Character educators have a special responsibility to look after children’s welfare. At a time when one out of every five children lives below the poverty line, and the United States ranks next to last among the wealthiest nations of the world in looking after the well-being of its children, character educators cannot be silent. Character educators cannot be content to merely teach virtue; they must become champions of children by advocating for them and helping them to be able to stand up for themselves. Working with the South Bend Chief of Police, we are developing a model for the champion character education that addresses the structural inequalities that stand in the way of our very future as a society.
Those of us involved in character education as both practitioners and researchers have a responsibility for children’s welfare that includes but goes beyond the teaching of virtue. This responsibility becomes all the more pressing when we consider the lasting effects of poverty on the young. Our authenticity as teachers of justice depends on the extent to which we pursue justice. By all accounts, we are failing miserably. More than one in five children in the United States is poor. Poverty is the single greatest predictor of abuse and neglect. A child living in severe poverty (family income of less than $15,000 a year) is 22 times more likely to be abused than a child who is somewhat above the poverty line (family income of $30,000 or more). Yet even as an increasing percentage of children fall into poverty, the income gap between the richest and poorest households grows. Fostering the character of children, especially these children, demands that we enlarge our role as educators to embrace what we call the role of championing. Children need adults who can serve as their advocates as well as their teachers, coaches, and mentors. To champion children is to take up their cause, to fight on their behalf for the resources they need to grow as people and as future leaders in a democratic society. Poverty is character education’s single greatest adversary because the toxic conditions of poverty shatter children’s dreams and rob them of agency. Poverty renders children servile and alienates them from the basic political and economic structures of their society.
The Foundation for Child Development reports that children under 18 make up the largest group living in poverty today and that poverty in this age bracket is the worst that it has been in the last 20 years. The recession threatens to wipe out gains that have been made in economic well-being over the last 35 years. Children’s overall health is declining as economically distressed families simply will not have the money for nutritious meals. In fact, children’s well being is expected to decline in every measurable category; and, of course, African American and Latino children will be the hardest hit as unemployment rates for these groups are ranging between three and four times the national average. Although we may believe that fluctuations in the economy are largely out of our control, how we respond to the young victims of such fluctuations is not. Among the 21 wealthiest nations in the world, the United States ranks next to last on the overall index of child well-being (UNICEF, 2007). How paradoxical that a nation that takes pride in being number one in its arms, its economy, and its Olympic team, settles for the bottom when it comes to caring for its children. Where is the moral outrage? Where are the moral leaders who will speak out for the most vulnerable among us? What are we, who call ourselves character educators and educators of character educators, doing to awaken the conscience of a nation without a moral purpose?
To champion children is to confront and overcome the toxic elements in their environment and to empower children to act on their own behalf. In our view, this entails becoming public advocates for children fighting for better schools, for safer playgrounds, for more adequate foster care, and for more effective services for delinquent youth. We have to do more, however, than create programs. We have to reach out to children and to their parents, who are often alienated from schools and other social institutions, in order to earn their trust and truly empower them. We need to meet them where they are, and consider the practical implications of their circumstances, in order to move beyond creating programs toward providing real access to those programs and the character-building benefits those programs have the potential to offer.
Community Collaboration
In 1914, Police Commissioner Arthur Woods noticed that poor children in New York City lacked safe places to play in their neighborhoods. He asked his police officers to involve charitable organizations in not only providing recreational areas but also programming and supervision. Police Athletic Leagues (PALs) grew out of Woods’ initiative. The mission for those leagues was to give children a wholesome alternative to the “temptations” of the street. A second purpose was to build a bridge between the police and the local community. Today, PALs and similar neighborhood-based programs can be found throughout communities in the United States. They provide much needed opportunities for children to play sports, to receive tutoring, and most importantly to be mentored by caring adults. The effectiveness of these programs for children typically depends upon generous and charismatic community leaders, who can successfully relate to youth while attracting private resources.
One such charismatic leader is Darrly Boykins, the South Bend IN Chief of Police. As an officer, he revived the South Bend Police Athletic League a few years before being named chief. Our collaboration with Chief Boykins began unexpectedly late one evening when we brought our students in a class called “Coaching as Ministry” to the South Bend Police Department to learn about his work with the city’s youth. We were aware that with the recent economic downturn, community-based athletics programs had cut back along with schools and almost all public projects. In fact, across the country even sports programs in public schools had been forced to adopt “pay to play” policies that constrict already limited opportunities for low income students. We wanted our students, who were planning on coaching at the high school and youth sports levels, to become aware that the inequality in wealth was mirrored in the inequality of sports participation. Economically disadvantaged families in South Bend did not have the money to enroll their children in the local soccer, football, and baseball leagues, let alone the elite travel teams.
