CHARACTER

DEVELOPMENT

in schools and

beyond

Edited by

Kevin Ryan

Thomas Lickona

CHARACTER

DEVELOPMENT

in schools and

beyond

Edited by

Kevin Ryan

Thomas Lickona

Character Development in Schools and Beyond/ edited by Kevin Ryan, Thomas Lickona -- 2nd ed., rev. and expanded

p. cm. -- (Cultural heritage and contemporary change, George F. McLean, Gen. ed.; Series VI, Foundations of Moral Education; vol. 3)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Moral Education. 2. Character. 3. Moral Education--United States.

I. Ryan, Kevin; II. Lickona, Thomas; III. Series.

LC268.C34 1992

370.11'4--dc20 92-10115

CIP

THE COUNCIL FOR

RESEARCH IN VALUES & PHILOSOPHY

S. Avineri, Israel

P. Balasubramaniam, India

P. Bodunrin, Nigeria

V. Cauchy, Canada

M. Chatterjee, India

R. De George, USA

M. Dy, Philippines

I.T. Frolov, USSR

H.G. Gadamer, BDR

A. Gallo, Guatemala

K. Gyekye, Ghana

P. Henrici, Italy

J. Hoyos Vellez, Colombia

T. Imamichi, Japan

A. Irala Burgos, Paraguay

J. Kellerman, Hungary

M. Kente, Tanzania

R. Knowles, USA

J. Kromkowski, USA

J. Ladrière, Belgium

P. Laleye, Senegal

H.D. Lewis, UK

S. Lokuang, Taipei

A. Lopez Quintas, Spain

M. Markovic, Yugoslavia

H. Nasr, USA/Iran

Ngwey Ngond'a Ndenge, Zaire

J. Nyasani, Kenya

C. Pan, Singapore

Paulus Gregorios, India

O. Pegoraro, Brazil

C. Ramirez, Costa Rica

P. Ricoeur, France

M. Sastrapatedja, Indonesia

J. Scannone, Argentina

K. Schmitz, Canada

V. Shen, Taipei

W. Strozewski, Poland

Tang Yi-jie, Peking

J. Teran-Dutari, Ecuador

G. Tlaba, Lesotho

Wang Miao-yang, ShanghaiGeorge F. McLean, Secretary

Cardinal Station, P. O. Box 261

Washington, D.C. 20064

Tel. 202/319-5636; Fax. 202/319-6089

The sample study units used in Chapter 8 are from Value and Living: Learning Materials for Grades 7 & 8 by Clive Beck (Toronto: OISE Press, 1983). The epigraph by Gerald Grant quoted in Chapter 5 is reprinted from Daedalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, "America's Schools: Public and Private," vol. 110, no. 3, Summer 1981, Cambridge, MA.

Special appreciation is extended to Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development for permission to include the report from its panel on Moral Education, April, 1988: Moral Education in the Life of the School. Chaired by Kevin Ryan and with the participation of Thomas Lickona and Edward Wynne, the panel's report summarizes well the main theses of the present volume.

The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy wishes to thank the authors of the present volume for their gift of genius, effort and time in the extended and repeated discussions which made of this a unified effort reflecting the best insights of the members, individually and corporately. It thanks as well the members of the teams of philosophers and psychologists who laid the groundwork for the present volume in their works: The Philosophical Foundation for Moral Education and Character Development; Act and Agent, and Psychological Foundations of Moral Education and Character Development: An Integrated Theory of Moral Development, both of which appear in this same series.

Throughout the work of this extended project the devoted labor of B. Kennedy in manuscript preparation and the constant support of the James A. McLeans have been essential to the success of the work.

Preface

by Robert Coles vii

Part I. The Context

1. Character Development: The Challenge and the Model

by Kevin Ryan and Thomas Lickona 3

2. Trends in American Youth Character Development

by Edward A. Wynne and Mary Hess 29

3. Society, Culture, and Character Development

by Henry C. Johnson, Jr. 49

Part II. The School

4. Students and Schools

by Edward A. Wynne 79

5. Partners in Moral Education: Communities and

Their Public Schools

by Madhu Suri Prakash 97

6. School Climate and Character Development

by Clark Power 117

Part III. The Classroom and Its Curriculum

7. Character Development in the Elementary School Classroom

by Thomas Lickona 141

8. Moral Education in the Junior High School

by Clive Beck 163

9. Moral Education in the High School Classroom

by Robert J. Starratt 181

Part IV. Beyond the School

10. Character Development in the Family

by Thomas Lickona 201

11. The Role of Religion in Character Development

by Thomas C. Hennessy 219

12. Television as a moral Educator

by Edmund V. Sullivan 241

13. The College Experience and Character Development

by Walter Nicgorski 263

14. The Moral Education of Teachers

by Kevin Ryan 287

Epilogue: Integrated Character Education: Implementing a New Paradigm

by Timothy G. Rusnak, Thomas M. Farrelly, Kenneth L Burrett 305

Appendix: Moral Education in the Life of the School

by The ASCD Panel on Moral Education 341

About the Contributors 371

Index 375

For twenty-five years I have been working with children in various parts of this country and abroad in hopes of learning how they acquire their moral values, and very important, how they try to live up to those values, if indeed they do so. At times I have been stunned by the willingness of, say, small children from poor, uneducated families to behave rather impressively, from an ethical point of view, despite the overwhelming stresses and burdens placed upon these boys and girls, not to mention their parents. For instance (and I have many times mentioned this incident) I watched a six year old black child go through mobs daily in New Orleans, be threatened, be told she would be killed by the white segregationist men and women who awaited her (during the autumn of 1960), and yet she managed to walk past such people with poise and dignity. I was trying to find out about her psychological adjustment (which turned out to be quite normal) but I was not at all prepared, as I watched her closely and listened to her every word, for what I learned (from her teacher) she said as (escorted by federal marshals) she passed those hecklers: "Please, dear God, forgive them, because they don't know what they're doing."

I suppose we might be cynical about such a child's capacity to connect her own considerable travail with that of Jesus of Nazareth as He hung on the Cross, ready to die. The chid was only repeating what she heard in church; she was obeying her parents, mouthing their pieties--"coping" (that dreary, contemporary word) with her considerable anxiety. True, she was fearful at times; and true, she did find personal solace in the prayer she spoke every day as she entered school, amid the screaming death threats and curses--for months. But she also meant what she said, and was well able to explain her moral (as opposed to psychological motives). One day, for instance, as I asked her about "those people," whether she really did feel like praying for them, she responded with a question of her own: "Well, don't you think they need praying for"? The child had thrown the moral heart of the matter back at the doctor--had asked me, the grown-up and supposedly knowing child psychiatrist, to take a sharp look at my own values, purposes, ethical assumptions.

