Ethics Newsline®

As summer ends and kids head back to class, what do parents most want from schools? Reading, writing, and arithmetic, of course, along with sports, the arts, civic engagement, and interpersonal skills. But increasingly I hear a plaintive refrain: “Help us teach ethics and character.” If, along with social skills and academic literacies, there’s no focus on ethical literacy — if their kids come out smart, well rounded, and immoral — where’s the value in that?

How can you tell a school that earnestly promotes ethical development from one that merely talks a good game? Here are nine things — five values and four processes — to look for:

1. Honesty. Truthfulness, accuracy, and candor aren’t impossible ideals. Despite increasing levels of student cheating and plagiarism, it’s not hard for schools to define standards of honesty in writing, research, and relationships. Look for programs that specifically teach students to detect and resist deception, duplicity, and fraud — and that explain clearly to them why they must do so.

2. Responsibility. Being accountable for one’s own impulses, thoughts, and behaviors is central to good character. Showing up on time, repaying one’s debts, remembering to feed the cat — all of these are aspects of promise-keeping. But keeping one’s word isn’t always easy. Look for programs that teach the tougher aspects of responsibility — like knowing when to keep secrets that need protection and when to divulge information that needs telling.

3. Respect. Honoring others is simple when they look and sound like you or when they’re doing what you want. Sound character education reminds students of the world’s amazing diversity of races, tastes, species, aptitudes, and competencies that deserve our attention. It promotes listening even when you’re not being heard, appreciation even when you don’t fully understand, and obedience even when you didn’t craft the rules. Look for programs that put principle above personality, emphasize service before self, and encourage giving as a precondition of getting.

4. Fairness. Whatever teaches students to share equally, supply those less fortunate, and let others shine will help them understand the fair distribution of benefits. Whatever helps them play by the rules, judge by evidence rather than prejudice, and assume innocence until guilt is proven will help them grasp the fair procedures of justice. Look for programs that use everything from athletics and theater to student council and school trips to bring home these lessons.

5. Compassion. Whether it’s called empathy, love, tenderness, or kindness, this value goes to the core of motives and feelings. More intuitional than the others, it’s taught more readily by example than by discourse. When it’s missing, the other values turn brittle, and hypocrisy isn’t far away. Look for programs rooted in affectionate teaching, engaged learning, and a caring purpose.

Look, too, for four processes that bring these five values alive:

6. Expanding the moral perimeter. If these values operate only within the boundaries of family, clan, or clique, they won’t amount to much. Mafia hit-men and tin-pot dictators also honor these values among their confidants, though they deny them to everyone else. By contrast, those with the highest character see no perimeter at all: Everyone is worthy of their moral concern. Look for programs that diligently expand this perimeter — not by lowering standards and adopting a wooly relativism, but by extending these five values uniformly, even when they aren’t reflected back.

7. Imparting decision skills. The mere avoidance of wrongdoing isn’t sufficient for a life of integrity. Needed are ways to choose wisely between competing values. Children taught in primary school always to obey all five values find, as they grow up, that their toughest choices arise when one value (like responsible promise-keeping) conflicts with another (like truth-telling) — and where they can’t fully obey both at once. Look for programs that teach them right-versus-right decision skills lest they abandon the entire ethics enterprise as something they’ve outgrown.

8. Teaching moral courage. It is observable, sadly, that some people with fine values and solid moral reasoning skills can leave their decisions sitting unimplemented on the shelf. Absent the guts to put values into action, ethics is impotent. Character education without courage is like software without hardware — great stuff, if we could make it run. Too many schools coddle and cocoon their students, so that few opportunities remain for taking tough stands, testing one’s mettle, and facing down danger. Look for programs that help students express moral courage by enduring risk for the sake of principle.

9. Building cultures of integrity. Individuals live in and learn from cultures larger than themselves. They’re influenced not only by the school’s faculty, staff, and other students, but by its traditions, histories, and campfire stories, as well as by its parents, location, and standing among its peers. Look for programs that recognize this web of moral relationships, that see character and leadership as one, and that take responsibility for educating students to become builders of cultures of integrity throughout their careers.

And a tenth point: Even the best schools can’t do this work by themselves. Building character isn’t like building houses: You can’t contract it out. It’s a team sport, where parents, educators, and kids are on the field together. Look for a great program. Then get behind it every way you can.

©2006 Institute for Global Ethics