Morality and

Values In Schools

Definition of Morals
Morals are the rules which people use
to guide their behavior and thinking.
When an individual is dealing with, or
capable of distinguishing between,
right and wrong.

Definition of Values

A principle, standard, or quality

considered worthwhile or desirable

Morals and Values

Our children are taught in various
environments- at home, at school, at
church, at the movies, and they are taught
by reading books or magazines, and by
television and their friends. Whatever
they are taught will guide them in their
decision making and their problem solving.
If morals are not taught our children will
make decisions based on immediate needs
and desires, and based on emotions, not on
sound judgment.

Percent of Adults Who Support

the Teaching of Specific Values
The findings of one study indicate that the top five
values that are thought to be the most important
values to be taught are:
Personal responsibility97%
Strong work ethic96%
Honesty96%
Democracy95%
Acceptance of people of
different races and ethnic
backgrounds91%

Some Stats
In a statewide poll of adults in
Wisconsin, 91% thought that schools
should emphasize character
education, teaching students values
such as respect for others, personal
responsibility, and citizenship.

A poll done for the NEA found

Morality and values topped the list of issues of
most concern to the American public.
The most pressing issues were said to be:
Morality and values..........36%
Education............................27%
Health Care........................17%
Crime....................................13%
Taxes.....................................6%

Another NEA poll, the Shell Poll

o The study suggests that the three
values that are most endangered in
America are respect, responsibility,
and honesty.
o Large majorities feel that the nation
has become weaker in terms of
respect for other people (74%),
respect for the law (77%), and
respect for authority (86%).
o 2/3 also say that societys standards
for acceptable behavior are getting
worse.

There were significant

findings in the NEA polls
regarding three different
questions.

Which issue is the most

serious problem in America?

Moral values56%
Race relations14%
The environment.12%
The economy..7%
National defense6%

Which of these problems regarding

moral standards concern you most?
A tendency to blame others instead of taking
responsibility......................................................39%
A lack of respect for other people...............30%
Too much focus on money and materialism..28%
Lower standards of honesty and integrity..24%
More permissive sexual attitudes..................15%
All of these..........................................................14%

What has the most potential to create

a positive effect on a childs moral and
ethical standards?

Parents72%
Peers/Friends.26%
Teachers18%
Clergy15%
TV.8%

Character Education
Lets get one thing perfectly clear you are a
character educator. Whether you are a teacher,
administrator, custodian, or school bus driver you are
helping to shape the character of the kids you come
in contact with. Its in the way that you talk, the
behaviors that you model, the conduct you tolerate,
the deeds that you encourage, the expectations that
you transmit. Yes, for better or for worse you are
already doing character education. The real question
is what kind? Are you doing it well or poorly? By
design or default? And what kinds of values are you
actually teaching?

Character Education
Character education often is used
synonymously with terms such as moral
education, values clarification, and moral
reasoning.
It has been defined as the intentional
intervention to promote the formation of
any or all aspects of moral functioning of
individuals.

Traits of Character
Education
Responsibility
Being accountable in word and deed.
Having a sense of duty to fulfill tasks
with reliability, dependability and
commitment.

Traits of Character
Education
Perseverance
Pursuing worthy objectives with
determination and patience while
exhibiting fortitude when confronted
with failure.

Traits of Character
Education
Caring
Showing understanding of others by
treating them with kindness,
compassion, generosity and a
forgiving spirit.

Traits of Character
Education
Self-discipline
Demonstrating hard work controlling
your emotions, words, actions,
impulses and desires. Giving your
best in all situations.

Traits of Character
Education
Citizenship
Being law abiding and involved in
service to school, community and
country.

Traits of Character
Education
Honesty
Telling the truth, admitting
wrongdoing. Being trustworthy and
acting with integrity.

Traits of Character
Education
Courage
Doing the right thing in face of
difficulty and following your
conscience instead of the crowd.

Traits of Character
Education
Fairness
Practicing justice, equity and
equality. Cooperating with one
another. Recognizing the uniqueness
and value of each individual within
our diverse society.