There are other children like her all over this country; in fact, boys and girls everywhere, by their very nature as human beings, have the capacity to ask questions, to wonder why, to take note of inconsistencies, to think of what might be as well as what is--and of course, what ought to be. Even as that black child showed her capacity for moral reflection, some of us wonder about many of our all too privileged children, who will never have to face screaming mobs, who won't experience poverty or the strain of racial prejudice--and who, not rarely, are nevertheless troubled, confused, morally adrift, hence the incidence of drug and alcohol abuse, of self-destructive behavior of all kinds, of visits to the offices of our suburban psychiatrists and psychologists. Even our bright and seemingly well-adjusted students are not necessarily decent and honorable individuals; as Walker Percy put it in The Second Coming, "they all get A's, yet flunk ordinary living." Another shrewd writer, the poet and physician William Carlos Williams, reminded us that "smart isn't necessarily good," a paraphrase, really, of Ralph Waldo Emerson's distinction of one hundred and fifty years ago, between "character" and "intellect." A student of mine said as much recently when he offered this telling irony to me--that he "saw people get A's in moral reasoning courses, and still behave very badly." He referred to their gossipy, smut, selfish ways--to his own, at times. I believe St. Augustine, long ago, dared face a similar moral paradox.

But that student and Ruby and indeed all of us who are students and teachers and parents will continue to pose such ironies to ourselves, one hopes and prays; and we all need to have, in that regard, the reflections of others, who have dared look at the question of character, of moral knowledge and moral action, of the nature of moral purpose. We are fortunate to have, in this book, an important series of essays which will help us along enormously--give us plenty of reason to stop and consider what we want morally for our children, for ourselves. There has been an aching void in the literature of moral reflection as it ought to apply to education, and this book addresses that absence boldly and thoughtfully.

Concern for the values and morals of the young is an enduring adult preoccupation. Down through recorded history, this worry about the character of the younger generation is evident. Concern, however, has never been enough to ensure that the young possess the type of character that can sustain the individual and society. Some societies have failed to transmit their values to the young, and this has often meant their swift decline. The rubble of history is mute testimony to this failure.

Societies, of course, must do more than merely survive. They must also grow--in their understanding of what it means to be a human community, in the range of opportunities they offer each member for full human development, and in their capacity to handle the new ethical problems wrought by technology and other social changes. In addition, they must learn to function as part of an increasingly complex world community, where global peace and justice demand ever increasing levels of cooperation. But whether the task is survival or development, any society ultimately depends for its success on the character of its citizens--on the extent to which a critical mass of its people hold, find their identity in, and act upon a shared moral vision.

Democratic societies have a special dependence on the virtue of their citizens. In the United States, for example, the Founding Fathers believed that universal schooling was needed, at least partly, because moral education was needed. Government by the people, where the people themselves ensured a free and just society, required that the people be good--possessed of at least a minimal understanding of and commitment to the moral foundations of democracy. Those foundations included respect for law and for the rights of others, voluntary participation in public life, and concern for the common good. Loyalty to these democratic values, Thomas Jefferson argued, must be instilled at an early age.

Two centuries later, there are visible cracks in the moral foundations of democracy. Ed Wynne and Mary Hess, in Chapter 2 of this book, presents quantitative evidence that the conduct of United States youth, during the last 20 to 30 years, is marked by two disturbing trends: (1) a rise in self-destructive behavior (e.g., suicide, teen-age pregnancy, and drug abuse), and (2) a rise in destructive behavior involving others (e.g., juvenile crime and disorder in schools). To these two trends, we would add two others, equally troubling. The first is an attitude of "We're not doing anything wrong." In a 1981 survey by the National Organization to Prevent Shoplifting, for example, 50 percent of the one hundred thousand youths aged 9-21 surveyed said they had shoplifted, and most of those said they would do it again. When a ninth-grade teacher of our acquaintance asked her students how many had ever shoplifted, most raised their hands. "Don't you think it's wrong to shoplift?" she asked. They answered, "We have a right to the material things in life."

That answer points to a fourth disturbing change in the moral values of the young, namely, a growing materialism. In 1970, according to the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at the University of California at Los Angeles, 39 percent of U.S. college freshmen said that "being very well off financially" was an important objective in going to college (Astin, The American Freshman, 1989). By 1989, that figure had risen sharply, to 78 percent. Meanwhile, less materialistic values had lost ground. By 1989 only 41 percent of freshmen felt that "developing a meaningful philosophy of life" was an important reason for attending college, compared with 83 percent who thought so in 1970.

Finally, behind this materialism may lie something deeper still: a spreading privatism, a detachment from community and commitment. That attitude, as Henry Johnson argues in Chapter 3, strikes at the very heart of morality's recognition of our interrelatedness and the claims we have on each other. Privatism makes a virtue of selfishness.

BEYOND NATIONAL BORDERS

There is evidence, moreover, that no country has a monopoly on these moral problems: they cut across national borders. Here is a Canadian magazine (Donahue, 1984) arguing the case for values education in the schools: 70 percent of Ontario's children, grades 7 through 13, use alcohol; 33 percent of tenth-grade boys and 25 percent of girls have had sexual intercourse, accompanied by rising rates of teen-age pregnancy and abortion; suicide is the second leading cause of death among teen-agers. Two summers ago we joined philosophers, psychologists, and educators in South America to share concerns and approaches to moral education. Here is what one woman, head of a university department of education, had to say about the state of moral affairs in her country:

Moral values in my country are declining. It is a serious problem. First of all, more and more young people are living together without getting married so they can break up if they want to. Their children grow up without a secure situation, and it has an effect. There is more crime among young people, and more dishonesty everywhere--in government, in business, among ordinary people. Part of the problem is people are spending more than they earn and need money to pay their debts. There is more materialism--people are following a new life style. They think it will make them happy, but it only makes them unhappy. And there is more divorce, which never used to be a problem.

CAUSES OF THE PROBLEM

How did we come to the present state of affairs? In the United States, three social institutions have traditionally been responsible for shaping the character of the young: the family, the church, and the school. However, post-war United States, like many other nations, has seen significant changes in all three of these institutions, changes which in turn have had a major impact on their teaching functions.

The Family

At a 1985 symposium on character development sponsored by the American Educational Research Association, the well-known sociologist James Coleman began his comments with this statement: "I believe the causes of the downward trends in youth character lie primarily outside the school--in the changes that have taken place in the American family."

Other observers echo that theme. John Agresto (1982), a project director at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina, writes of the erosion of family life and of the family's function as moral educator, and traces that erosion to values that have long been part of our culture:

The same principles [that led to the decline of neighborhoods]--individualism, love of mobility and change, self-interest, self-fulfillment, and personal privacy--have weakened many of the bonds of the central moral teacher: the family. These principles, when pursued as the greatest of worldly aims, are antithetical to the persistence of vital family life. For example, it has become progressively harder for liberal countries, such as ours, to constrain divorce or insist that family life be peaceful and harmonious. . . . An emphasis on the principles of individualism and private right hardly makes family ties "for better and for worse" a solid feature of our society (p. 156).

