L. Thorndike, the Director of the Division of Educational Psychology, was chosen by the Board of the Institute to oversee the study. Hugh Hartshorne of the University of Southern California and Mark May of Syracuse University were chosen to serve as the Inquiry’s codirectors. Both Hartshorne and May held doctorates from Teachers College. Both also had a nearly identical liberal progressive lineage (Setran, 2000, pp. 208-209), and Thorndike obviously decided to go with individuals whom he knew to lead this effort.

The agreement with Teachers College called for a three year “inquiry into character education with particular reference to religious education” (Hartshorne & May, 1928-1930, vol. 1, p. vi). The inquiry was set to begin September 1, 1924 with all funds supplied by the Institute of Social and Religious Research. In 1926, the grant was extended for 2 additional years, thereby enabling the grant to fund a 5-year study from 1924 to 1929. The final bill for the Character Education Inquiry was $140,000 (In 2008 dollars, adjusted for inflation, this study would have a cost of $1,625,698).

Whereas the motivation for and original thrust of the inquiry was to examine the question of the influence of character and religious education on youth character, by the time that Hartshorne and May designed the study, this goal had become a matter of only minor concern. Hartshorne and May’s research design called for a primary study along with seven secondary studies. The primary study focused on the development of a large body of standardized test material for use in the field of moral and religious education. Tests were to be developed in the areas of knowledge and skills, attitude, opinion and motive, conduct, and self control. Student character was assessed through innovative classroom tests of honesty (deceit) and altruism or prosocial behavior (service).

The reason for the shift from applied research to a study where the emphasis was on measurement was due to Thorndike’s interests and influence over the project. Thorndike was much more interested in precise measurement than conducting research in schools. He spent considerable time in schools during his first year at Teachers College (1899), but he found schools to be a “bore” and urged his students to not waste their time there except to administer a test or experimental device (Lagemann, 2000, p. 59). Thorndike’s position was that “To have in education the real benefits of quantitative science we must spend arduous years in devising, testing, and standardizing units of measurement, in searching for convenient, arbitrary zero-points, and eventually for the errors of measurement” (as cited in Lagemann, 2000, p. 59).

According to Mark May, the Institute for Social and Religious Research had no clear view of the purpose of the research they were funding. It was May’s observation that “I don’t know what they had in mind” (as cited in Chapman, 1977, p. 55). But, according to May, it was very clear what Thorndike wanted: “They left it up to Thorndike and this Board. The direction and testing…was due primarily to the fact that this was the emphasis that Thorndike gave it. This is what he wanted done and they did it” (as cited in Chapman, 1977, p. 56). It was clear to May that Thorndike set the direction for the undertaking. May recalls that he was chosen to be a lead researcher on the project because of his expertise in measurement and testing. He was, in fact, Thorndike’s doctoral student and his choice. May states that Hartshorne was recommended by George Coe of the Religious Education Association because of his knowledge of the theory of character and character education (Chapman, 1977, p. 55).

Of the seven areas that had originally constituted the focus of the secondary study, only three actually were included in the study. The three secondary studies focused on the problem of traits—the interrelations of conduct, knowledge, attitudes, and opinions; the problem of causes and significance—the biological and social concomitants of conduct, knowledge, attitudes, and so forth; and the problem of efficacy—the results of current techniques purporting to develop character and certain habits.

The study sample, drawn primarily from private and public schools situated in Eastern metropolitan areas of the United States, consisted of 10,850 fifth through eighth grade students. Hartshorne and May attempted to use representative samples combining various SES levels, ethnic groups, types of communities, and intelligence levels.

Instead of a study designed to focus on the practice of character and religious education with a view toward the development of knowledge that would be useful to practitioners, the research focused instead primarily on the measurement and the fundamental nature of character. Of the final 1,782 pages of text in the 3 volume report, only 50 pages, or 3% of the manuscript reported data on the influence of character and religious education programs on youth. The funders noted this shift upon reading the final report. Galen Fisher, the Executive Secretary of the Institute of Social and Religious Research, presents the following interpretation:

The attractiveness of the CEI to educational progressives of the era was based on the findings derived from the basic psychological research contained in the report. The particular finding that received the most attention was referred to as the doctrine of specificity: “a child’s conduct in any situation is determined More by the circumstances that attend the situation than by any mysterious entity residing in the child” (Hartshorne & May, 1930, p. 610).