Traits of Character
Education
Integrity
A firm adherence to a code of
especially moral or artistic values.
Being honest, trustworthy and
incorruptible.

Traits of Character
Education
Patriotism
A love for and loyalty to one's
country

Traits of Character
Education

Respect
Showing high regard for an authority,
other people, self and country. Treating
others as you would want to be treated.
Understanding that all people have value as
human beings.
http://www.ilovethatteachingidea.com

Approaches to effective
Character Ed.
There are many different approaches
for providing meaningful character
building experiences for your
students, but we will concentrate on
the following:
The Holistic Approach
The Smorgasbord Approach

The Holistic Approach

Integrates character development into every
aspect of school life.
The distinguishing features of this approach are:

Everything in the school is organized around the

development of the relationships between and among
students, staff, and community.
The school is a caring community of learners in which
there is a obvious bond connecting the students, the staff,
and the school.
Social and emotional learning is emphasized as much as
academic learning.
Cooperation and collaboration among students are
emphasized over competition.

The Holistic Approach

Values such as fairness, respect, and honesty are part of
everyday lessons in and out of the classroom.
Students are given ample opportunities to practice moral
behavior through activities such as service learning.
Discipline and classroom management concentrate on
problem solving rather than rewards and punishments.
The old model of the teacher-centered classroom is
abandoned in favor of democratic classrooms where
teachers and students hold class meetings to build unity,
establish norms, and solve problems.
Obviously this is a best-of-all-worlds approach and requires
a significant commitment from the administration and
teaching staff.

The Smorgasbord Approach

Building a caring community

This approach is about building a community in the school

with students playing an active role in shaping the culture
and environment of the classroom as well as the school at
large.

Teach values through the curriculum

Give students opportunities to engage in thinking about

character and values by asking more higher order
thinking questions.

Class discussions

Includes morally challenging classroom discussion using

critical thinking skills and providing a group bonding
experience and engaging students in deep, meaningful
reflection about the kinds of people they are and want to
be.

The Smorgasbord Approach

Service learning
Approach to teaching in which academic
goals are accomplished through
community service.
Explicit instruction in character and values
This direct approach is to teach it as a
subject within itself, by creating specific
character education lesson plans.

Character Education:
Why are we doing this?
Quality character education helps schools
create a safe, caring, and inclusive learning
environment for every student and supports
academic development. It fosters qualities
that will help students be successful as
citizens, in the workplace, and with the
academic curriculum. It lays the foundation to
help students be successful in all of the goals
we have for our public schools. It is the
common denominator that will help schools
reach all of their goals!

Group Discussion
In your opinion, is it being done well
or poorly?
Do you think it is done by design or
default?
What kinds of values do you think
should be taught?

Patriotism
What does it mean to be an
American?

September 11 has raised this question

that few Americans have seriously
considered since WWII.
Young people especially need to reflect
on patriotism, for they will soon hold the
future of our democracy in their hands.

Patriotism
Most teachers have been urged to
mark September 11 with lessons that
stress the need for enhanced
tolerance and diversity.
Few have lessons about Americas
founding principles, or the cost at
which our freedom was won.

How can our schools

encourage patriotism
If students are to become patriots they must
understand and embrace the principles of liberty,
equality and justice on which the nation is founded.
They must develop the qualities of character that
mark true citizenship: courage, responsibility,
gratitude, and self sacrificing devotion to the common
good.
As educators, our task is to help young people see that
America is worthy of their love, and to help them
become worthy of their heritage as U.S. citizens.

How can our schools

encourage patriotism
A way to go about doing this is to change the
way that our schools teach history
government and literature.
Most schools use standard- issue textbooks in
history and government classes. Unfortunately
these text are generally dry, lacking in detail,
and monotonous in style.
Students can never grow to love America by
reading these types of text, and need stories
that engage their imagination, excites their
gratitude.

How can our schools

encourage patriotism
Americas story consists of two major
components: principles and people. Our
challenge is to bring both to live for
students.
Even though these are important
components, teaching young people to be
patriots requires more. It is what the
Greeks call a paragon, or character ideal.

