One significant characteristic of the character education movement of the past 20-plus years has been the gap between the motivating rationale for the movement and program development in the field. That is, the factors that sounded an alarm among concerned educators, parents and policy makers and gave rise to the current character education movement focused on the “declining well being of youth.” Such factors as suicide rates, teen violence, declining academic performance, increasing drug usage, and precocious sexual activity were pointed to as evidence of a cultural malaise that placed an entire generation of youth and the general culture “at risk.” The cultural malaise was due in part to the declining status of the two-parent American family and the toxic popular culture impact on youth in ways not seen prior to the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. The indicators of this crisis nearly always focused on adolescent behavior and values. While program development at the high school level has focused primarily on violence reduction, sex education, and drug resistance education, to date general character education efforts have been primarily focused on elementary and middle school levels.
The reason for high schools to not immediately respond to the general call for character education was twofold. First, high schools and high school teachers tend to identify themselves as subject matter specialists and give less emphasis to character development than in elementary and middle schools. High school teachers when asked to define their professional focus tend to say, “I teach History” or some other subject area. Elementary teachers tend to see their responsibilities as more general than subject matter and involving educating the whole child (including character). Thus, elementary schools were seen as more fertile soil by curriculum developers. Second, many high school teachers, and their students, tend to see character as largely formed, or at least largely outside schooling’s influence, by the time high school arrives. In our culture the adolescent quest for identity is seen as highly personal and adolescents’ awareness of adults attempting to shape their character is often viewed suspiciously. These observations are not meant to be reflective of all teachers and secondary schools, but the fact that efforts at character education have made few inroads into high schools today is indicative of a fundamental difference between the perceptions of roles and responsibilities of elementary and secondary teachers.
Smart & Good High Schools (SGHS) represents the first significant comprehensive effort to address the role that high schools should play in the character development of adolescent youth. The work of the SGHS report was made possible from a grant of the John Templeton Foundation—a strong supporter of character education over the past 20 years, sponsoring many Character Education Partnership (CEP) programs and awards. The authors of this report, Tom Lickona and Matt Davidson, bring extensive backgrounds in character education. Tom Lickona is one of the significant figures in the field and played a crucial role in pushing the movement forward in its early days. His 1991 book Educating for Character has been one of the most frequently cited books in the field. Matt Davidson, the report’s co-author, has established himself as a respected evaluator in the field—coauthoring, for example, Character Education Evaluation Toolkit for CEP—and has for the past 4 years served as research director for the Center for 4th and 5th Rs (Respect and Responsibility) directed by Lickona at SUNY Cortland.
The three goals that guided the work of the SGHS project were: (1) identify practices that could be reasonably identified as promising; (2) describe practices in sufficient detail to make them accessible to practitioners; and, (3) generate theory—namely, a working model of a high school that develops and integrates academic excellence and moral character.
The research that led to this report took place over a 2-year period and included: (1) assembling a database of relevant literature; (2) site visits to 24 high schools; (3) guidance from two panels; and (4) supplemental interviews. The 24 diverse high schools had all received some kind of external recognition for excellence and were drawn from every region of the country and included 18 public schools and six private schools. A National Experts Panel was also assembled consisting of 32 individuals deemed to have significant expertise with regard to the development of youth character and related issues. The author of this review served as a member of this panel. Finally, a National Student Leaders Panel of 40 high school students was assembled and consulted.
The ultimate value of this project is a result of the inductive and practical approach of Lickona and Davidson. The approach followed was to present a clear and compelling conceptual framework for a “smart and good” high school and accompany that framework with descriptions of practical promising practices that capture the voices of staff, teachers, administrators, and students. Lickona and Davidson do not advocate any one curricular approach but rather adopt an eclectic viewpoint. One factor that undoubtedly insured the high value of the final report was that although the authors supported their “promising practices” with quantitative and qualitative research findings, they did not let the report become controlled by these findings. It is becoming increasingly apparent to this reviewer and others in the field of educational research that randomized clinical trial research in education will not by itself lead to improved educational practice. I will have more to say about this later.
Thus, the identification of promising practices and the integration of these practices into a comprehensive conceptual framework is the primary focus and contribution of this report. Three criteria were established by which a practice would be considered “promising”: 1) research validation-empirical substantiation; 2) relevance and face validity; and 3) the testimony of credible sources.
