|
Determination Diligence Enthusiasm Excellence
Flexibility Forgiveness Friendliness Generosity Gentleness Helpfulness
Honesty Honour Humility Idealism Integrity
Joyfulness Justice Kindness Love Loyalty Moderation Modesty
Orderliness Patience Peacefulness Perseverance Purposefulness
Reliability Respect Responsibility Self-discipline Service Tact
Thankfulness Tolerance Trust Trustworthiness Truthfulness
Understanding and Unity.
I suppose we could another fifty traits to be used
in character education. So who decides what values will be imparted?
Secondly, the values are abstract and it will take
considerable mental effort to translate into the kind of
behaviour needed to lessen undesirable
behaviour. Why spend time debating the meaning of a
value and what values go to make up a good character when you can
tackle the undesirable behaviour (“bad
character”) issue directly? Let’s take drug abuse for example. In a
character education class you could discuss till you’re blue in the
face that not taking drugs requires a person to be assertive and
confident in saying “no”, having respect for your parents and own body
and being self-disciplined. And this discussion might still not affect
behaviour. You could also discuss that
encouraging someone to use drugs (giving them the drug) is not
friendliness, helpfulness, love and so on.
Thirdly, acting according to many values does not
necessarily make one a responsible person – of good character. For
example, a bank robber could be clean, confident, cooperative,
courageous, reliable and loyal – and so on. If a bank robber attended
a character education class the objective would be to get him to stop
robbing banks not learn about a whole bunch of nice traits.
Fourthly, sometimes to be a good person, to be
ethical, you have to ignore the value and do the opposite. For
example, if a group of thugs is chasing a young boy because they want
to beat him up, and you see him hide, you should not tell the truth if
the thugs ask you if you have seen the boy.
Instead of all this cogitating, wouldn’t character
education be more effective by raising a social issue directly and
then discussing it in a way that brings people to their own
realisation of what behaviour would best
benefit them and everyone else?
There is considerable scope for research on the effectiveness of
character education. Dr Bill would be happy to assist
postgraduate
students (with approval of their university or college). Contact
him on
bill@valueseducation.co.uk
Copyright © 2008 Values Education Ltd
Note
to editors. Feel free to use this article as long as the following
details are retained. “A values education article from CAVE
www.valueseducation.co.uk ”
|