Thus, the Hartshorne and May study was not, as sometimes assumed, primarily a study of “Best Practices” or “What Works” in character education in the 1920s. With regard to the efficacy of character and religious education in the promotion of character, the authors concluded that “the mere urging of honest behavior by teachers or the discussion of standards and ideals … has no necessary relation to conduct … the prevailing ways of inculcating ideals probably do little good and may do some harm” (Hartshorne & May, 1930, vol. 1, p. 413). It is argued in this essay that this frequently cited conclusion was not warranted. This conclusion, while warranted by the data of the CEI, was an inference that was not consistent with a wealth of other contemporary educational research. As noted below, a greater variety of research on character education was available to teachers and educational leaders in this era, and this research led many educators to a very different set of conclusions about the practice of effective character education.

The era of the Character Education Inquiry and the early character education movement was one in which many influential educational theorists and school leaders understood tradition to be an inadequate guide for the development of contemporary life and educational practice. This perspective was stated nowhere more clearly than in the Tenth Yearbook of the NEA Department of Superintendence:

Add to this repudiation of tradition, a rejection of individualism, and a changed social purpose is obvious for American education. As Kilpatrick (1933) stated:

Kilpatrick’s (1933) belief in the exercise of social control was a part of a broader perspective. It held that society could be bettered through the application of science to the solution of current social problems. In addition to this shift to a more social perspective, a correspondingly significant change was occurring in views of the nature of childhood. The influence of Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, and Dewey was causing many educators to pay greater attention to the interests and needs of the child than in the past. Education, at least in prominent theory, was becoming more child-centered and activity based. Conversely, the influence of tradition and religion were declining and would contribute less and less to informing the practices of education. Clearly, the notion that character education involved the direct transmission of virtue from adults to children in schools was under critique.

The debate over the appropriate methods to be used to foster character in American schools remained focused on two approaches throughout the first half of the twentieth century. These two approaches (direct and indirect) provided the language and defined the framework for discussions about how to teach character in America’s schools. The terms direct and indirect were the language used by educators of the era when talking about moral and character education. Some historians have used the terms student-centered and teacher-centered (Cuban, 1984) and progressive and virtue-based (McClellan, 1999) to describe the dominant approaches to pedagogy (including character education) of the era. The terms direct and indirect, in addition to being the language of the era, also have a somewhat narrower meaning than the aforementioned terms and will be used in this essay.

Many reformers understood the direct approach as the “old” traditional way of teaching and the indirect approaches as consistent with the new child- centered and activity based “modern” ways. The exact origin of the typology of these two categories is unclear. Setran (2000) has attributed the origin of this categorization to W.W. Charters (1928), however, many references to this distinction appeared years prior to 1928 (e.g., Chubb, 1911; Coe, 1909; Hawyard, 1909).

The alleged differences between direct and indirect character education were not always clear. At the most general level, the distinction was:

Even early in the twentieth century, this debate, among academics and educational leaders, had been ceded largely to those favoring an indirect or informal approach to character education. Typical of this perspective is the Iowa Plan of Edwin Starbuck (1922). In 1922, this plan won a national $20,000 competition sponsored by an anonymous donor. Twenty-six state plans were submitted by the February 21,1920 deadline. Starbuck, a professor of philosophy at the University of Iowa, organized the curriculum development effort with a team of seven college professors and two school superintendents. This winning approach was child-centered with a focus on democratic school environments. The Iowa plan was a typical program with regard to its exposal of the indirect method:

Although the general spirit of the time among academics and educational leaders favored indirect instructional methods, recognition existed that both approaches had their place:

To teachers of the time, the distinction between indirect and direct methods was often murky. For example, a 1932 survey of 483 teachers found little agreement in teachers’ classifications of 15 lessons. The authors concluded that:

Despite this warning, clear differences of gradation that separated direct and indirect methods can be detected in the writings and practice of the era. Generally, direct methods accorded a more central role to teachers and their determination of the content of the lesson, teacher planning of the lesson, and the incorporation of the lessons into the formal curriculum (e.g. history, literature, civics). Indirect methods tended to be more incidental and arise as the occasion dictated. Indirect lessons were based on student experiences. In indirect teaching, “preaching” and “moralizing” on the part of the teacher were to be avoided. Students were asked to locate the moral lesson for themselves and children formed their own plans and solved their own problems. The basic difference between direct methods and indirect methods centered on the extent to which the lesson was teacher centered or student centered. Of course, even this distinction contained many shades of grey. Jones concluded that the direct or indirect distinction largely was a matter of perception

These two generic approaches to instruction provided the framework for the interpretation of the findings of the Character Education Inquiry and a useful perspective for taking measure of the impact of the CEI on the practice of character education.