Chief Boykins talked to our class about how important sports had been in his own life and how much he wanted to give back to the next generation. As an officer who had spent many hours patrolling the city streets, he understood how difficult life could be growing up in some of the city’s roughest neighborhoods. He also understood that many children and adolescents in these neighborhoods, many of whom are African American and Latino, viewed the police with suspicion and even fear. Chief Boykins decided that the best way for him to reach out to vulnerable youth was through sports. He started a tennis camp for children from 8 to 17 years old, which has grown each year and this summer drew 250 children from all areas of the city, many of whom arrive every day by bus. In addition to tennis, the camp now provides swimming and art lessons as well as mandatory community service.
The Chief also established an afterschool boxing club in a church hall, which had been used for storage. The club, which draws about 80 members, most of whom are from one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, is staffed by the Chief, police officers, and local volunteers, including one who served time in prison. In addition to a regulation boxing ring and bags, the club also has exercise equipment for parents, who can work out while their children train, and a room with computers and a worktable for tutoring and homework.
The Chief chose the sports of tennis and boxing because the disadvantaged youth had access to neither and because both offered the opportunity for one-on-one mentoring. He added swimming to the tennis camp because so few of the children knew how to swim. Both programs are structured to keep the children and adolescents active from the time they arrive to the time they must leave. Even during the hottest of the summer days, the children are running around on the courts. No one is hanging out or goofing off. The emphasis in both programs is to have fun while learning the skills of the sport. The boxing program begins with a conditioning routine that all of the participants must complete before they put on their gloves. Even the youngest boxers readily catch on to the sequence of drills and work through them with little prompting and consistent determination. The children and adolescents in both programs are remarkably well behaved. There are no fights or even verbal tiffs. No one ever uses foul language.
From the beginning, Chief Boykins insisted that the PAL programs be free, and he has managed to keep that way, even when he had to help subsidize the PAL programs out of his own project. Although much of his funding comes from private sources, Chief Boykins has received modest help from the city. While meeting with Chief Boykins we learned that those funds had been reduced although the numbers of children involved in his programs had been increasing. We were so taken with the Chief’s dedication, the challenge that he had taken on, and the dearth of resources at his disposal that we left the Police Department promising to help in every way we could. We were fortunate to receive a grant from the Ganey Foundation through the Center for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame, which enabled us to work with Chief Boykins by providing educational programming, student coach-mentors, and some direct financial assistance.
We received, of course, far more than we gave. Chief Boykins and his fellow police officers and community volunteers taught us first-hand about how community-based sports programs can meet the needs of some of our cities’ most vulnerable children. Their example and inspiration led us to think more carefully about the role that coach-mentors might play in fostering character development through sports. Prior to working with Chief Boykins, we had been offering character-oriented educational workshops to coaches and parents across the country through the Play Like a Champion Program® (PLC) at the University of Notre Dame. We focused these workshops on how adults could help each child to become a champion by providing a nurturing, child-centered environment. Our workshops were intentionally counter-cultural. We had witnessed far too many well-intentioned but ill-prepared adults, who put winning ahead of children’s fun and development. Although they believed that sports built character, they screamed at mistakes, used fear to motivate, consigned “weaker” athletes to the bench, and imperiously imposed their own will. We asked coaches to take on a new role, that of servant or minister. Being a servant or minister means making sure that all children develop as they have fun playing.
In working with the PAL programs in South Bend, we realized that if we are committed to guaranteeing all children a fruitful sports experience, we have to go further than serving only the children whose families can afford to send them to camps and put them on elite teams. All children should have the opportunity to “play like champions.” It is estimated that parents will spend over 7 billion dollars on travel alone to youth sport tournaments throughout the country (Huettel, 2010). In the city of South Bend, 13.6% of the families are below the poverty level. They can ill-afford the club fees, uniforms, shoes, and equipment that are expected of participants in any sport. Many work two jobs and do not have reliable transportation to practices and games. Champions for children have a moral responsibility to children other than their own. Parents, of course, have a prior duty to care for their own children, but this does not justify spending extravagant sums of money to further their own children’s sports careers while a substantial number of other children go wanting.