The SGHS report is organized into six sections/chapters. Chapter one presents the nature of the challenge facing American high schools today. The report sees a widespread crisis with regard to today’s adolescents’ academic performance and moral character. In the second chapter the two central components of character that form the overarching organizing framework for the report—performance character and moral character—are presented. Performance character is defined as a mastery orientation consisting of qualities such as effort, perseverance, diligence and the like. These qualities are seen as critical if one is to achieve one’s potential for excellence in academics, the workplace, or other areas of endeavor. Moral character is defined as a relational orientation consisting of qualities such as integrity, justice, caring, and respect. These qualities are seen as essential for successful interpersonal relationships and ethical behavior.
Chapter three describes methods by which high schools can foster moral and performance character. The Ethical Learning Community (ELC) is a perspective on how high schools can integrate excellence and ethics in all phases of school life. The focus of this chapter is more on setting priorities and changing the culture of the school than it is on specific curricular ideas. In this chapter, and in the next two chapters, a set of guiding principles and supportive best practices are presented to provide guidance to school personnel. For example, the first principle for this chapter is “Develop a shared purpose and identity.” Two of the promising practices presented for this principle are “Develop an honor code” and “Make a character compact with parents.” Supporting research and examples, drawn from real-school settings, typically follows these and other promising practices in the SGHS report. The voices of teachers, administrators and students reverberate throughout the report.
Chapter four presents the idea of a “Professional Ethical Learning Community (PELC)” as the source for the leadership for the effort to create a Smart and Good High School. The PELC is seen as an ongoing effort by all school personnel to (1) collaboratively work together to strive to be excellent in their own work and ethical behavior; and (2) to help and challenge each other in their shared task of fostering excellence and ethics in students. Principles and best practices designed to create a culture of excellence and character among staff are presented. For example, PELC Principle 5 is “Practice collective responsibility for excellence and ethics.” A promising practice in support of this principle is “Develop Critical Friends Groups in which staff work together to design and critique teaching and learning practices.”
Chapter five focuses on “Fostering the 8 Strengths of Character.” The report defines the presence of performance and moral character of students in terms of eight characteristics of individuals that possess good character (performance and moral). The authors draw these eight strengths from cross-cultural wisdom, classical conceptions of the good life, social science theory and research, positive psychology’s emphasis on assets and their own grounded theory research. These strengths are also referred to as developmental outcomes. These eight outcomes are: (1) lifelong learner and critical thinker; (2) diligent and capable performer; (3) socially and emotionally skilled person; (4) ethical thinker; (5) respectful and responsible moral agent; (6) self-disciplined person who pursues a healthy lifestyle; (7) contributing community member and democratic citizen; and (8) spiritual person engaged in crafting a life of noble purpose. Promising practices are also presented to develop these outcomes. For example, two promising practices presented for outcome 3—a socially and emotionally skilled person—are: teach the power of a positive attitude and teach manners. The report concludes with a short chapter on commonly asked questions about Smart and Good High Schools. Overall, the report contains six ethical learning community principles, six professional ethical learning community principles, and eight strengths of character (outcomes). The 20 principles and outcomes are supported by a total of 78 promising practices.
This report is groundbreaking in that it moves beyond calls for character education narrowly focused on specific character education outcomes (virtues) or implications for practice drawn solely from research findings. SGHS is not an “adopt a program” approach nor is it an “implement a research finding or findings” approach. Instead the authors present their recommendations in the form of a model for comprehensive school reform. In a respectful and intelligent manner the model is presented to practitioners as an invitation to consider and reflect and then begin to design and implement a local school-based approach to a smart and good high school.
It was John Dewey (1929) who first noted that educational practice is in fact a form of social engineering. In my judgment, this report is best viewed, and will likely be used in a manner consistent with, an engineering approach to the improvement of educational practice. That is, it will find the widest use and greatest impact where educators are focused on the task of designing and developing high-quality solutions to practical problems that meet or solve real-world needs.