How can our schools

encourage patriotism
Many of todays students difficulty
distinguishing between celebrities and
heroes.
We must acquaint them with Americas
great statesmen, lawgivers, military
heroes, and social crusaders, lead them to
say, I want to be like that.

How can our schools

encourage patriotism
Todays affluent students generally take
Americas economic freedom for granted. For
this reason, they need to hear the stories of
immigrants, who endure great hardships for a
chance to live the American dream.
Students should also read the inspiring
stories of African Americans who despite a
heritage of slavery overcame extraordinary
obstacles to achieve success.

Pledge of Allegiance and

its controversial issues
A federals appeals court ruled that
reciting the Pledge of Allegiance is
unconstitutional because the pledge
contains the words under God
The U.S. court of appeals said that the
phrase violates the First Amendments
prohibition on the establishment of
religion.

Pledge of Allegiance
The court said a profession that we
are a nation under God is identical,
for the establishment clause purpose,
to a profession that we are a nation
under Jesus, a nation under Zeus,
or a nation under no god, because
none of these professions can be
neutral with respect to religion.

Pledge of Allegiance
The pledge of allegiance is
considered to be an important
recognition of the freedoms on which
the united states was founded and a
tribute to those who have defended
the ideals of liberty, equality and
justice for all.

Pledge of Allegiance
Virginia State Senator Warren Barry says
not enough schools make a regular practice
of saying the Pledge of Allegiance these
days. As a result he says he feels these
students dont have a real appreciation of
the Pledge and should know the flag is
symbolic of our freedoms, our liberties,
and our culture.

Discussion
Should the Pledge be recited
everyday?
Do our students understand and
respect what the Pledge stands for?
Do you think that it is
unconstitutional to recite the Pledge?

Can Character Education

Reverse Moral Decline?
There are many debates about this
question with some feeling as though
it would make a significant
difference, yet others view
character education as useless.

Character Education Can

Reverse Moral Decline
If we want our children to possess
the traits of character we most
admire, we need to teach them what
those traits are and why they
deserve both admiration and
allegiance.
William J. Bennet

Character Education Can

Reverse Moral Decline
Many people have come to the realization that our
society is in deep moral trouble. Some of the signs
of this include:

The breakdown of the family

The deterioration of civility in everyday life
Rampant greed at a time when 1 in 5 children is poor
A sexual culture that fills our television and movie screens
with sleaze
Beckoning the young toward sexual activity at even earlier
ages
The enormous betrayal of children through sexual abuse
A report (1992) indicating that the United States is the
most violent of all industrialized nations.

Character Education Can

Reverse Moral Decline
With the awareness of these critical
issues in our society, schools cannot
be ethical bystanders. Schools
must do something about this
societal crisis, therefore, it is
necessary to teach morals and values
in schools.

Theodore Roosevelt stated it best, to educate a

person in mind and not in morals is to educate a
menace to society.
William Killpatrick adds that the schools are failing
to provide the moral education they once did; they
have abandoned moral teaching.
Character education was taught in the earliest days
of schools through discipline, the teachers
example, and the daily school curriculum.
Why then did Character education decline?

Why Did Character Education

Decline?

Darwinism

Led people to see all things, including morality, as being in flux

(continually changing).

Logical positivism

Asserted a radical distinction between facts (which could be

scientifically proven) and values (which were mere expressions
of feeling, not objective truth).

Personalism

Celebrated the worth, autonomy, and subjectivity of the

person, emphasizing individual rights and freedom over
responsibility.
Turned people inward toward self-fulfillment

Pluralism of American society

Whos values should we teach?

Secularization of public arena

Wont moral education violate the separation of church and

state?

Why Character Education Now?

Three causes:

The decline of the family

Schools have to teach values kids arent
learning at home and schools, in order to
conduct teaching and learning, must
become caring moral communities that help
children from unhappy homes focus on
their work, control their anger, feel cared
about, and become responsible students.

Why Character Education Now?