The 20% of children in poverty are effectively being “benched” before they even get to the sports field. Basic fairness demands that we consider the children who have no access to the sports programs the middle class take for granted. Helping to establish new programs for disadvantaged children, or to support underfunded existing programs like the PALs, is a good start. But ensuring access must go further, to finding ways to connect children in need of the programs—and then to finding ways to connect with those children. Only when these two steps have been taken can we then turn to the challenge of providing effective character education for poor, urban children.
Character Education: Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem?
As character educators, we ought to ask ourselves whether we as character educators have something important to contribute to the cause of combating childhood poverty. Character educators are generally not at the forefront of discussions about childhood poverty or inequality, nor are we typically leading the discussions about teaching children in poverty. Focusing on curriculum content, pedagogical processes, and the moral atmosphere of the school, we have not given sufficient attention to the larger social context in which the children live and learn. We need to play a far more forceful role than we have in raising moral awareness of the deplorable conditions in which so many of our children have been consigned to live. In fact, we have to face the uncomfortable truth that by focusing on children’s character rather than on their social circumstances, we may be excusing ourselves and others from taking a responsible stance towards childhood poverty. Even worse, we may be unwittingly blaming the victims of poverty, poor children and their parents, rather than the social structures that deprive them of the resources they desperately need to share in the American Dream.
Some character educators may not blame the poor for failing schools but instead blame misguided administrators and teachers. They go so far as to propose character education, properly conceived, as an alternative to public funding. For example, recommending Casey Carter’s (2010) book, On Purpose: How Great School Cultures Form Strong Character, Jay Mathews, a columnist from the Washington Post writes, “Samuel Casey Carter shows how great cultures—not big bucks, smaller class sizes, different curriculums, or better buildings—are what we need to save our education system.” Clearly children need cultures that encourage self-discipline and the traditional virtues of honesty, hard work, and cooperation to succeed at school and at life. Yet great schools cannot be built on culture and character alone. Children need to have teachers who have the expertise and resources to teach them effectively. Children with exceptionalities by and large need to learn in smaller classes and with well designed curricula. Poor children need facilities to conduct science experiments, to play sports, and to put on plays. Yes, many great schools are succeeding with marginal funding because they have extraordinary administrators and teachers, who build the cultures that Carter extols. Yet these heroic individuals would hardly agree with Matthews. They pay for curricular materials out of their pockets and fight for more and better services for students and families in need.
Character education, like math, science, or reading education, requires expertise. Yet some of the most powerful voices within the character education movement, in an effort to disseminate their programs as widely as possible, pretend that teaching virtue is as simple as teaching children to color in the lines. Doctors, lawyers, and engineers would not tolerate those who would oversimplify their profession. Children’s psyches are not like clay, which can be molded according to the design of the potter. Children need more than teachers who will lay down the law with clear rules and consistent consequences. Children need teachers who will listen and understand, who will honor them by attending to their needs and challenges, who will promote their character development with the same intelligence and informed precision that we would expect of a skilled surgeon. Character education is not the magic bullet that can solve our ailing schools, nor can character education be done on the cheap, as too many proponents of character education would like to believe
Character educators should be also careful lest they inadvertently foster an environment hostile to children’s development. For example, some of the early leaders of the character education movement (e.g., Ryan, 1989; Wynne, 1989; and Kilpatrick, 1992) advocated a return to traditional virtues, such as self-control and obedience and traditional practices of discipline with strong teacher authority, clear rules, and rigorous enforcement. Although no one can quarrel with the importance of having high expectations and clear rules for children, implicit in the traditionalist agenda was the belief that children who did not succeed were not trying. Yet many of the children who are not succeeding lack many of the resources of their advantaged peers. They do not have caregivers to help them with their homework or science fair projects. They often lack proper nutrition and have health care needs that are not being met. The competitive grading system reminds them again and again of how poorly they are doing. The traditionalist agenda seems directed to producing compliance and conformity without a concern for agency and self-direction (Kohn, 1997). This agenda too easily legitimates anger toward children who are not succeeding and does not take into account children’s need for care.