Any interpretation of the impact of the Character Education Inquiry on educational practice must take place within the broader set of findings of the era on the efficacy of differing methods of character education. At the beginning of the twentieth century the methods of science were beginning to be applied to the human personality and educational environments. By 1925, one bibliography listed 1,364 articles on the analysis and measurement of the human personality (Manson, 1925). School personnel clearly saw this new behavioral research as important. In the 1932 Yearbook of the Department of Superintendence of the National Education Association (Threlkeld, 1932), a chapter titled “Research Related to Character Education,” contains 98 pages of detailed annotations of research studies on character education. In this yearbook the Character Education Inquiry received attention, but it is only one of more than 100 studies discussed in the report. Simply put, the CEI was only one of many studies of the era that related to the effectiveness of character education programs. Also, in the 1920s and 1930s the growing field of educational research contained many findings inconsistent with one of the CEI’s conclusions, namely that direct methods were ineffective. Many studies of this era¹ compared the impact of direct methods to indirect methods on student character, and unlike the CEI, these studies utilized experimental research designs. In the studies that utilized experimental designs it was found that direct methods were, on balance, more effective than indirect methods.²

In spite of the accumulating research base for character education, in the 1930s many professional educators saw the field of educational research applied to character education as too nascent to inform practice. In 1932 a Yearbook, prepared by The Commission on Character Education of the Department of Superintendence of the NEA, was published. The Commission was chaired by A. L. Threlkeld, Superintendent of Schools, Denver, Colorado.³ In the chapter of the report on research in character education it was noted that, “Experimental studies of moral character are few and relatively unsatisfactory” (Threlkeld, 1932, p. 80). This chapter of the Report further noted that even though a controlled experiment had been included in the CEI it was only a minor part of the study, and the results were far from conclusive—the character education program, on a measure of deception, “showed a superiority of the experimental group in three comparisons, of the control group in two, and equivalence in one” (Threlkeld, 1932, p. 1) Thus, one of the leading professional organizations of the time took a critical stance toward the findings of the CEI.

The 20s and 30s were an era in which the field of educational research experienced rapid growth. In addition to the CEI, many other research studies into the efficacy of character education programs were published that presented data that could inform educational professionals’ decision making. One such large-scale study was the Penn State Experiments on the influence of instruction in character education that appeared in the December 1933 issue of the Journal of Educational Sociology. Growing out of a 1932 summer graduate seminar on experimentation in education, sixteen graduate students, in order to assess the effectiveness of direct versus indirect or incidental approaches to character education, employed thirty pairs of matched groups (classes).

Groups were matched on the variables of SES and academic ability. Measured comparisons were made on 180 variables. The variables measured included moral knowledge, moral motivation and student reputation. Some of Hartshorne and May’s measures were included in the battery of instruments. In 26 of the 30 matched classrooms the results supported the effectiveness of systematic direct moral instruction. Under incidental instruction, on 56 of the variables differences favored the control groups and on 50 of the variables the differences favored the experimental. (Peters, 1933b) Incidental instruction referred to “the creation related experiences clearly integrated with the traditional divisions of curriculum with student awareness of the intent held to a minimum” (p. 269).