In the United States, one of two marriages now ends in divorce. Within the last decade, the number of single-parent households has doubled; more than one in five children now lives with only one parent. That one parent, typically the mother, frequently has a full-time job, plus all the household chores from preparing meals to getting the car fixed. She must struggle to find time for parental guidance and connecting with her children.

Even when there are two parents, family life must compete, as never before, with the demands of commitments outside the family. Two generations ago saw the father leave the home--often a farm or shop--to go to work. This generation has seen the mother leave the home. In 1970, 40 percent of married women worked outside the home; by 1980 it was 51 percent, and by 1990 two of every three married women were part of the work force. The last decade, moreover, has seen mothers of younger and younger children enter or return to the labor market. What this means, quite simply, is that first the father and now the mother have less and less time to spend in face-to-face communication with their children.

There are still other changes: the trend toward smaller families, reducing the number of positive role models and supports that brothers and sisters can provide; the fact that every year, one of five U.S. households moves, away from grandparents, away from long family acquaintances, and away from others who give children a sense of belonging and care enough to correct their behavior; the trend for parents increasingly to find their recreation apart from the family; and, finally, diminished opportunities for children to contribute meaningfully to the work of the family, as they once could to the family farm or store.

There are certainly strengths in the modern family--greater attention, for example, to the quality of interpersonal relationships in marriage, greater effort on the part of many parents to listen to children and to create relationships based on mutual rather than unilateral respect. And as a later essay in this book (Lickona, Chapter 10) makes clear, we are optimistic about the potential of families to contribute to children's moral development and help reverse the downward trends in youth character. But here we wish to note the very real changes in the family that threaten to undermine its crucial role in the moral education of the young.

The Church

The church not only speaks to our connection with our Maker, but is also a meaning maker. It addresses not only who we are, but what we ought to be and what we ought to do. By virtue of this concern, the church is directly involved in character development.

However, the exact place of religion in U.S. society is difficult to judge. We have often thought that if a visitor from outer space came to gather data on our society, landed in a motel and had only TV as a source of data, our extraterrestrial social scientist would have a very curious view of U.S. citizens, particularly concerning religion. The visitor would observe that the heroes of our TV shows have no apparent spiritual life. They are often caring, involved, and admirable people. But they belong to no church and seem totally untroubled by ultimate questions. In effect, our ideal citizens appear to live admirably without God.

Even the secular press has noted this phenomenon. Benjamin J. Stein (1985) observed in The Wall Street Journal that "on prime-time network television, there is virtually no appearance of religion at all." Stein wrote:

Whenever a problem requiring moral judgment appears--which is on almost every show--the response that comes is based on some intuitive knowledge of what is good and evil, the advice of a friend, a remembered counsel, or, more likely, the invisible hand of circumstance. When a cop goes bad and his partner must bring him in . . . there is no prayer, no ministerial consultation, no reference to scriptural precept. When a woman realizes she has sold her soul for a car and a condo on any number of TV movies, when a college student rethinks his behavior toward women, none of their analyses or actions has anything to do with religious tenets of any recognizable kind.

With the exception of an occasional attempt to put sex into the convent, . . . religion and the appeal to religious values in decision-making are simply invisible in prime-time television today (p. 5).

Does TV tell it like it is? Hardly. As Stein notes, "In the gritty course of real existence, Americans spend time and energy in the context of religious institutions and religious precepts." Those precepts are often a major factor guiding moral decisions.

Some evidence of the role of religion in U.S. life comes from a study carried out by Research and Forecasts, Inc. (1981) at the request of the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Co. The purpose of the study was to probe the basic beliefs and core values of a diverse sampling of Americans. In pursuit of that goal, the researchers conducted 2,018 hour-long interviews with 1,610 randomly selected individuals. In addition, they sent an eight page questionnaire covering the same issues as the interviews to more than four thousand leaders in business, law, education, government, the military, the media, religion and science; 1,762 leaders responded.

The researchers reported that they were quite surprised by what they found. At the beginning of their report, "The Impact of Belief," they write: "In investigating major aspects of American life . . . one factor that consistently and dramatically affects the values and behavior of Americans is . . . the level of religious commitment" (p. 6). The report goes on to say, "The impact of religious belief reaches far beyond the realms of politics, and has penetrated virtually every dimension of American experience" (p. 6). The study found that

Although less than half the public (44%) attend church frequently, three-quarters (74%) consider themselves to be religious. An equal number (73%) say they frequently feel God loves them, and nearly all Americans (94%) say they experience this feeling at least occasionally. Over half (57%) the public report that they frequently engage in prayer (pp. 17-18).

Using a behavioral index of religious activities and of the experience of religious feelings, the study also attempted to measure the depth of religious commitment. The authors report that slightly more than one out of every four U.S. residents can be termed "highly religious." The report claims to have identified "a comprehensive and powerful group of Americans, approximately 45 million strong, as intensely religious" and states further that such persons are "likely to vote often and to become highly involved in their local communities" (p. 7). Religion, then, is clearly a larger influence in people's lives than one would gather from watching TV, and that influence appears to be a force for participation in public life.

A more recent study of the religious affiliations and attitudes of 113,000 Americans confirms the view that the citizens of the United States are strongly tied to their churches (Goldman, 1991). A study directed by Barry A. Kosmin of New York University, found that only 7.5% of the respondents reported having no religion and only 2% refused to talk about their faith. On the other hand, 9 out of 10 Americans identify with a particular denomination. Ninety-six percent of these report themselves to be Christians. As Martin Marty, the Protestant church historian, said about these finds, it is "astonishing that in a high-tech, highly affluent nation, we have 90% who identify themselves as religious. If such a poll were done in Western Europe, the ancestral home of many Americans, you would run at least a third or lower on every indicator (Martin in Goldman, 1991, p. A18). It would appear from these studies. then, that religion is a strong presence in the lives of Americans.

Most observers, however, would agree that the church's teaching authority has diminished significantly from what it was two to three decades ago. The general rebellion against established authority in the 1960s loosened the hold that religion had over the conscience of young people. But in part, many believe, the church had itself to blame for the loss of teaching influence. In the 1960s and 1970s, critics charge, the church stopped talking about duty, devotion, and doctrine, and joined the cultural chorus preaching growth and fulfillment. Religious education classes that once taught the catechism command to "know, love, and serve God," became indistinguishable from values clarification--a new movement which sought to have children look inward to themselves for values. Asked about her goals, one Sunday School teacher said. "We are teaching the children to grow, to become whole persons, to question, to choose values" (Kilpatrick, 1983, p. 24). This wholesale psychologizing of religion prompted one well-known psychiatrist (Menninger, 1973) to write a book entitled Whatever Became of Sin?

There is at least one more question one must ask in assessing the role of religion in contemporary moral life. If, as some studies show, religion is alive and well in today's society, then why is there a rising tide of materialism and privatism? The call of religion is to spiritual values and community, not to storing up treasures and retreating from commitments. It may be that we have always wanted God and a private prosperity at the same time. But any religion worth the name must put those values in tension.