Character educators would do well to revisit Kozol’s (1991)Savage Inequalities, a poignant expose of the stark differences between the public schools of the well to do and those of the poor. Commenting on the squalor of the schools in East St. Louis, then Superintendent of Schools Dr. Lillian Parks noted,
Gifted children are everywhere in East St. Louis, but their gifts are lost to poverty and turmoil and the damage done by knowing they are written off by their society. Many of these children have no sense of something they belong to. They have no feeling of belonging to America. (pp. 33-34)
Poverty does more than deprive children of material goods; poverty in the land of plenty sends children the message that they do not deserve the same opportunities to learn and play as their more affluent peers. The traditionalist character education agenda tends to reinforce that belief by emphasizing virtues of self-discipline and failing to include virtues of social criticism and democratic participation. Rather than giving hope and empowering children, character education can confirm them in their fate.
Character education should teach children to take responsibility and foster personal accountability and development—but it should also acknowledge that certain circumstances are beyond individual control and responsibility. Far from excusing students from taking responsibility, this information provides an entirely new set of character lessons. Programs that have been successful with children of greater privilege cannot simply be replicated for children from entirely different circumstances. Character education for poor children must communicate to them that they belong to America and that they are worthy of the best that America has.
Sports and Character Education
Sports, as we have noted, appears to be a potentially powerful area for reaching out to vulnerable children and promoting character development. There is a growing body of research showing that sports participation has many physiological and psychological benefits, particularly for children and adolescents from lower socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds (e.g., Marsh & Kleitman 2003; Zarrett, Fay, Yibing, Carrano, Phelps, & Lerner, 2009). One way to explain these findings is simply to note that participation in any activity is better than no participation (Linver, Roth, & Brooks-Gunn 2009; Power, 1999). Economically disadvantaged children are far less involved in extracurricular activities than their peers (Guest and Schneider 2003; Linver, Roth, Brooks-Gunn 2009; Marsh & Kleitman 2002; Power, 1999). PALs and other such programs provide an opportunity for many of these children to receive regular exercise, adult mentoring, and positive peer interaction in a safe and supervised environment.
On the other hand, the data on sports participation suggests that participation in athletics during the adolescent years may lead to problems, such as alcohol use and delinquency, as well as prevent them (Linver, Roth, & Brooks-Gunn, 2009). Taliaferro, Rienzo, and Donovan (2010) found that the effects of sports participation in high school vary significantly depending on whether the student is male or female, white or minority. For example, they found that African American and Hispanic males experienced far more negative outcomes of sport participation than white males.
One of the difficulties in making generalizations about sport experience on positive youth development or more specifically on character is that the quality of sport experience varies widely by context as well as by individual. For example, we find that youth sport and high school coaches have different approaches to motivating their athletes, relating to them as individuals, and encouraging their autonomy. There is a growing body of research (e.g., Duda & Ntoumanis, 2005; Gano-Overway, Magyar, Kim, Newton, Fry, & Guivernau, 2009) that shows that climate makes an important difference in achievement motivation and prosocial behaviors. In our view, coaches must deliberately incorporate character education strategies if organized sports are to have a positive influence on character (Hellison & Walsh, 2002; Shields, Bredemeier, & Power 2002).
Championing Children: A Propaedeutic to Character Education
Chief Boykins knew that sports provide not only a healthy outlet for young people but an alternative environment to the street. His rules for the participants and mentors are deceptively simple: “Work hard. No swearing. Stay focused. Be respectful.” When we asked Chief Boykins how our student volunteers should work with the children in his programs, he responded, “Just show them that you care for them. Take a personal interest in each child and give them all the encouragement you can.” Chief Boykins emphasized a simple but profound insight that character education must begin and end with care. A popular saying reminds of this, “Children need to think that you care before they care what you think.” Character education or really any kind of education begins with showing children that we care for them as persons. Noddings (2005) rightly points out that caring for a child means more than looking after them or having influence over them. There are many teachers and coaches who are very successful at getting children to obey. But is that really caring? According to Noddings, the caring relationship must be based on more than simply acting in ways that the caregiver believes will benefit the child. Noddings (1984) explains that care is profoundly relational. The caregiver must attend to the needs and well-being of the other and the other must feel “cared-for.” In school and on the sports field, children receive a great deal of attention from some adults because those adults are trying to get something from them. Teachers and coaches expect children to listen, to learn, and to be successful on tests and in contests. Children may rightly suspect that the adults in these relationships care less about them as persons than about they produce. Insofar as there is caring, it is limited by being conditional, controlling, and adult-centered.