C. C. Peters, a noted educational researcher of the era and the Penn State University professor who taught the graduate seminar, noted that “the previous controlled experiments dealing with this topic (character education) have been so few and so small in scope that we may say the question has hitherto been nearly untouched” (Peters, 1933a, p. 213). Based on the Penn State experiments, he concluded that “systematic moral instruction can aid in the development of character” (Peters, 1933a, p. 271). Although teachers who used systematic moral instruction often utilized student discussion in order to avoid the appearance of indoctrination, the researchers admitted a refreshing honesty on this point:

It is not possible to assess the influence within the educational community of the Penn State Studies and other research of the era (e.g., see note 1) on subsequent practice other than to observe that they were published and noted by researchers and educators of the time. For example, in 1934 and 1935 reviews of research in character education in the National Education Association’s publication Review of Educational Research, the Penn State Studies were featured (Jones, 1935; Symonds & Kirkendall, 1934).

Even 5 years after the findings of the CEI were published, the educational community did not feel that sufficient quality research existed to discredit the pursuit of direct methods in character education. The contemporary interpretation of the CEI varied widely. In a 1931 review of character education research, Breed (1931) cited Mark May to the effect that “The major implication of these contributions of science is that character can be taught” (p. 290) Of course, May was referring to the use of indirect or incidental methods—not direct methods. Vernon Jones (1935), however, presented a different perspective on the CEI: “Hartshorne and May, however, as a result of their extensive study emphasized the great difficulty of making changes in the character of children” (p. 35). Jones also expressed skepticism about the CEI’s advocacy of incidental methods in character education

The perspective of Troth in 1930 was typical of the general support for the direct approach that many of the era drew from educational research:

Another important perspective on the impact of the CEI on the theory and practice in character education may be inferred from the discussion about character education within the National Education Association. By 1940, the number of teachers in the United States had doubled since the turn of the century to nearly 900,000. Approximately one fourth of those teachers belonged to the National Education Association. The NEA’s leadership on educational issues was apparent in its frequently cited array of publications. In addition to practitioner-oriented journals such as The Journal of the National Education Association and Educational Method, the NEA published a quarterly Research Bulletin of the National Education Association, and an extensive annual report of the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the National Education Association. The Association also published an annual series of yearbooks on special topics of interest to the membership. A number of these yearbooks focused on character education. In addition, the American Educational Research Association, at the time a department of the National Education Association, published a quarterly Review of Educational Research.

A review of the perceptions of the Character Education Inquiry in NEA publications in the 1930’s provides an important perspective on the impact of the CEI on theory, research, and practice. In the decade of the 1930s, The Journal of the National Education Association devoted little attention to the topic of character education. The Journal’s only concentrated attention to character education over the decade was a column that ran between 1930 and 1931 and a series of articles on the character education program in the Denver Public Schools that also appeared during the same 2 years. The Character Education Inquiry received no mention in the pages of the Journal of the National Education Association between 1930 and 1940.

An important source of information regarding educational research in the 1930s was the Research Bulletin of the National Education Association. The Bulletin was published quarterly and issue themes tended to focus largely on “bread and butter” issues such as school finance, building needs, and teacher salaries. Only 3 of the 40 issues included a character education emphasis. In 1934, as a part of the Research Bulletin series, Education for Character-Part 1: The Social and Psychological Background, and Education for CharacterPart II: Improving the School Program were published. These two volumes, appearing 4 full years after the publication of the last volume of Studies in the Nature of Character series, present a valuable window on the salience of the Hartshorne and May research. In Part I, the CEI is cited 16 times. This volume, as the title suggested, summarized of the current research on what we today would call basic research into moral development. The CEI citations focused on findings regarding the relationship between such factors as intelligence, gender, home backgrounds, club membership, and character. The final citation focused on school influence, but, unlike the other citations, contained a caveat:

The authors highlighted the finding of the relationship of group morale to student conduct.

In Part II of the Research Bulletin (National Education Association, 1934a), pages 83-141 focused on the implications of research for the improvement of school programs. The authors rejected special classes for character education (This section of the Bulletin was published without attribution of authorship). Instead it took a three-pronged approach; the entire curriculum (regular class work), individual counseling and guidance, and school and classroom administration. Hartshorne and May were cited four times in Part II of the Bulletin with the focus of the citations on the efficacy of more modern methods (activities rather that didactic instruction) and the lack of efficacy of traditional approaches. The authors acknowledged the weaknesses of the recent research into program effectiveness, but believed that theory offered useful guidelines.