Whatever its past failures or present weaknesses, religion, like the family, is an enduring institution. As such, it has important potential for laying the foundations of our children's character development. Indeed, as several chapters in this book suggest, religion, with an eye to the Ultimate, provides special reasons and resources for leading the moral life.

The School

By virtue of the fact that they hold our children for so much time during their formative years, schools have--or ought to have--a strong effect on the characters of the young. Indeed, schools in this country and around the world have traditionally been seen as institutions where the young received both cognitive and moral training. Schools have been the place where children were taught important lessons of good citizenship and membership in community. In the United States, adults have looked to the schools to transmit certain social values the nation both needs and prizes, values such as fair play, concern for excellence, respect for law and property, willingness to work hard, the ability to delay gratification, and a sense of service. In the nineteenth century and early part of this century, the school sought to instill these values in every way it could: through its rules and discipline, through the teacher's good example, and through its textbooks and curriculum. When children practiced their reading, for example, they typically did so through McGuffey Reader tales of heroism and virtue, like the one about "honest Charles," who was trusted (because he was known to be honest) to guard a salesman's oranges and who courageously repulsed "Jack Pilfer," the thieving bully who tried to steal them (Minnich, 1936).

With time, however, the moral consensus supporting this unabashed, old-fashioned character education began to break up. It did so under the hammer blows of several forces: Darwinism, which led people to see everything, including morality, as being in flux rather than fixed and certain; scientific empiricism, which, as in the case of the famous Hartshorne and May study (1928), seemed to show that moral behavior was highly variable, governed by external circumstance rather than by any consistent internal state that one could call "character"; and logical positivism, which permeated the universities and held that there were no objective moral truths--hence morality was a matter for personal choice rather than public transmission. The moral life came to be seen as a form of private life. In this climate, public schools retreated from their function as moral educators. Similarly, teacher education became increasingly technical, summoning teachers-to-be not to shape the values of tomorrow's citizens and leaders but only to transmit, with efficiency, a body of information and skills (Ryan, Chapter 14).

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, as both private and public morality seemed to be breaking down (as shown by a wave of scandals in all walks of life and increasing violence throughout society), there was renewed interest in the school's role as moral educator. Both the 1975 and the 1989 Gallup Poll turned up strong public support: fully 84 percent of parents of school-age children agreed with the statement that schools "should provide instruction that would deal with morals and moral behavior." Such general support, however, still left schools facing hard questions: What kind of moral instruction should they provide? Whose values should be taught, and how?

In the perceived absence of agreement about what moral content should be taught, the new forms of moral education focused on process: how to clarify one's values (values clarification), how to reason with greater complexity about moral conflicts (moral dilemma discussions), and how to make systematic moral decisions (values analysis). Each of these approaches made its own contribution to the revival or advancement of moral education, contributions which are reflected in this volume. But process without content did not meet the whole need. Schools were still shying away from the crucial question of what students ought to value. Moreover, much of the new moral education, because it avoided the question of what are worthwhile human values, frequently fostered moral relativism. Teachers commonly began moral discussions with the statement, "There is no right or wrong answer" and ended with, "Make your own decision." Morality seemed to be a matter of personal opinion.

Ironically, at the same time schools were trying to stay officially value-neutral in the curriculum, they began, in their institutional functioning, to reflect and reinforce a substantive value shift in the wider culture. That shift is the growing emphasis on individual rights over and against civic responsibilities. Writing in Dedalus, Gerald Grant (1981) reports how this shift has not been lost on the young. A new student entering the Boston public schools would, Grant writes, "be handed `the Book,' a 25-page pamphlet detailing student rights, with less than half a page on student responsibilities" (p. 141). He then goes on to describe how the pamphlet details an elaborate and exhausting process that teachers must go through to discipline a child and how many "protections" are built into the system for the student. Grant reports an incident he personally encountered while doing his study:

A female teacher was still shaking as she told us about a group of students who had verbally assaulted her and made sexually degrading comments about her in the hall. When we asked why she did not report them, she responded, "Well, it wouldn't have done any good." "Why not?" we pressed. "I didn't have any witnesses," she replied (p. 141).

In schools that function like this, the traditional moral authority of the teacher is reduced to a narrow, legalistic authority. At best, students develop a strong sense of their rights and a weak sense of their obligations; at worst, they learn they can behave irresponsibly with impunity.

Recent critiques of U.S. education tend to say little or nothing about the schools' failures or promise as moral educators of the young. That omission is itself part of the problem. But there is every reason to believe that the public still wants schools to help children become honest, decent, caring persons who are capable of leading good lives in a troubled world. Indeed, in a fragile and fragmented society, schools take on increasing importance. Not every child has a stable and supportive home life; not every child goes to church; but every child does go to school. As this volume attests, we believe there is much schools must and can still do, even in our intensely pluralistic age, to elevate the character of our children and our nation.

In addition to the home, the church, and the school, there are two other forces in the socialization of the young that bear at least brief mention here. One is new; the other is old, but has taken on new strength in recent decades. These forces are television and the peer group.

Television

Two later chapters (Johnson, Sullivan) analyze in depth the growing impact of the mass media as moral educator. Of all the mass media, television looms the largest. In 1992, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the typical fourth-grader reported spending more than three hours a day in front of the TV set.

Neil Postman, New York University professor of communication arts, calls television "the first curriculum" because the typical high school graduate has spent more time watching TV (fifteen to sixteen thousand hours) than going to school (no more than thirteen thousand hours). Postman reports that "television appears to shorten the attention span of the young as well as eroding, to a considerable extent, their linguistic powers and their ability to handle mathematical symbolism. It also causes them to be increasingly impatient with deferred gratification" (U.S. News & World Report, 1981, p. 43). Similarly, the National Institute of Mental Health report, Television and Behavior (1982), surveying some twenty-five hundred studies during the prior decade, documents a variety of negative effects of television on children's cognitive and social-moral functioning. Postman also calls our attention to the fact that "television is opening up all of society's secrets and taboos, thus eroding the dividing line between childhood and adulthood" (U.S. News & World Report, 1981, p. 43). Allowing children full access to the seamier side of adult life, Postman argues, flies smack in the face of what was until recently part of our civilization's wisdom: that childhood is a period of relative innocence, to be protected and nurtured, a period necessary for children's healthy development. The loss of that period was brought home to us personally in a recent conversation with a kindergarten teacher. Her five year olds, she said, now play "Guiding Light" in the housekeeping corner. A typical play session will begin with the children saying things like, "You're pregnant by him," "You run away with her," and "You get shot."

Clearly, television poses three serious threats to our children's character development: first, it exposes them to all manner of shoddy moral content (violence, law breaking, casual sex, infidelity, put-downs as humor, the idea that things make you happy), which potentially affects their perception of what is normal and appropriate human behavior; second, it further reduces, almost to the disappearing point, the family talks, games, festivities, and arguments through which children's socialization occurs and their values are formed; and third, it is an everpresent pleasure machine, an addictive escape mechanism eroding the self-discipline of students.