In contrast, if children feel that their teachers and coaches care about them and their development, they are better able to accept and flourish within the limits, directions, structure, and guidance provided. Demonstrating the kind of true care that produces these results involves listening and hearing what children have to say, seeing children as individuals with their own particular set of needs and abilities, having patience and understanding for children’s behavior and responding in constructive and never demeaning ways, remembering your sense of humor, and constantly offering positive reinforcement that reminds children that you care for and believe in them.
All the elements of the South Bend PALs program reinforce a culture of caring. It was not enough, Chief Boykins realized, to open up courts or a boxing gym. The Chief and the volunteer officers had to spread word about the programs through neighborhood organizations. They also had to provide bus transportation to and from the summer camps. Perhaps most importantly they had to create an atmosphere in which children and their families felt welcome. Although their police cars were visible, the Chief and officers wore sweats and asked to be called “coach.” They did not simply supervise; they participated. They played tennis, sparred in the ring, held bags, and did sit ups. They kept the rules simple and never doubted that the children would follow them. They never raised their voices because they never had to. We found that the student volunteers quickly adopted the caring approach that Chief Boykins and his fellow officers modeled in their interactions with children. Whenever we visited the tennis courts and gym, everyone was engaged. The children rarely if ever had to be called to order or reprimanded. Whenever children arrived at the boxing gym, they immediately began their strength and conditioning routine. After a couple of weeks, they needed no prompting from any of the coach-mentors. Even though some children came from rival gangs and different neighborhoods, there was no fighting, bullying, or even teasing. The children were self-motivated and self-disciplined. There was no cursing or swearing or vulgarity. Tennis and boxing proved to be ideal sports for keeping the children involved, goal-oriented, and supportive of one another. Because most of the children had no prior experience with these sports, they all valued the instruction that they received as well as the opportunity to develop their skills. Most importantly, all of the children participated equally no matter what their skill level. The Chief’s programs starkly contrast with typical youth sports leagues. All too often youth sport coaches of team sports, like basketball, football, soccer, and softball leave too many children on the bench. The prevailing norm in the youth sport culture is that winning trumps all. PLC is one of a very few coach education programs in the United States to insist that the youth sport organizations mandate equal playing-time. The moral principle for our stance could not be simpler. All children have an equal right to play and to physical, intellectual, and character development. Children get enough messages about their inferiority in school and on the playground. Every child who gets a low grade or who gets excluded or bullied is told, in fact, that she or he is not as good as those who are succeeding. The PAL tennis and boxing programs include everyone and most importantly they do not force social comparisons—a program characteristic that is especially important for children who, as we have seen, may face constant comparisons to children of higher SES in the classroom. Instead, the programs focus on skill development. The only expectation for each child is to get better. Everyone starts at a different place; everyone thus has a different goal.
One of the ways in which we assessed the summer tennis program was to ask children a few simple questions about their experience. The vast majority of the children (86%) of the 52 children who responded to our survey reported that they made friends at camp. All but one (98%) reported that they had fun and liked their counselors. Perhaps more significantly, that same percentage (98%) agreed that you can trust a police officer to protect you and that police are friendly. At the beginning of the camp, only 59% agreed that they could trust a police officer and even less (45%) agreed that the police were friendly. Clearly the camp experience succeeded not only in providing fun and building relationships but in meeting Chief Boykin’s goal of helping children to view the police in a more positive light. In his dissertation, Kohlberg (1958) had speculated that lower class, African American children might struggle to develop to the conventional stages of moral reasoning because they could not identify with authority figures, such as the police, who seemed distant, threatening, and even hostile.
We also asked the participants in the PAL programs to fill out a short questionnaire about their experiences in school. We found that over 73% of the children at the beginning of the summer tennis camp and 77% at the beginning of the boxing club noted that one of the worst parts about school was that their teachers were mean. We do not know why so many children perceived their teachers to be mean, but we do know that the children perceived their PAL coach/mentors in a more favorable light. One of the advantages of sports is that they give adults and children opportunities to form positive relationships, which in turn create opportunities for guidance, direction, and challenge. The PAL programs provide what we think of as a propaedeutic for character education. That is, they offer a supportive environment for children to interact with caring adults and with each other. Within this environment, children have fun and learn important life lessons about the values of fairness, hard work, discipline, and respect. They also perceive powerful institutions in their city, the police force and the University of Notre Dame, in a benign rather than fearful or resentful way. They begin to experience a sense of being cared for and of being respected. The coach-mentors take an interest in them and ask them questions. The children gain in self-confidence as their athletic skills develop. The coach-mentors take care to put sports in perspective. They ask to see the children’s report cards, give praise and encouragement as warranted, and help the children set academic goals. There are indications that the achievement ethic that develops in the ring or court carries over to school. The boxing program added a math tutoring component and children’s grades improved. Felix, one of the best boxers in the area, found that the discipline that made him successful in the ring also made him successful in school. He approached academics and athletics with the same focus and organization. Ramon, for whom English was a second language, confessed to Officer Maria Scherer, his coach-mentor, that he was struggling in spelling. She told him that she would help him and had him practicing his spelling as he did his crunches. After the next test, Ramon’s Dad accompanied him to the ring to share with Officer Scherer that he had gotten his best grade ever on spelling.