The authors of the Bulletin attempt to locate character education within broader finding of specificity of moral conduct. The obvious weakness of the recommendations is that no research is offered to support that ideal that programs organized on these principles are effective. The general thrust of the implications for practice is consistent with the evolving child-centered emphasis in education. Although the child-centered approach to educational practice well predated the appearance of the CEI, the CEI was seen as offering support for this perspective. The authors were also aware that this research was flawed and the support it offered was far from compelling.

A 1935 issue of the Research Bulletin, titled “Creating Social Intelligence: A Descriptive Bibliography,” contained 17 short annotations of published descriptions of character education programs across the nation. Following this issue, character education does not appear as a topic in any of the issues over the remaining five years of the decade

The Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the National Education Association, throughout its issuance, were lengthy compendia of speeches and reports presented at the annual meeting of the NEA. A typical volume ran between 700 and 900 pages. It is notable that throughout the 1930s character education and the CEI received little attention in the NEA Proceedings. In the Proceedings, the Department of Research (one of the many departments of the NEA), failed to mention the CEI in any of their annual reports, and the speeches that were presented were an eclectic collection with no reference to research.

In the issues of the Review of Educational Research published in the decade of the 1930’s, brief sections of 6 of the 40 issues contained reviews of research on character education. These research reviews tended to report that direct methods were more effective than indirect methods. The Penn State Studies (Peters, 1933b) were viewed as providing strong evidence in support of this position. One review of character education research (Jones, 1935) referenced Hartshorne and May’s study as being opposed to incidental character education and “make it clear that anyone hoping to achieve character outcomes from instruction will have to work for them and not expect them to come incidentally” (p. 34). By 1937, the doctrine of specificity, seen as many to be so damning to the cause of character education had apparently lost salience. In a chapter on character education in the December 1937 issue of the Review of Educational Research the status of the “specificity versus generality” controversy was presented in this way:

One of the coauthors of this appraisal was none other than Mark May. Many contemporary historical accounts have assumed that the CEI finding that character was highly situationally determined was the death knell for character education. It is apparent that researchers and educators in the 1930s tended to view the findings as less than compelling.

In the first half of the twentieth century Dewey and other progressives undoubtedly impacted American education (Cremin, 1961). In addition, educational research became an increasingly important factor in the justification of educational practice. An examination of the influence of educational research on practice in character education in this era may provide useful insights into the potential role for research in today’s character education movement. Specifically, one can examine the question of did the educational research of 1920s and 1930s contribute to the selection of method in the practice of character education during this era?

One way to attempt to assess the impact of research on practice is to examine the school curriculum at the time under consideration. If one can detect shifts in curriculum practice following the appearance of a set of research findings, one has evidence (although not compelling) for impact. The opposite argument, however, is even stronger. If one finds no change in the school curriculum one can reasonably conclude that the ideology or research was not a factor in shaping the curriculum.

In 1926 the Committee on Character Education of the Department of Superintendence of the National Education Association conducted a survey in 229 cities regarding the status of character education efforts. Their results found

The most general pattern detected was that schools used the regular curriculum and extracurricular activities to teach character. An equal stress on direct and indirect methods was reported in the survey results.

In 1930, 129 Denver teachers kept a diary for one week in order to record the methods they used to teach character (Anderson, 1930). These teachers recorded 1,051 distinct incidents contributing to character education. Of these incidents, 50 were classified as formal direct type, that is, the lessons were a part of a regular class in character education. The other 1,001 incidents were of the informal direct type and involved definite teaching for character in situations and incidents accompanying the routine school day. That is, as “teachable moments” arose teachers used those incidents as opportunities to present lessons on character. Five hundred and eighty two (58%) of these informal direct incidents involved the use of the subject matters to teach character, 273 (27%) of the incidents were based on classroom management issues or events (e.g., cheating) and 146 (15%) were derived from extra curricular activities. The use of the subject matter as an opportunity to teach character was found to be the most common method and was clearly was consistent with a teacher-centered pedagogy.

