PSYB10H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 61: Character Education
Document Summary
Polls indicate that about 70 percent of public school parents want schools to teach strict standards of right and wrong, and 85 percent want schools to teach values. And research suggests that many overworked, frayed parents, doubting their capacities as moral mentors, are looking to schools to take on a larger role in their children"s moral growth. In response to this demand, a billion-dollar character education industry has cropped up in the last few decades, including myriad organizations marketing packaged character education programs to schools. Many of these programs are devoted to inculcating values such as self-discipline, responsibility for others, and honesty. Some of these initiatives are carefully considered, rigorous, and tuned in both to children"s developmental experiences and to teachers" needs and capacities. But most of these undertakings appear to have little or no impact on children"s moral lives.