The Peer Group

Young people have always gravitated to age-alike groups. And peers have always offered the young important opportunities for moral growth: opportunities to interact on an equal footing, take the perspective of others, face and resolve conflict, be part of a team, and experience the special bonds and challenges of friendship. But in the past, adults were more likely to mediate peer influence: to keep track of whom kids were playing with and what they were doing, to discuss values or behaviors they were picking up from playmates that didn't square with family values, to intervene to help solve a problem when an adult's help was needed, to talk with teens about the dangers of running with the wrong crowd, and to put restrictions (e.g., "No unsupervised parties") on a youngster's freedom when that was necessary.

As that kind of parental mediation declined for many children, a new kind of peer group influence arose: stronger than ever before and less tempered by adult values such as responsibility, prudence, and self-control. Schools also had an unwitting hand in the "liberation" of the peer group by reducing demands on students' time outside of school. A Nation at Risk (1983), for example, reported that U.S. high school students, on the average, spend only 4.5 hours a week on homework. Many teenagers use their after-school freedom to work; an ABC television special, "Save Our Children, Save Our Schools" (1984), reported that 67 percent of U.S. high school students hold jobs. Jobs have meant money in the hands of teen-agers, who now support, almost by themselves, whole industries. In this context, a distinctive youth culture has emerged with its own music, magazines, clothing styles, diversions, and values. Those values are often orthogonal to the values of deferred gratification, self-discipline, and service to others that have been part of the nation's tradition--and part of the moral heritage we want to pass on to our children.

One could argue that the weakening of traditional socializing institutions and the rise of new forces such as the media and peer culture are producing a new kind of character in the young. The data on increasing youth crime and suicide suggest the impact of the new influences and altered institutions. There is other evidence, however, that adults are still powerful figures in the lives of most youth. The New York Times reported the results of a Columbia University research project which studied, over an eight-year period, 300 adolescents of all social class levels in urban, suburban, and rural settings. The principal finding, which held up across five different states, was that teenagers are more like their parents in their attitudes and values than they are like their peers (Collins, 1984). By itself, of course, that finding can be good news or bad news, depending on whether the values parents hold are ones worth emulating. But at the very least, this study offers hope. Despite all the competing influences, adults can still have a formative influence on the character of the young.

The present volume is written in the spirit of that hope. Our task has been to address three questions: How can schools (both public and private), the family, the community, the church, higher education, and even the mass media, contribute to the moral growth of the young? How can we educate so as to develop "full moral agency," that is, the kind of character that can translate moral knowledge and feeling into effective moral action? What obstacles confront us as we undertake such an enterprise?

The editors of, Morality, Moral Behavior, and Moral Development (Kurtines and Gewirtz, 1984), state that the current pluralism of psychological models of moral functioning reflects the ethical pluralism of the larger culture. It may no longer be possible, they suggest, to construct the kind of theoretical synthesis that inspires the support of a range of scholars. We were more optimistic when we undertook the present volume but soon found ourselves struggling with pluralism in our own ranks. We represent, for example, a variety of religious traditions. Ideologically, we run the gamut from neo-conservative to neo-Marxist. Educationally, we differ on whether the ideal school looks more like a participatory democracy, with students helping to decide rules and policies, or more like the traditional school arrangement where adults make the rules and delegate limited, carefully supervised authority roles to students (such as tutor, monitor, or team captain). Psychologically, most of us subscribe to the general notion of "moral development"--the idea of a developmental progression, with later levels being more mature than earlier ones--but this, too, is challenged. Wynne (Chapter 4) thinks that "formation" is a more accurate metaphor than development," and Beck (Chapter 8) rejects the notion of vertical development, arguing that adolescents are "as good at morals" as adults.

These theoretical differences underlie the wide range of character development strategies (teacher modeling, cooperative learning, direct moral instruction, moral discussion and debate, role playing, research on moral issues, teaching empathy through literature, study of the classics, self-esteem-building activities, reflective discussion of values such as friendship, work, responsibility and religion, "problem posing" the media, class meetings, cross-age tutoring, school assemblies, the schoolwide just community, and community service and guided reflection on its meaning) proposed and illustrated in the various chapters. Beneath all this diversity, however, is a set of shared assumptions. These assumptions, we think, are the unifying threads that bind the different chapters into a whole and differentiate that whole from other approaches to moral education. These shared assumptions are:

1. Moral values are not relative, in the sense of being purely subjective or arbitrary; rather they are objectively grounded in human nature and experience. For example: To be fair, honest, and caring in our relations with others is to act in ways that are consistent with, and enhancing of, our essential human dignity. To be unjust, deceitful, and cruel is to act in ways that violate our essential human dignity. Philosophers speak of fundamental values such as justice, honesty, and love as being inherently and objectively good because they flow from the "constitutive human good"--that which constitutes or defines our very humanity. These values are what make us human. When we are faithful to them, we are faithful to our human nature--to what enables us to live and grow as individuals and communities.

2. Moral action is not due simply to rational or cognitive factors, but springs from moral personality, which includes affective qualities as well as intellectual processes.

3. Religion, defined as a stance bearing on ultimacy (What makes life worth living? What is our ultimate purpose and destiny?), is rooted in our human nature, and the working out of a religious understanding provides a foundation and support structure for moral development.

4. Current models of moral development and values education are not sufficiently comprehensive to capture the full complexity of human character.

5. An adequate approach to moral education or character development must build on a comprehensive, integrative view of the moral agent, a view which does justice to the multi-dimensionality (thought, feeling, action) of the moral agent and its interactions with the moral environment; moreover, character development programs must include moral content (What values are worth holding?) as well as process (How should we reason about moral problems?) and be grounded in a non-relativistic stance toward the human good.

6. One task of the moral life is to hold competing values in balance. We are, in our own society and in much of the Western world, only beginning to recognize and recover from an imbalance created by a surge of "personalism" during the previous two decades. Philosophers (e.g., McLean, 1983) describe personalism as an ethos which gave rise to a "new subjectivity," a new respect and concern for the individual person. Existentialism, through both literature and philosophy, contributed to this personalist ethos by portraying persons as creating themselves through their freely chosen actions.

From this new personalism came many good things: the civil rights movement with its concern for the freedom and dignity of all persons, a new respect for the child as a person, a heightened valuing of personal conscience (reflected in religion and theology), and a deeper appreciation of the idea of human development and the importance of enabling each person to develop his or her full potential (reflected by the growth of developmental psychology and the human potential movement).

But from this same personalistic ethos came a host of other, less positive changes: hostility to authority and rules, the notion that morality is entirely subjective, a "look out for Number one" individualism, and a general weakening of personal and social commitments. Prior to personalism, McLean (1992) observes, people were likely to view themselves as part of something that defined them--a member of a family, a son of the church, a citizen of their country--part of a community, an ongoing tradition that limited freedom (because it carried obligations) but supplied roots and identity and social purpose. When personal freedom became the reigning value, we experienced ourselves as able to choose our identity, our life-style, our values, our destiny--and saw any constraining influence as an intolerable restriction of our rights and individuality.

