Character education and social responsibility: Can schools fill in what the culture leaves out? 

“Yes, reading and math are important. But what matters most is what kinds of human beings are reading the books and doing the math.”
—Charles Haynes, founding board member, Character Education Partnership

On Sept. 9 of this year, as President Barack Obama gave a speech to a rare joint session of Congress on the subject of health care reform, U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted out, “You lie!” as Americans and millions of others around the world watched this exceptional breach of protocol.

On Sept. 12, tennis star Serena Williams ferociously berated a line judge for calling a foot fault on one of her plays at the U.S. Open tennis tournament. Spewing profanity, Williams threatened to shove a tennis ball down the line judge’s throat.

On Sept. 13, rapper Kanye West jumped onto the stage at the MTV Music Video Awards show to confront Taylor Swift, a young female country music singer, shouting that Beyoncé Knowles deserved the award Swift had just received.

Ours is the era of the 24-hour “news” cycle, where radio and television programs frequently have more time to fill than they have legitimate news to report. Things being what they are, these three incidents set talking heads to bobbing furiously, sold newspapers worldwide, set bloggers to blogging and stirred up a hornet’s nest of activity on the World Wide Web.

This is also the era in which America’s schoolchildren are growing up. With highly publicized outbursts such as those described above occurring within a four-day period—and others like them at every turn—what are kids learning about how to think and conduct themselves in school, at home and out in the world as adults someday?

Some startling statistics

The Josephson Institute, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization advocating character and ethics development, conducts programs for schools and other communities. Its biennial 2008 Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth is based on a survey of nearly 30,000 students in high schools across the United States. Here are a few of the survey’s findings:

• A considerable majority of students— 64 percent—admitted to cheating on a test; 38 percent said they did so two or more times.
• More than eight in 10 students (83 percent) from public schools and private religious schools confessed they lied to a parent about something significant.
• More than one in three boys—35 percent—and 26 percent of girls admitted stealing from a store within the past year.

Here’s another finding: 26 percent of the students admitted they lied on at least one of the survey questions. Despite these admissions, 93 percent said they were “satisfied with [their] personal ethics and character,” and 77 percent said “when it comes to doing what is right, I am better than most people I know.”

A report such as this raises many questions. Among them: Is there a relationship between what the study found and children’s exposure to media? Should schools play a role in teaching character education and social responsibility, and if so, when should they start? Don’t parents bear the responsibility for instilling ethical values in their children?

The beginnings of some answers

Many studies link the amount of media exposure children experience to sexual initiation at an inappropriate age, obesity, social isolation and aggression, among other issues.

It’s a “major public health issue,” University of Washington physicians Dimitri Christakis and Frederick Zimmerman wrote in an article in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, a journal of the American Medical Association.

Electronic media are “among the most profound influences on children in this country,” Christakis and Zimmerman wrote, and “this [fact] intersects with many other issues that are critically important to child health, including violence, obesity, tobacco/alcohol use, and risky sexual behaviors.”

The damage begins in the preschool years and continues through adolescence, building momentum as it goes, as children experience a constant barrage of information from the Internet, television and radio. The kids don’t even have to be paying attention; one study found that 3-year-olds were three times more likely to be overweight if they spent two or more hours a day in a room with a TV on. Children who are watching television aren’t engaged in physical activity, after all, and they’re bombarded with advertisements for sweetened cereals and fast food.

Just as there are reports describing the harm done to schoolchildren by media exposure, other studies aim to inform educators and parents about programs that exist to counteract its influence and help foster positive attributes instead.

As an example, in June of this year, ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development), an international educational leadership organization, published a two-part report, “Teaching Social Responsibility.” The online report is a compilation of articles, studies and descriptions of programs being used across the United States to nurture a sense of ethics, honesty and compassion for others, and to boost civic engagement in students. Abstracts link to source materials that describe how a variety of service projects encourage a sense of community awareness and activity in children and teens, and the message is driven home that “schools must teach more than academics.”

In 1984, the nonprofit Center for Youth Citizenship found a home within the Sacramento County Office of Education. The CYC works with its host and other county and corporate partners in programs that encourage students to become good citizens and to develop good character traits. Through its California Partnership for Character Education, CYC—in collaboration with the Sacramento COE—works with schools to empower staff and students to create a culture of social responsibility and civic-mindedness.

Effective character-based approaches From the “Handbook on Teaching Character-Based Citizenship in California Public Schools,” published by the Center for Youth Citizenship: Establish higher expectations, common agreements and a clear structure for decision-making about desired adult and student behavior, attitudes and skills. Link good character and citizenship with instruction in key skill areas and study habits. Expand the learning culture and community as well as responsibility for learning and student success. Bridge student, staff, parent and community relationships for achievement and good citizenship. Develop necessary school and community leadership. Promote accountability and communication between and within the school community.

“We try to take the definition of character education out of the abstract,” says Rhonda Sato, CYC’s acting executive director. “In the early days, people thought of it more as a movement than an approach. We think of it as character-based citizenship; it’s all about students being good everyday citizens.”

The CPCE developed a research-based program called “Free to Learn” that elementary school teachers can integrate into their lesson planning in reading and language arts.

Free to Learn provides skills training to staff and students in six critical areas it calls its “Six Core Character Traits”:

• caring, giving and service
• justice and fairness
• leadership, initiative and teamwork
• respect
• responsibility
• trustworthiness

For those concerned about adding to teachers’ already-heavy workload, Sato has a ready message.

“Educators have a lot on their plates,” she says. We didn’t want an add-on program that would add to that. Our approach is aligned with reading texts.”

Schools employing the program and integrating the traits into their curriculum report improved student achievement and citizenship and enhanced teaching methods while they gained valuable insights into student achievement and character. A four-year study based on the California Standards Test from 2004 to 2007 showed an average 6 percent rise in scores for schools using character-based education.