Also in 1930, the National Education Association surveyed teacher’s judgments of effective practice in character education (Department of Classroom Teachers, 1932). Four hundred and eight “competent” teachers of Grades 1-8 in 14 widely scattered school systems or teachers colleges responded. The survey asked the teachers to rate 15 character education practices as to their potential merit. Teachers were asked to respond on a four point scale from highly desirable to positively harmful. More than 90% of the teachers saw four practices as highly desirable or desirable: (1) assigning students housekeeping responsibilities, (2) referring a problem student to the school counselor, (3) using the student self-directed project method in social studies (without explicit moral content), and (4) reading students a story that contains a moral message and having students identify and discuss the message. These practices appear to be of the indirect type or using the Denver terminology—informal direct. However, teachers did not reject more direct practices outright. Seventy percent or more of the teachers also rated the following practices as highly desirable or desirable: (1) students mark and defend their own citizenship grade on report cards, (2) children discuss and illustrate the traits of a good citizen, (3) teacher reads the story the Little Dutch Boy, points out the moral of the story, and has the students discuss it, and (4) the teacher reads anecdotes from the life of Lincoln and involves the class in discussion of Lincoln’s exemplary character. Although it appears from this survey that teachers endorsed a multiplicity of methods they favored the indirect approach but not to the exclusion of direct methods.

In a 1931 survey of character education practices in Chicago Public Schools, 200 different plans were found in use (Bowyer, Winter, & Wilkinson, 1931). These plans were classified as either direct—using a systematic, formal, organized course with a definite time allotment; indirect—using assemblies, seasonal campaigns, citizenship lessons, mottoes, and posters; a combination of direct and indirect—using student activities, clubs, assemblies, student government, and other organizations; or incidental—the development of character through all the studies in the curriculum and actual cases as the situation arises. This latter category includes classroom management and the handling of inappropriate student behaviors (discipline). The indirect classification for Chicago is what the Denver district would classify as the informal direct method. Of the 200 plans submitted 30 used direct methods (15%), 40 utilized an indirect approach (20%), 70 utilized a combination of both (35%), and 60 relied on the effect of the incidental curriculum (30%).

Twenty years later, in 1950, Henry Lester Smith, Dean Emeritus of the School of Education of Indiana University, conducted a national survey of character education practices for the Palmer Foundation (Smith, 1950). Smith received 300 responses: 77 from colleges and universities involved in teacher training, 124 from public schools, and 41 from state superintendents of education. Smith concluded, “there is a decided variance in opinion as to the methods that should be used in character education” (Smith, 1950, p. 9). While many from the three groups above did not express an opinion regarding the direct versus indirect debate, of those that did, the state superintendents and colleges of education favored the indirect approach by better than two to one. Respondents from the public schools were evenly split between the two methods (35 to 35). Smith observed that many academics and administrators saw direct methods were seriously flawed:

Smith also noted that practitioners were more pragmatic in their appraisal of the effectiveness of the two methods:

Supporting the above finding with regard to the constancy of a blend of more traditional and progressive teaching methods in character education is Larry Cuban’s (1984) broader analysis of teaching methods between 1890 and 1980. Basing his analysis on over 7,000 historical artifacts and sources, Cuban found the dominant teaching method—teacher centered—remained relatively constant over nearly a century. He estimated that core progressive teaching practices, although penetrating a considerable number of elementary schools in the years between 1920 and 1940, seldom appeared in more than one fourth of the classrooms.

Even though good reasons exist to believe that the early character education movement was widespread and vigorous, a number of educational historians have largely ignored the movement.⁴ Among the histories of the character education movement one finds only minimal discussion of the impact of the Hartshorne and May inquiry on practice, or of reasons for the eventual decline of the movement.⁵

However, the question remains if the decline in published citations for character education was followed by a similar decline in the practice of character education in schools? For example, the mid-1930s were a time of intense effort with regard to character education. A number of books intended to assist teachers in conducting the enterprise of character education were published throughout the 1930s.⁶ These authors did not view the Hartshorne and May findings as damaging to the cause of character education. Instead the common interpretation was that the measurement field was still new and not completely reliable, and that the variables measured were few in number and did not include many of the important outcomes of character education. May and Hartshorne (1927) suggested that current practice simply needed to be improved somewhat by focusing less on direct methods of instruction such as lecture and exhortation and more on indirect methods such as creation of positive school climate and service oriented activities for students. They did not seem to feel that the enterprise of character education should be abandoned.