Now the challenge facing many societies is to construct a new balance: to reintegrate the person into community, to restore responsibility to freedom, and to recruit moral choice in the service of social values and goals. The effort to create a new moral balance shows up in all sorts of ways: less permissive child rearing, greater discipline in the schools, restoration of a core curriculum in our universities (part of an effort to rebuild a common culture), and a recovery of the place of traditional values and tested wisdom in the moral life. Part of the task of reconstruction is to ensure that the new trends are not reactionary but integrative: combining the deepened appreciation of freedom and individuality that is the positive legacy of personalism with an understanding of how to exercise freedom so as to enhance rather than undermine moral growth and community.

AN INTEGRATIVE VIEW OF THE MORAL AGENT

The chapters in this volume share, in addition to the above assumptions, an "integrative view" of the person as moral agent. This view or

model (see Figure 1.l) holds, first of all, that human character involves the interplay of three components: knowing, affect, and action. Let us consider each of these in turn.

Knowing

Moral knowing begins with learning moral content: those values which constitute the moral heritage passed on from one generation to the next. Each new generation and each individual may alter or add to that heritage, but the heritage provides a foundation. In our own culture, that foundation typically includes values such as cooperation, courtesy, courage, fairness, honesty, loyalty, responsibility, religion, forgiveness, helpfulness, love, work, learning, democracy, freedom, equality, and respect (including respect for self, others, animals, property, and the environment). "Knowing" a value also means knowing what behavior it requires in concrete situations. What does "love" mean in terms of how you treat your little brother or sister? What does "respect" tell you to do when someone passes on information that is damaging to another person's reputation? What does it mean to be "helpful" when thereis someone new in your class who doesn't know his or her way around and doesn't have any friends?

Moral knowing includes moral reasoning. Reasoning asks, "What are worthwhile values, ones that are for our good and the good of our fellows? Why are some values and their derivative actions good, and others bad? Why is it important to keep a promise? Help around the house? Share what you have with those in need? Why is it wrong to cheat on a test? Shoplift from a store? Lie to your parents?" Moral reasoning also seeks to formulate principles (e.g., the Golden Rule, "Respect the rights and worth of all persons") that help us to establish a hierarchy of values and decide what to do when values conflict. What principle should guide the eleven-year old (Lickona, Chapter 7) whose friends take a package from someone's mailbox and then slough off the objection that "that's stealing"? What did loyalty and justice require of a German citizen under the Third Reich? Of a U.S. soldier ordered to shoot Vietnamese civilians at My Lai? What principles should have guided Truman when he faced the decision of whether to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima?

Moral knowing also includes cognitive strategies for making decisions in a systematic way. Your best friend in high school confides to you that she has been raped but is not sure whether to report it. What should you do? What are the alternatives? The likely consequences of each alternative? The moral values or principles involved? What course of action would most likely maximize the good consequences, minimize the bad, and still be faithful to the important moral values or principles at stake?

Moral knowing, especially in complex matters, also means becoming informed: trying to find out what's true before you decide what's right. Consider, for example, the continuing proposal, despite the demise of the Soviet Union, that the United States spend billions of dollars to build an outer-space "Star Wars" defense against the possibility of Soviet attack by intercontinental ballistic missiles. Would such a defense really work? It is any longer needed? Does the threat of nuclear war launched by, say, a third-world power warrant such an expenditure? What alternative defense systems are available and what is their likely effectiveness? If Star Wars is funded, what does that do to the national debt and the country's ability to finance domestic programs such as reformed health care and repair of its infrastructure.

Moral knowing also depends, in a very important way, on moral imagination. Making a good moral decision--whether about how to help a raped teenager or how to prevent a nuclear war--requires that we project ourselves imaginatively into the situation, into the roles of the parties affected. Choosing the best course of action is only partly a matter of having the facts; it is also a matter of imagining what consequences might occur from this or that decision, and how it would be actually to experience those consequences. "Imagination," writes Elizabeth Simpson (1976), "invests meaning and saliency in persons and events" (p. 167). In Shaw's St. Joan, Simpson observes, "an elderly priest blames the repetition of evil in generation after generation on the failure of imagination; he himself had to actually see the young girl burned to realize the enormity of the act. He asks, `Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination'?" (Simpson, 1976, p. 167).

Finally, there is the quality of good judgment--what Aristotle called "practical wisdom"--that is indispensable to mature moral knowing. Philosopher Jon Moline (1982), proposing good judgment as a central goal of character education, argues, "If our students learn to be judicious or wise, it is likely that in the long run they will arrive at right answers" when they face hard moral problems (p. 197). We know, Moline says, what the qualities of wise judgment are: hearing both sides; avoiding hasty decisions whenever possible; seeking advice in decision making; considering how others have treated equivalent problems; trying to moderate the pressures of self-interest; giving special weight to the opinions of more experienced persons. As educators, Moline says, "We can describe such judicious traits to students, point out role models who have displayed them, and ask them to act in an equivalent fashion" (p. 198). We can also have young people practice being judicious when they make personal and group decisions. But however we do it, we should make the cultivation of a judicious manner of judgment a basic objective of moral education.

Knowing moral values and what they require of us, reasoning about why such values are important and good (and how they differ from values which are not good), formulating moral principles to handle value conflict, systematic decision making, moral imagination, and judicious judgment--these are the elements we see as constituting moral knowing. All must have our attention if we wish to educate for the full development of the cognitive side of moral agency.

Affect

Moral affect is broadly defined to include the whole range of factors, often neglected in discussions of moral education, that constitute the affective or emotional side of our morality. These affective factors are usually linked in some way to cognition but clearly go beyond it.

How deeply do we hold the values we say we hold? Do they lie at the center--or the edge--of our consciousness and personality? A half-century ago, McDougall (1936) argued that moral ideals are powerless unless they are rooted in a moral self. Elaborating on that idea, Blasi (1984) observes that for many people, being a just or honest or caring person is not part of the "essential self" that comprises their identity; hence those values are not powerful regulators of their behavior. But if, on the other hand, I do experience justice, honesty, or compassion as essential to my identity, then that identity becomes a strong motive for moral action consistent with those values. To act otherwise would be to violate my sense of who I am.

Do we love the good? In education for virtue, Kilpatrick (1983) points out, "The heart is trained as well as the mind, so that the virtuous person learns not only to distinguish between good and evil but to love the one and hate the other" (p. 112). That is why wise teachers have always looked to literature as a way to teach a sense of right and wrong. We can talk to children in abstract terms about deceit and hatred and loyalty and love, but when they come face to face with those qualities enfleshed in unforgettable characters, like the Wicked White Witch and the great and gentle Asian in C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia (1970), they feel repelled by the evil and drawn, irresistibly, to the good.