In character education, the contexts in which character education takes place vary widely in schools and communities. The search for research-based, law-like generalizations that apply to all educational settings is likely to produce knowledge that will be too general to have “engineering power.” In the field of character education research and practice have never been tightly coupled. The Hartshorne and May (1928-1930) findings did not sound the death knell for character education as some have suggested, and research on values clarification and the moral dilemma discussion approach of Kohlberg in the 1970s and 1980s (Lawrence, 1980; Leming, 1986, 1987, Lockwood, 1978; Schaefli, Rest, & Thoma, 1985) had little impact on the extent of implementation of these approaches in America’s schools. Today the emphasis on research-based practice is also showing signs that the idea of research-driven practice may be chimerical. The current “What Works” approach results in awarding a stamp of approval to approaches that are too narrowly designed to have broad applicability or too general to provide the “engineering power” necessary to facilitate local design of effective programs.
Practice in education is always shaped by much more than research findings, however valuable those findings may be. Dewey described the process in the following way:
The scientific content of education consists of whatever subject-matter selected from other fields, enables the educator, whether administrator or teacher, to see and think more clearly and deeply about whatever he is doing. Its value is not to supply objectives to him, anymore than it is to supply him with ready-made rules. Education is a mode of life, of action. As an act it is wider than science. (Dewey, 1929, p. 75)
It is this reviewer’s judgment that Lickona and Davidson are not proposing that practitioners adopt all 78 promising practices in their local schools. Rather the report is an invitation to consider and experiment to see if those particular schools can’t engineer a local program that works.
To return to the engineering analogy, developing character in youth may be compared to an engineer’s task of building a bridge. While there are certain empirical givens such as the tensile strength of steel, and the physical properties of concrete, different civil engineers are likely to come up with very different designs for a given bridge. Prior bridge designs (that did not collapse), the characteristics of the site such as span and soil and substrata conditions, budget, and the personal creativity and aesthetic sensibility will impact the final product. Similarly, different teachers and schools are likely to respond differently to the report. In some schools some of the 89 practices may already be in place, others partially implemented and others not previously considered. Some teachers will embrace portions of the report immediately and reject other practices out of hand. In some cases, schools will embrace the entire model and work toward its implementation, while other schools will be more selective and be partial implementers. These local decisions will not take place in a vacuum, but rather be based on their local and in-depth knowledge of students, school culture, school curriculum and political and moral values of the local community. The crafting of a Smart and Good High School will always be influenced by local characteristics, and no two Smart and Good High Schools will look exactly alike.
It is my interpretation of the SGHS report that the authors did not see this report as a cookbook or a “how-to” manual for school personnel. That is, this report was designed more along the lines of the Whole Earth Catalog—published between 1968 and 1998. The purpose of the Whole Earth Catalog was to provide education and “access to tools” in order that the reader could “find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested.” These efforts to both provide an overarching conceptual framework and at the same time specific practices (access to tools) was a challenging one.
The SGHS report should also be of great value to the broader community of professionals committed to character education, in that the breadth and depth of the ideals presented are sure to make each of us reflect on some of our deepest professional and personal beliefs and understandings. Let me give two examples, the first related to the place of theory, the second on the issue of spirituality in character development.
Can Character Education be Advanced Without a Coherent Theory of Character Development?
Have the authors succeeded in their effort, using a grounded theory approach, to develop a coherent theory of school-based character development that encompasses both performance character and moral character? Why concern oneself about theory at all? A curriculum theory is “a coherent and systematic body of ideas used to give meaning to curricular phenomena and problems and guide people in deciding on appropriate justifiable actions.” The body of ideas that comprise a curriculum theory describes the purpose, content, and structure of the curriculum. An adequate curriculum, according to Walker (1990), should meet three criteria. It should be meaningful (clear and unambiguous), logically consistent, and factually correct. This latter criterion refers to whether the theory is consistent with relevant research regarding how learning occurs in the domain under review. Thus, a curriculum theory provides a clear guide to curriculum developers, and prevents those involved from riding off in all directions simultaneously in their work. Additionally, with a theoretical perspective, researchers may deduce and test a coherent set of hypotheses that provide data regarding the adequacy of the perspective upon which the curriculum is based. In this sense, a research-based theoretical perspective is essential for the development of effective practice. How does the SGHS program measure up in this regard?