“Discipline referrals go down because kids are implementing the notion of being kinder to each other,” says Steven Ladd, superintendent of the Elk Grove Unified School District, near Sacramento. A number of schools there employ character education at a variety of grade levels.

“If I feel like I’m really part of a team or unit, so that my being on campus and being part of a school family [is valuable], then my attendance rates are up, and my grades are up,” Ladd says of the benefits of CE. “All of that translates into my capabilities in the classroom.

“Character education is not a pill,” Ladd cautions. “You don’t take a pill and then—all of a sudden—it’s there. It’s about understanding those character traits—personal responsibility, integrity, accountability. The more we use them in our lives, the better we get at that. … Character education creates a positive learning environment. We’ve certainly seen that at Prairie [Elementary School, in the district] and every school where kids continue to do well. Not at every school or in every condition, but it certainly contributes to the kind of environment we have in our schools.”

A success story

Prairie Elementary is a suburban Title I school in Sacramento County with more than 1,200 students in prekindergarten through sixth grade. Its principal, Fawzia Keval, is in her seventh year as its chief administrator. She shepherded the school to a State Schools of Character award in 2007 and again in 2009 from the Character Education Partnership, a respected organization described on its Web site as a “nonprofit, nonpartisan, nonsectarian coalition of organizations and individuals committed to fostering effective character education in our nation’s K–12 schools.”

Keval echoes Ladd’s sentiments about the nature of character development and the time it takes to nurture it.

“This is something that has to develop over the course of a lifetime, not just in one class or textbook. It needs to begin in preschool,” Keval says. “I see it as [educators’] moral responsibility so that our students can become active and engaged citizens, become good family members and good neighbors. We teach our students about personal integrity, self-confidence and moral development. We talk about what it looks like, what it sounds like and how it feels.”

Keval decided to give character education a try starting in the 2003–04 school year after a staffer at the Sacramento COE told her about the Center for Youth Citizenship and its programs.

In addition to implementing the training learned from the CYC, Keval and her team personalized Prairie’s program with three basic rules: Be safe. Be respectful. Be responsible. Because Prairie’s mascot is a panther, those rules later spawned the “Panther Pledge,” which students gather each morning to recite prior to the start of the school day:

PANTHER PLEDGE

I am safe.
I am respectful.
I am responsible.
We are here to learn; therefore, I will do nothing to keep the teacher from teaching and anyone from learning.
By acting this way, I am taking charge of my future.
I believe
I will achieve,
I will succeed.

Students, staff and parents all have a role to play in nurturing character and good citizenship at Prairie. And everyone is acknowledged—and rewarded—for contributing to the program.

“We give out “paw prints” (badges saying ‘Caught you being good!’) to the students as awards,” Keval says. “Each month we focus on a different trait such as responsibility or honesty. There are weekly and monthly awards, such as sitting at a specially decorated table in the cafeteria once a month, for the winners.”

Teachers and other staff are recognized, too. Once a month, the entire staff votes for the most deserving person. Keval and the vice principal surprise the lucky winner with balloons, a Starbucks gift card, a photo taken with students.

“The kids absolutely love having their teachers chosen,” she says.

Parents get paw prints, too. Children report on activities their parents joined them in or on other ways that they exhibited a positive character trait. The reward: a special “Prairie Panther Parent Paw Print.”

“Parents are so thankful that we’re doing this program,” Keval says.

Keval engages parents by holding family nights, giving a state-of-the-school address and through other means.

“I let them know what we are doing and how they can help,” she says. “We put out a print and online newsletter that keeps them informed and talks about the theme of the month and what they can do at home to promote that theme.”

Prairie’s whole-school approach to character education has paid off in multiple ways in the years since it was enacted. The number of suspensions dropped from 217 in 2004 to 111 in 2007, and attendance improved. Proficiency in English-language arts rose from 29 percent in 2004 to 34 percent in 2007, and math proficiency rose from 38 percent to 44 percent. (Even though the program is formally implemented through reading and language arts programs, teachers are so keen on CE and so thoroughly versed in it that math and science teachers find a way to include its principles as well.)

Superintendent Ladd sums up the virtues of character education succinctly.
“As I’ve watched [character education] in our schools, it really promotes the idea that students take on responsibility for their actions, that they add value to their communities and that acts of kindness really matter.

“They learn that, if I don’t study, my grades might suffer. If I do my work and contribute to a sense of team, there’s value to that. You know, if you stub your toe, it smarts for a few minutes, yeah. But we can dust ourselves off and learn value from that, too. It’s that resiliency that counts and will have huge payoffs in the future.”

Marsha Boutelle ( mboutelle@csba.org ) is a staff writer for California Schools.

Character references

Among the character education resources reviewed for this story are the following:

Community of Caring | www.communityofcaring.org
This University of Utah College of Education program, founded by the late Eunice Kennedy Shriver in 1982, includes a focus on children with disabilities.

Character Education Partnership | www.character.org
Based in Washington, D.C., the Character Education Partnership is an umbrella organization for character education and serves as a resource for individuals and education groups for the nation’s K–12 schools.

Center for Youth Citizenship | www.youthcitizenship.org
“CYC’s character-based citizenship approach focuses on today’s school and community leaders working together to help youth achieve and succeed in a highly diverse and rapidly changing world,” says Rhonda Sato, acting executive director of this initiative that is located in the Sacramento County Office of Education.

Josephson Institute | http://josephsoninstitute.org
The nonprofit, Los Angeles-based Josephson Institute’s Character Counts program trains K–12 educators to instill universally accepted values of honesty, respect, fairness, tolerance and other positive attributes.