Are schools teaching values to children? Are they teaching character education to children and is it the same as teaching values to children? Schools refer to good character in terms of citizenship. Building positive and productive citizens are important in today’s society. Many see the teaching of values and character education as the same. In my professional opinion, character education and the teaching of values go hand in hand and need to be taught in every school.
Some schools recognize character education as promoting positive social thoughts, values, and behaviors to their students while they are in school. Other schools teach it to develop a specific desirable value in children. Basically, both ways are about finding a method to help students develop good habits or virtues.
Character education has two meanings. The big picture refers to almost anything schools might try to provide outside of academics that will help children grow into responsible adults. The smaller picture refers to a particular style of moral training that reflects a particular set of values.
Since many students spend as much time in school as they do at home, schools must be a place that supports family and community efforts to build values through character education. In teaching character education teachers are able to foster the development of ethical and responsible individuals by teaching them about the sound values needed for the future of a productive society of responsible citizens.
Children that learn to be caring, honest, and responsible will have important traits that make for upstanding citizens. This is not only a parent’s responsibility, it is the reason schools need to support strong character education methods. Schools need to model and show examples of good character behavior because that is where students spend most of their time.
Building good character traits help students to face the unknown situations that they will face in today’s world. It will provide them with the knowledge that they need to deal with in tough situations, the negative influences of television, and peers.
Along with building citizenship, character education supports academics. Students learn how to focus on their studies with the purpose of achieving passing grades, participating in discussions, and working in groups as a team. Research indicates schools that teach character education have less discipline problems, suspensions, tardiness, and absenteeism.
From the first day of class the teacher has a choice of how to set the culture of the classroom – one that will cultivate learning either positively or one that will have negative effects. Will it be one of competition, authoritarian, passive learning, and anxiety? Or will it be one built on the acceptance of individual differences, collaboration, respect, confidence, and encouragement? Many schools are creating the latter of the two and those schools are the most successful.