Based on a review of the content of educational writing about character education in the decade of the 1930s, there is no clear recognition that Hartshorne and May’s research had a significant impact on the decline of character education. McClellan (1999) suggests that character education did not decline, but simply was transformed by the times: “Both the Second World War and the early stages of the cold war seemed to emphasize the importance of character and schools offered a rich variety of activities to promote moral and civic growth” (p. 70). Field (1992, 1996) likewise argues that character education became subsumed into social studies education as American became more concerned about group citizenship in the unsettled times of the 40s. Additionally, such character education innovations as homerooms, student clubs, and conduct/citizenship grades on report cards have persisted into the present era. What appears to have happened during the 1930s is that writing about character education gradually declined while character education school practices were slowly subsumed under the rubric of citizenship education within the social studies curriculum in response to shifts in societal priorities. In a 1968 interview Mark May was asked about the future of character education (Chapman, 1977), May noted that “what happened was, they kept changing the labels on it. The word ‘character education’ somehow went out of fashion and it became ‘citizenship education” (p. 63).

There is some evidence to support May’s observation, but the data suggests that the picture may be a bit more complex. The author conducted a detailed count of entries under the subject headings “character and education” contained in volumes 1-7 of Education Index⁷ (see Table 1).

Between 1929 and 1940 the number of entries for “character” and “character education” went from 499 citations to 132 citations, a decrease of 73%. By volume 7 (1947-1950) the number of citations had dropped to 96 or a drop of 81% from volume 1. Over the same period of time, the number of citations for citizenship, citizenship education, and civics stayed relatively constant, ranging from 193 citations in Vol. 1 (1/1929-6/1932) to 200 citations in Vol. 7 (7/1947-5/1950). The ratio of “character” and “character education” citations to “citizenship,” “citizenship education,” and “civics” between volume 1 and volume 7 (1929-1950) went from 2.6:1 to 1:2, a clear shift in focus within the character/citizenship education arena. By the beginning of the fifth decade of the twentieth century the count of citations in the Education Index show a shift to a greater relative emphasis on civics within the educational community. While interest in writing about character education had significantly declined, interest in character education in schools remained a significant part of the school curriculum into the 1950s.

Ultimately, the impact of the CEI must be understood from two perspectives simultaneously. First, it cannot be questioned that the CEI impacted theorizing and writing about character education. As Setran (2000) noted: “Nearly every author endorsing liberal progressive methods after 1928 relied on the CEI as the fundamental empirical basis to support philosophical proposals” (p. 317). But at the same time, the practice of character education in the nation’s schools was proceeding independent of the writing on the topic. So why were research and practice so loosely coupled in the years following the publication of the Character Education Inquiry? Below I offer perspectives on this question.

Based on the continued vitality of the character education movement in the 1930s, it appears that the research findings from Hartshorne and May had only limited impact on the development of theory and practice. Given the relative constancy of the teacher-centered method of instruction in American schools (Cuban, 1984), it is unlikely that the use of the traditional direct method of character education changed substantially in the direction recommended by May and Hartshorne (1927).

I see three major reasons why the Character Education Inquiry did not, as has been presumed, send an earthquake through the educational establishment following its publication. First, many did not see the results of the study as compelling. There was sufficient skepticism among teachers, administrators and university faculty regarding both the quality of the findings and the limited focus of the study. Beals (1950), in a history of the development of the early character education movement, noted that with regard to the development of school-based practice in the 1930s that:

Beals argues there was a competing body of research that reached different conclusions regarding best practices, and it was easy for character educators, if they carefully read the research, to pick and choose from a wide variety of studies and findings.

Kenyon (1979) claims that the results of the CEI were deliberately distorted in order to further the cause of those wedded to particular educational agendas. He makes a particular point regarding the distortion of the efficacy of the direct approach noting that the often cited sentence of Hartshorne and May that “prevailing ways of teaching ideals and standards by direct inculcation of probably do little good and may do harm” (vol. 1, p. 413) is not the complete idea being presented. Hartshorne and May (1928-1930) go on to finish this idea with the recommendation that the focus for character education should be “on the reconstruction of school practices inn such as a way as to provide not occasional, but consistent and regular opportunities for … forms of conduct as make for the common good” (vol 1. p. 414). This perspective is one that many proponents of the direct approach would approve of. Hartshorne and May did not argue, therefore, that direct methods had no place in a good character education program, but rather that such methods should take place within a educational environment the reinforces the same virtues as those being systematically taught.