The SGHS project was designed, first and foremost, to produce a practical guide for high school personnel. The authors attempted to balance research and best practice evidence from schools and did a commendable job. Wherever possible, the authors attempted to include relevant research, in combination with relevance and face validity, in support of their promising practices. As the authors make clear in their introduction they take a diverse epistemological perspective on the types of knowledge that matters in developing a coherent perspective on how schools that develop character work. An examination of two of the best practices will illustrate the eclectic underpinnings of the report.
In two of the best practices, activities are presented that eerily remind one of values clarification strategies. The Hot Seat Activity is recommended with Outcome 3: Socially and emotionally skilled person/Promising Practice 5: Teach the art of asking questions. This activity involves students asking each other an array of meaningful questions, considered by the SGHS authors to be one way to develop a conversational skill important for attaining “intellectual, emotional, and spiritual intimacy” in relationships. Examples of the types of questions are “Talk about your family.” What is your favorite place to be?” “What three things would you like to have written on your tombstone?” “and What is the biggest character flaw you’re going to have to overcome in order to succeed in life?” The teacher explains that the purpose of the questions is to give students an opportunity to talk about things that matter and to give students access to a part of the person not previously shared. In values clarification (Raths, Harmin, & Simon, 1978), one of the classic activities was the public interview (p. 171). The purpose of this activity was to give the student a sense of importance by being at the center of things and to provide a vehicle for getting lives revealed to each other in more than a superficial manner. At least on the surface, these two curricular activities—the Smart & Good “Hot Seat” and the values clarification “public interview”—may strike a reader as highly similar (though SGHS does introduce this activity as having the main rationale of developing a social-emotional skill—the art of meaningful conversation—which was not the rationale offered by values clarification).
SGHS Outcome 8: Spiritual person/Promising Practice 2 is “Have students write about their lives including their‘laws of life’.” An activity “An Analysis of My Life” is presented. The teacher begins by asking students to reflect on a passage from a book, When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough: “You don’t become happy by pursuing happiness. You become happy by living a life that means something.” To get them to think deeply about the question, “How could you go about trying to lead a life that means something?”, he gives them 12 questions to write about. For example, “Look at those goals you have planned for your future. Are you presently doing something to actively pursue those goals? Explain.” Another question is “After you die, what would you like remembered about you? What would you like your epitaph to say?” Although the teacher in this case frames the writing assignment as having the purpose of helping students pursue a meaningful life, many of the reflection questions themselves are similar to those used in the Thought Sheets activity of Values Clarification (Raths, Harmin, & Simon, 1978, p. 156).
In fairness, one should note that both the Hot Seat Activity and the Analysis of My Life are particular examples of classroom strategies, among others, that SGHS uses to illustrate a broader “promising practice.” (In the case of the Analysis of My Life activity, the broader “promising practice being illustrated is “Have students write about their lives.”) Nevertheless, In the case of the two examples I have described, the authors might have commented about the potential pitfalls of moral relativism and invasion of personal privacy, both criticisms that were leveled at the values clarification approach. A skilled teacher will manage these issues, and these types of activities are obviously found interesting by many adolescents that are actively searching for their personal sense of identity and meaning in life. In other places in SGHS, one finds activities based on social learning theory principles such as developing school norms and studying lives of character. One also finds cognitive-developmental approaches to character development in the promising practice on moral dilemma discussion.
The fact that the many promising practices presume widely differing views on the pathways to character development can, from my perspective, be seen as a weakness only if one assumes that character development can only be seen as a unitary developmental construct. This aspect of the report, like the remainder of the report, is an invitation to reflect and consider. Specifically on questions such as “What model, or models, regarding character development should serve as a foundation and guide for the development of high school programs?”
The eclectic nature of the report is also a plus because it respects school personnel and their pedagogical content knowledge. Lee Schulman (1987) has proposed that the appropriate way to understand expert or effective education practice is through the study of the cognition of expert teachers’ understanding of their practice. He describes “pedagogical content knowledge” (PCK) as “that special amalgam of content and pedagogy that is uniquely the province of teachers, their own special form of professional understanding.” For reflective teachers, this special form of knowledge is formed by trial and error, based on the observation of one’s effects on one’s classroom and students and critical reflection on what has been observed. Teacher’s PCK also includes knowledge of how their classrooms and schools best foster character development among their students. Each teacher reading the SGHS Report will bring their PCK to their assessment of the value and applicability of the report. At the same time, each teacher’s PCK will likely develop (Dewey referred to this as growth) as a result of the encounter with the report and its ideals.