Troubling trends in youth character

Young people have been adversely affected
by poor parenting; the wrong kind of adult
role models; sex, violence, and materialism
portrayed in the media; and pressures of
peer groups.
This is evident by trends in:

Rising youth violence, increasing dishonesty,

growing disrespect for authority, peer cruelty,
bigotry on school campuses, decline in work ethic,
sexual precocity, growing self-centeredness and
declining civil responsibility, increase in selfdestructive behavior and ethical illiteracy.

Why Character Education Now?

A recovery of shared, objectively
important ethical values.
Adults must promote this morality by
teaching the young values as respect,
responsibility, trustworthiness, fairness,
caring, and civil virtue.
Good character consists of knowing the
good, desiring the good, and doing the
good.

Developing Character
In order to establish Character Education,
each teacher needs to:

Act as a caregiver, model, and mentor

Create a moral community
Practice moral discipline
Create a democratic classroom environment
Teach values through the curriculum
Use cooperative learning
Develop the conscience of craft
Encourage moral reflection
Teach conflict resolution

Developing Character
The school as a whole should:
Foster caring beyond the classroom
Create a positive moral culture in the
school
Recruit parents and the community as
partners in character education

Challenges Ahead

The factors that will determine if

Character Education will take hold in
American schools and succeed are:

Support for schools

Role of religion
Moral leadership
Teacher education
Educating for character is a moral
imperative if we care about the future of
our society and our children.

Which Values?
Some have argued that it is not possible to
reach an agreement regarding which values
to teach.
Others are concerned about the separation
of church and state and believe any
attempts to teach values or morality will
introduce religion into the classroom.
Whether or not we deliberately adopt a
character or moral education program, we
are always teaching values. Even people
who insist that they are opposed to values
in school usually mean that they are
opposed to values other than their own.

Values
The fact is that there are a lot of values
we all share. Nobody argues that
discrimination is morally appropriate or
that lying is better than telling the truth.
There is no way of teaching subjects
without teaching values. So lets be up
front about that and have explicit
curriculum. If we dont, we are going to
teach values only in hidden and most
devious ways. Lets have discussions about
the values we want to transmit.

Reason to Oppose
Character Education
Alfie Kohn does not think that Character
Education can reverse moral decline
because he says that the techniques of
character education may succeed in
temporarily buying a particular behavior.
But they are unlikely to leave children with
a commitment to that behavior, a reason
to continue acting that way in the future.

 Today, we have children raising children,

we have children in overcrowded adult
prisons and jails, we have children
attending drug and alcohol treatment
centers, children suffering and dying from
illness and sexually transmitted diseases,
children killing themselves and children
killing other children. This is what happens
when we do not teach our children morals
or live as an appropriate example.

Moral Controversy

Sex
Education

Interesting Facts
During the 1960s, schools expelled
pregnant students (married or unmarried)
and school re-admission after delivery was
prohibited.
The attitude in the 60s was that a
pregnant students was socially contagious
and that pregnancy would spread among
students.
As sex education has increased over the
decades the teenage birth rate has
declined and no longer are teen mothers
punished by denying them an education.

However

The United States has the highest rate of teen

pregnancy out of any country in the developed
world. Experts say that restriction to sex-ed,
contraception, and condoms fuel this rate, while in
European countries (who have less than half of
the amount of teen pregnancies) teens are given
confidential access to contraceptives.
In 1996, the teen pregnancy rates were:
93.0 per 1000 in the United States
62.6 per 1000 in England and Wales
42.7 per 1000 in Canada
15.1 per 1000 in Belgium

Definition of Sex
Education
Sex education is education about sexual
reproduction in human beings, sexual
intercourse and other aspects of human
sexual behavior.
It is also about developing young people's
skills so that they make informed choices
about their behavior, and feel confident
and competent about acting on these
choices.

Aims of Sex Education

Sex education seeks both to reduce the
risks of potentially negative outcomes from
sexual behavior. For example, unwanted or
unplanned pregnancies and infection with
STDs, and to enhance the quality of
relationships.
It is also about developing young people's
ability to make decisions over their entire
lifetime.