Second, the CEI, due to its length and complexity, was both largely inaccessible, and the results were seen to many practitioners as more negative than positive when it came to implications for practice. Its length, 1,782 pages, and the relatively minor emphasis in the study on the impact of school curriculum on students, would seem to insure that it would not achieve wide readership

Finally, the common interpretation of the results of the CEI were that there is no such thing as character and teachers should not attempt to shape students’ conduct in a preordained manner. This common perspective on the implications of the CEI ran counter to the conventional wisdom in schools and as a result made little headway with practitioners. The persisting issue of the link between pedagogical practice and theory and research was a salient then as today. Issues of classroom management and teaching in “real world” classrooms for many teachers made the application of indirect methods seem impractical. In the era under study, the calls for progressive pedagogy emanated largely from the cloistered halls of academe or the secluded offices of large city superintendents of schools. While the character education movement had strong grass roots, attempts to shape its development were largely top down in nature with the advocates for change far removed from the perturbations of classroom life. The shape and evolution of the practice of character education arose more from the requirements of life in schools than from the exhortations of theorists and researchers. As one of the perceptive observers of the era stated:

So, what did account for the dramatic reduction of writing about “character education” as noted by entries in the Education Index in the 1930s, and why has this been misinterpreted as the disappearance of character education from America’s schools? One hypothesis is that those who were doing the writing about character education in journals and proceedings during this era lost interest in the topic to the extent it could not be assimilated into the emerging educationally progressive outlook. We need to keep in mind, however, that the voices of those in the “educational trenches”— teachers—remained silent in these same publications both before and after the publication of the CEI.

A second, and related hypothesis is that writing about any educational innovation has a life span. All educational innovations receive greater attention when the first gain popularity and later on receive less attention as the sources of the original interest and concern lessen. A related case in point are the citations in Education Index under the subject heading of “war and education” following the World War II era. The entries for this subject heading for Volume 3 (7/35-6/38) was zero; for Volume 4 (7/38-6/41) there were 33 entries; for Volume 5 (7/41-6/44) there were 2,223 entries; and, for Volume 6 (7/44-6/47) there were 231 entries. By Volume 7 (7/47-5/50) the number of entries under the subject heading “war and education” was 4. Just as the concern about war and its effect on children rose and fell in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as the concern about youth character gradually lessened during the first 3 decades of the twentieth century, so did the writing about character education.

The current assumption that the CEI represented the death knell for the early character education movement, is only partially accurate. The CEI was one of many factors that lead to a decline in writing about character education. But, as I have argued in the article, that if one consults the full rage of historical writing about research and practice in this era, one can see that more complex picture emerges. Research and practice were then, as today, loosely coupled phenomena and to understand the complex interplay requires a broad perspective.

Today we find the issue of the relationship between research and practice in education a significant predicate in the current administration’s approach to educational reform—No Child Left Behind. The history of the public schools’ reaction in the 1930s to the Character Education Inquiry should serve as a sobering reminder of the complexity of the relationships that exist between research and practice in education.

In a recent USA Today article the following was concluded about the state of educational research today:

In is unlikely that the situation today regarding the link between research and practice will prove to little different that it was over 80 years ago. The potential for developing a science of character education will depend on a more realistic view of research as it is used by teachers and curriculum developers. The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) rigorous review standards have resulted in the elimination many studies published in high quality peer reviewed research journals while three of the most widely used character education programs (DARE and Learning for Life) do not appear in the WWC reviews or do not meet evidence standards.

Today, as it was in the 1930s “what research says” is seen as not salient by many practitioners due to its inaccessibility, incomprehensibility and irrelevance to the classroom tasks that teachers face in their varied environments. More fundamentally, this failure to find a significant impact of research on practice in character education may be due to a fundamentally flawed assumption about the relationship pointed out by John Dewey:

A more fruitful approach to understanding the role of research in improving practice will be found in the act of listening to teachers and trying to understand how they understand research and apply of it to the act of teaching. We as researchers must remain open to the possibility that our role may not be as significant as we might like it to be, but growing out of a more realistic view of how research is perceived a used may possibly grow a more salient role for our work.