Is Spirituality Central to the Development and Exercise of Good Character?
A second general area that encourages character educators to reflect more deeply on the goals of processes of character education and development is found in Outcome 8 of the eight Strengths of Character: “Spiritual person engaged in crafting a life of noble purpose.” This outcome attempts to place the spiritual development of students as one of the objectives of good and smart high schools. The authors state “We are helping students develop a sense of purpose, which we believe animates and guides the development of all other strengths of character” (p. 195). They continue that educators should “engage students in the study of religion and in developing faith in something larger that themselves” (p. 195).
In general the authors’ call for schools to assist students in finding purpose for their lives is expressed in their belief that happiness “requires transcendence—finding ourselves by finding something bigger and higher than ourselves.” Religion is seen as one, but not the only, source of finding purpose, and they note that “One does not have to be religious to be ethical, and being religious is no guarantee of being an ethical person.”
The authors do a good job of describing constitutionally permissible consideration of religion within the school’s curriculum, and it is obvious that many have interpreted the establishment clause in a way that is unnecessarily exclusive to the study of religion in schools. This section of the report deals with questions that many educators will find new and novel. Asking teachers to “Engage students in reflecting on existential questions” (promising practice 1) and “Engage students in the study of religion and in developing their faith in something larger than themselves” (promising practice 5) will undoubtedly raise red flags for some school personnel, but as throughout the report, the arguments are carefully presented and well-reasoned. For the broader character education community, this emphasis on the spiritual encourages deeper reflection on a personal and professional level. One is especially invited to examine the question of moral motivation and the role that cognitive decision-based approaches to character education presume about moral motivation. This discussion is long overdue and much needed.
Conclusions
Let me make final observations about the SGHS Report. One area that one wishes the authors had devoted more attention to is the role that the academic curriculum can play in the Smart and Good High School. As noted above, high school teachers tend to identify very strongly with their subject matters. History and literature receive some attention. With regard to history, SGHS describes a lesson on developing ethical reasoning regarding Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb in WWII and offers excellent guidelines for developing competent citizens by teaching about our democratic heritage are presented. However, other subject areas within the social studies are not discussed. Good suggestions are presented regarding using the study of lives of character in literature and current events. The section on developing a “diligent and capable performer” describes how students in a science research class get grants to do original research that aspires to real-world standards. But in general, teachers in the various subject areas that are the heart of academic life in high schools areas may be left wondering how best to integrate matter of character into their curriculum.
Finally, the authors are to be commended for the centrality they give to “educating for character in the sexual domain.” Under the report’s Outcome 6, “Self-disciplined person,” SGHS devotes six pages to describing Promising Practice 2: “Approach sex education holistically, as an opportunity to develop good character and a future orientation.” Here the authors present convincing arguments, data, and curricular ideas in support of the idea that sexual self-restraint is a part of good character and good for adolescents and good for society. Their approach is consistent with school programs that emphasize abstinence but includes character development practices that could be embraced by all sides of the sex education debate (given the fact that advocates of teaching safe sex practices also now endorse abstinence as the only completely effective way to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease). The logic and force of the arguments offered by Lickona and Davidson in this section is compelling.
The Smart and Good High School Report is a brilliant blend of research and practical insights. It is best seen as a respectful invitation to begin the process of realizing the full potential of high schools. SGHS has been written with near “perfect pitch.” It is an impressive blend of conceptual clarity and organization, real-world best practices and the best scholarship and wisdom on the subject. It is an accessible document and one that can be read over and over with new insights sure to follow each reading. Teachers and schools will likely make this report their own, and the report will advance practice differently in different classrooms and different schools. Not everyone will find everything in the report of value but no one, I am guessing, will find nothing of value. This report is an invitation to consider, reflect, innovate, and implement and presents a significant opportunity to advance the practice of character education in America’s high schools. As the discussion is enjoined around the country, new insights and practices will undoubtedly emerge. Tom Lickona and Matt Davidson have started the dialogue on how to advance the practice of character education in America’s high schools in brilliant fashion.