How committed are we to living the moral life? Are we willing to do the right when it carries a cost? Does our conscience bother us (and how much?) when we betray a principle or fall short of an ideal? Do we have the capacity to feel the kind of constructive guilt that impels us to make amends and strive to do better? Do we have the ability to enter emphatically into another's suffering, the willingness to make ourselves vulnerable to another's pain?

Moral identity, attraction to the good, commitment, conscience, empathy--all these are part of the affective side of our moral selves. One could reasonably argue that these factors, taken together, constitute the larger part of our individual moral personalities. These affective factors, we submit, also constitute the essential bridge between moral knowing and moral action. Their presence or absence explains why some people practice their moral principles and others do not. Hence moral education which is merely intellectual--which touches the mind but not the heart--misses a core component of character.

Action

Moral action is the component of moral agency which brings knowing and affect to fruition. Moral action has three components: will, competence, and habit.

Will is what mobilizes our moral energy--the energy both to think through a problem and weigh choices and to act once the choice is clear. Will is what enables us to overcome--to press through--inertia, anxiety, pride, or self-interest, to do what we know and feel is right.

Competence is also crucial. Good will alone will not ensure effective moral action. To solve a conflict fairly, for example, we need skills of listening, communicating our view, and finding a middle ground. To aid a person in distress, we need to be able to conceive and execute a plan of action. Staub (1979), for example, found that children who had role-played a series of situations in which one child helped another were subsequently more likely than children without such experience to investigate a distress cry from another room. Similarly, Huston and Korte (1976) report that "people who are capable of effective intervention and who feel competent to deal with emergencies are more likely than others to help" (p. 281). These findings suggest that moral competence may benefit from a general feeling of effectiveness as well as specific skills.

Finally, moral action, in many situations, also benefits from habit. Aristotle believed that morally good actions arise from a steady state of character, a deeply rooted disposition to respond to situations in certain ways. People who have good character, as Bennett (1980) points out, "act truthfully, loyally, bravely, kindly, fairly without being much tempted by the opposite course" (p. 130). Often they do not even think consciously about "the right choice." They are good by force of habit.

Habit begins in freedom, of course--with consciously made decisions to do the kind, courteous, or fair deed. An important part of our moral training, then, is developing good habits through repeated choices, habits that will serve us well not only when the going is easy but also when we are pressured, tired, or tempted. To recognize the role of habit in the moral life is to acknowledge what Aristotle argued: that virtue must be practiced, not merely known. The implication of that principle is clear: Character education, wherever it occurs, must provide many and varied opportunities for young people to act--to live out their developing values and ideals, and to reflect on what they value in light of their lived moral experience.

The three components of moral agency--knowing, affect, and action--obviously do not always work together. We may think that we should give more money to charity or more time to our children, but not care enough to do so; we may feel we have wronged a colleague or subordinate but be too proud to apologize; we may be distressed about a deteriorating situation in our marriage but lack the imagination or will to effect an improvement. But in any situation, full moral agency involves a unity of knowing (whether conscious or not), affect, and action.

AN EXAMPLE OF FULL MORAL AGENCY

As a brief example of fully functioning moral agency, we would offer an Associated Press story that appeared one winter on the front pages of many U.S. newspapers. The article reported an incident that happened on a downtown street corner in St. Paul, Minnesota, during near zero weather. As a city bus stopped at the corner to pick up passengers, a middle-aged woman got on. Despite the bitter cold, she wore only a thin, tattered coat, no shoes, and socks that were nearly worn through. As she put her coins in the meter, a 14-year-old boy got up from his seat, walked to the front of the bus, and handed the woman his shoes. "Here, lady," he said, "you need these more than I do." According to the bus driver who phoned in the incident, the woman accepted the shoes, and began to cry.

A simple act of human kindness, one person responding to another's need. And yet contained in that act, we believe, are all three components of moral agency. This young man saw a human need and made a judgment that he should respond. Underlying that judgment, it seems safe to say, was the value of helping, and moral imagination enough to appreciate what it must have felt like to be out in a cold wave without warm clothing or shoes. It seems equally clear that the boy was touched by the woman's condition and felt impelled to act--affective responses that suggest a moral personality in which caring lies at the core. Finally, this 14-year-old took action. Acting in this situation didn't require any special skill but surely sprang from the virtue of helping, from a habit of responding to others' needs. One can imagine that there were many people on the bus who saw the woman's need and even felt compassion for her, but lacking a strong disposition to act (at least in this public situation), they failed to take the initiative to help.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MORAL AGENT

The fact that a 14-year-old boy helped the woman on the bus while many adults did not challenges facile generalizations about "moral development." One could offer other examples of how the moral responses of children often seem more direct and honest, more immediately empathic, and less inhibited by social roles than the moral responses of their elders.

Acknowledging that, we would nonetheless assert that human persons, at least under favorable conditions, do on the whole develop--toward a greater maturity, a fuller realization of their humanity. It is evident that people can and do develop physically, intellectually, socially, and spiritually. Our model holds that they develop morally, too. (Even Beck, who in Chapter 8 challenges conventional assumptions about development, states that development occurs within the different periods of life.) Moral development has been variously described by Piaget (1932), Erikson (1961), Kohlberg (1981, 1984), Damon (1977), Selman (1980), Gilligan (1982), Perry (1970), and Knowles (1992). Some of these accounts have focused on changes in the structure of moral knowing; others have addressed affective or behavioral aspects of morality, such as caring, identity, virtue, and commitment. Considered together, these various accounts offer persuasive evidence that people do in fact grow morally: toward greater ability to take and coordinate social perspectives, to balance the needs of self and others, to imagine fully the situation of others, to distinguish values which advance the human good from those that do not, to construct moral principles, to make moral decisions that are based on principle rather than self-interest or social pressure, to judge judiciously, to make and sustain commitments, to deal with moral ambiguity and uncertainty, to be aware of one's own moral shortcomings, and to function in an integrated way that seeks to bring conduct under the consistent dominion of one's moral ideals.

All of this we might call "vertical development"--the term which developmentalists use to describe growth toward more differentiated, more integrated. more comprehensive ways of understanding and relating to the world. In Kohlberg's (1984) scheme, for example, vertical development proceeds from preconventional to conventional to postconventional or principled morality. But our model asserts that there is another kind of development which is at least as important as vertical development, and that is horizontal development.

Horizontal development is the extension or application of a person's most mature capacities over a wider and wider range of life situations. When horizontal development is weak, a child may say in a moral discussion that "two wrongs don't make a right" but then practice eye-for-an eye vengeance on the playground. An adult may rail against dishonesty and corruption among politicians but use a different standard when filling out his own income tax. When horizontal development is weak, we may have a moral capacity--moral reasoning, for example--but seldom use it. A common moral failure is moral blindness--the failure to see the moral dimension of situations and ask moral questions. Moral education for horizontal development seeks to develop persons who see the world through a moral lens, persons for whom it is second nature to stop and think, "Is this right?''