Worldwide Controversy
Although some sort of sex education is part of many
schools' curriculum, it remains a controversial topic in
several countries as to how much and at which age
schoolchildren should be taught about contraception or
safer sex, and whether moral education should be
included or excluded.
In the United States in particular, the topic is the
subject of much controversial debate. Chief among
controversial points is whether sexual freedom for
minors is valuable or detrimental, as well as whether
instruction about condoms and birth control pills reduce
or increase out-of-wedlock or teenage pregnancy and
STDs.

Statistics
Only 7% of Americans say that sex
education should not be taught in schools.
15% of Americans believe that schools
should teach the Abstinence-Only-UntilMarriage Program.
36% believe that Comprehensive Sexuality
Education should be taught.

Abstinence-Only-UntilMarriage Program
Federal funds are available to schools who
teach using this method.
President Bush has been pushing for this
program since he was first instated into
office.
Emphasizes abstinence from all sexual
behaviors and does not cover information
on contraceptives, STDs, masturbation,
etc.

Federal Definition

its exclusive purpose is teaching the social, physiological, and

health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity;
teaches abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage as
the expected standard for all school age children;
teaches that abstinence from sexual activity is the only
certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually
transmitted diseases, and other associated health problems;
teaches that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in
context of marriage is the expected standard of human
sexual activity;
teaches that sexual activity outside of the context of
marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical
effects;
teaches that bearing children out-of-wedlock is likely to have
harmful consequences for the child, the child's parents, and
society;
teaches young people how to reject sexual advances and how
alcohol and drug use increases vulnerability to sexual
advances; and
teaches the importance of attaining self-sufficiency before
engaging in sexual activity.

Problems with this

program
Very little evidence that teens who
go through this program refrain from
having sex longer than others.
When they do have sex, they often
fail to use contraception.

Comprehensive Sexuality
Education
Comprehensive Sexuality Education is a program
that starts in kindergarten and continues through
high school.
It brings up age appropriate sexuality topics and
covers the broad spectrum of sex education,
including safe sex, STDs, contraceptives,
masturbation, body image, and more.
Argued that this program does not teach sexual
morals.

Proponents of this
program
View it as necessary to reduce risk
behaviors such as unprotected sex, and
equip individuals to make informed
decisions about their personal sexual
activity.
Additionally, proponents of comprehensive
sex education contend that education
about homosexuality encourages tolerance,
but does not "turn students gay" as some
conservatives believe.

What about Both?

46% of Americans believe that schools
should teach that abstinence is best, but
also discuss how and where to obtain
contraceptives.
Typically, most schools fall in the middle
of the two types of programs.
Neither one usually provides confidential
access to contraceptives.

Should morality be
included?
Proponents believe that curricula which fail to teach
moral behavior actually serve to prevent children from
making informed decisions; they maintain that curricula
should include the claim that conventional morality is
"healthy and constructive", and that value-free
knowledge of the body may lead to unhealthy and
harmful practices.
Opponents of this view argue that sexual behavior
after puberty is a given, and it is therefore crucial to
provide information about the risks and how they can
be minimized. They hold that conventional or
conservative moralizing will put off students and thus
weaken the message.

Study of the Effects

A researcher named DiCenso compared
comprehensive sex education programs with
abstinence-only programs.
Their review of several studies shows that
abstinence-only programs not only did not reduce
the likelihood of pregnancy of women who
participated in the programs, but that
'abstinence- only' actually increased it.
Four abstinence programs and one school program
were associated with a pooled increase of 54% in
the partners of men and 46% in women.
The conclusion of this review was that "the
overwhelming weight of evidence shows that sex
education that discusses contraception does not
increase sexual activity".

Final Quote
Education is the responsibility of the
schools whether it is about smoking,
alcohol, drugs, violence, racial diversity or
sex. The assumption that these are the sole
responsibility of someone else is a
disservice to our children. Parents have a
key role in the total education of their
children in partnership with the schools.
But too many parents fail part of their
responsibility resulting in this country's
highest teenage pregnancy rate in the
industrialized world. Charles Gershenson