There are also signs that the PAL programs are building cross-generational communities. Moms and Dads accompany their children to the gym and even workout with them. Some fathers with boxing experience help out in the ring. Others watch from a distance but by their presence encourage their children throughout their workouts. One of the older and more accomplished boxers, Devon, who had struggled with anger issues, brought his baby son with him to the gym and received parenting advice from the coach-mentors along with free childcare. Taking to heart the advice of the Chief to give back to the community, Devon began working as a volunteer for the younger boxers.
The PAL programs remind us that above and beyond the contributions of charismatic individuals, like the Chief, Officer Scherer, Tom Carnavale, a student volunteer from Notre Dame, and members of the local community including an ex-convict, was the transformative power of moral community. All of those in the programs took an interest in and responsibility for each other. They established an environment that transcended race, social class, age, and gang affiliation. They took pride not only in their individual accomplishments but in their community as a whole. This engagement in a meaningful community is, we believe, an indispensable condition for moral development.
Champions For Children: The Role of the Character Educator
We often overlook the “championing” dimension of the character educator’s role because we do not give sufficient attention to the dynamics of power and vulnerability in considering the lives of children. Piaget (1935/ 1965) recognized that adults because of their status entered into a hierarchical relationship with children, which led to a morality of obedience and constraint. Only a context of equality, Piaget believed, would allow children to develop the mature morality of cooperation. The proper role for the adult moral educator was in Piaget’s terms that of an “elder collaborator.” Kohlberg suggested that adult moral educators working could and should assume a larger role by acting as Socratic discussion leaders and even as “advocates” of moral ideals (Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg 1989). He, like Piaget, cautioned that adults should not misuse their influence over children by asserting their authority instead of inviting them to think for themselves. To simplify, Piaget and Kohlberg, believed that adult educators could foster moral development only by “lowering themselves” as it were, to relate to children on a more equal footing. They both regarded the power of the adult with suspicion because it was all too often used in the context of constraint to control children, discouraging them to think or take responsibility for themselves.
Although Piaget and Kohlberg express an invaluable insight into the dynamics of the adult to child relationship, we need a stronger view of the character educator when confronting social inequality. To act as a champion is to embrace one’s power, rather than to relinquish it. To act as a champion is to confront and overcome social structures that defeat children, particularly those children who experience the double vulnerability of being poor. Champions must not be afraid to use their power to protect and empower children. In a certain sense, moral developmentalists may learn from the traditionalists, who urged a more assertive role for those in authority. Children need limits, direction, and above all support for their own safety and well-being; they also need to acquire the strength to be able to discipline themselves. Chief Boykins set very clear boundaries in the PAL programs, which the children readily embraced. On the other hand, the Chief and staff did not wield power for their own self-aggrandizement or for maintaining the status quo but for the sake of serving the most vulnerable. Champions for children must heed the moral developmentalists’ insights into fostering children’s understanding of justice and sense of agency through restraining their adult authority. Champions for children, however, must also challenge their fellow citizens to take responsibility for the children we now ignore.
Champions must be warriors. We must contend against the forces that maintain the status quo of inequality, exploitation, and neglect. Champions must accept the charge of fighting for the soul a nation that has lost sight of its own future—the development of all of its children. We character educators are by training and profession uniquely prepared for the role of being champions for children. We can give our children no greater gift than a character education that will strengthen them for the struggles in which they are already engaged. Yet we cannot educate them to pursue the common good without doing the same. The abundant wealth of our nation is a blessing not to be hoarded by the powerful and secure, but to be generously lavished on all of our children so that we can provide them with the educational and recreational resources that they to need to develop and flourish.