If we take the idea of vertical development seriously, we will provide educational experiences of increasing variety and complexity, roles and responsibilities that meet young people at the cutting edge of their development and challenge them further. Elementary school students, for example, can be challenged by social roles, such as helping a classmate with his math, tutoring a child from a younger grade, leading a class meeting on how to reduce put-downs, or serving on a student council to prevent school vandalism. If we take the idea of horizontal development seriously, our commitment to fostering character will be wide as well as deep. In a school it would show up across the board: in the curriculum (in how many subjects do ethical questions get raised?); in instructional methods (do students work together as well as alone? do they reason and discuss as well as listen?); in classroom and school management (do students share responsibility for creating a good learning environment and solving problems that arise?); and in school relations at all levels (is there a whole-school climate of fairness and cooperation?).

Finally, our model of the moral agent says what we take to be obvious: Character develops in and through human community. We grow through membership. Roles to play, perspectives to consider, conflicts to resolve, commitments to fulfill, relationships to care about, responsibilities to juggle--these are the social matrix in which we live and have our moral being. Moreover, the relationship between the individual and community is best conceived not as one-directional (with the social environment shaping the person) but bi-directional: interactive, dynamic, one influencing the other. Translated into character education, this emphasis on community means that the family, the school, the church, the university must be human communities--interactive, participatory, morally authoritative but not authoritarian, making demands, providing support, challenging and helping youth to work together, think together, and take the risk and responsibility of relationships. This kind of participation in community provides obvious opportunities for intellectual growth, but it provides something deeper, too. When we interact with others in positive ways, we become attached to them, learn to value them--and eventually all people--as persons of worth and dignity, and come to know and feel from within our essential interdependence and responsibility for each other.

The chapters that follow vary in the attention they give to the different aspects of the moral agent, but all share the general model just described. Chapters are grouped in four sections. Part 1 of the book continues the context setting we have begun here. Wynne (Chapter 2) presents long-term empirical evidence of downward trends in youth character; Johnson (Chapter 3) tells us that if we wish to form character, we must analyze and reckon with the values of a relativistic and intensely pluralistic culture which will be the backdrop for whatever efforts we undertake.

Part II, on the school, offers three views of how public schools can best realize their potential as agents of character development. Wynne (Chapter 4) summons schools to avoid a focus on narrow cognitive learning and individualistic concerns and to pursue instead "a vital collective life." Prakash (Chapter 5) encourages communities and their public schools to persist in the struggle to find genuine moral consensus in the midst of pluralism and to provide a model to students of how to preserve mutual respect while addressing differences. Power (Chapter 6) proposes the democratic "just community" as a workable way to generate moral consensus and felt community within the high school and to overcome the privatism fostered by big-school bureaucracy.

Part III centers on the classroom. Lickona (Chapter 7) describes an approach, scaled to the world of the elementary school child, that combines community building, cooperative learning, moral reflection, and participatory decision making. Beck (Chapter 8) proposes a junior high school pedagogy which is "open but not neutral"--seeking to explore values (concern for the needs of self, friendship, family, school) in a "joint inquiry" with students while avoiding the fallacy that any judgment is as good as any other. Starratt (Chapter 9) illustrates ten teaching principles, including the call to recognize and develop our talents as "gifts for the community," principles which he finds present in the "intuitive practice" of effective moral educators in the high school classroom.

Part IV looks beyond the school. Lickona (Chapter 10) reminds us that morality begins at home, in the life of the family, and describes what parents can do to capitalize on the special opportunities they have to develop children's character. Hennessy (Chapter 11), while affirming the value of secular moral education in the pubic school, argues that religious perspectives offer a deeper foundation because they "deal with the deeper aspects of our nature, our quest for the transcendental, for the will of God." Sullivan (Chapter 12) calls attention to the rise of television as a "moral miseducator," which feeds the young "the myths of a commodity culture"; to combat its pervasive influence, he says, we must teach people to critique actively, not passively consume, media images and values. Nicgorski (Chapter 13) challenges colleges and universities to return to their task of fostering ethical vision among their students, including those who will lead society and shape its moral quality. Ryan (Chapter 14) addresses a particular and crucial task of the college: the preparation of teachers who themselves model good character and have the commitment and skills to foster it in the young. Finally, Rusnak, Farrelly and Burrett (Chapter 15) describe integrated character education as it is now beiny implemented in teacher education at Duquesne University and at a number of Pittsburgh schools working with Duquesne's new Center for Character Education.

Emile Durkheim (1961), the great French sociologist, wrote in the earlier part of this century words that still speak to our condition:

Society must have before it an ideal toward which it reaches. It must have some good to achieve, an original contribution to bring to . . . mankind. When individual activity does not know where to take hold, it turns against itself. When the moral forces of society remain unemployed, when they are not engaged in some work to accomplish, they deviate from their moral sense and are used up in a morbid and harmful manner (pp. 12-14).

Whether the moral forces of society are engaged in constructive work or turned toward destructive ends is not a matter of chance. We can influence the character of society by influencing the character of the young. In our own age, widespread character education--both inside and outside of school--is not, to paraphrase Chesterton, an idea that has been tried and found wanting but one which has not been truly tried. The time has come to take up the challenge.

Boston University State University of New York

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McLean, G. Philosophical Foundations for Moral Education and Character Development: Act and Agent. Washington, D.C.: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1992².

Menninger, K. Whatever Became of Sin? New York: Hawthorn Books, 1973.

Minnich, H. C. Old Favorites from the McGuffey Readers. New York: American Book Co.. 1936.

Moline, J. Classical ideas about moral education. In E. Wynne (ed.). Character Policy. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America , 1982, pp. 197-203.

A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform. A report by the National Commission on Excellence in Education. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983.

Perry, W.G., Jr. Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1970.

Piaget, J. The Moral Judgment of the Child. New York: Free Press, 1965 (First published in English, London: Kegan Paul, 1932).

Research and Forecasts, Inc. The Connecticut Mutual Life Report on American Values in the 8Os: The Impact of Belief. Hartford, Conn.: Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Co., 1981.

Save our children, save our schools. ABC Television Special, October 4, 1981.

Selman, R. The Growth of Interpersonal Understanding. New York: Academic Press, 1980.

Simpson, E. A holistic approach to moral development and behavior. In T. Lickona (Ed.), Moral Development and Behavior. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1976, pp. 159-70.

Staug, E. Positive Social Behavior and Morality, vol. 2: Socialization and Development. New York: Academic Press, 1979.

Stein, B.J. TV: A religious wasteland. Originally published in Wall Street Journal, 1985. Reprinted in Focus on the Family, April 1985, p. 5.

Television and Behavior: Ten Years of Scientific Progress. A report of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Rockville, Md.: National Institute of Mental Health, 1982.

U.S. News & World Report (TV's "disastrous" impact on children: Interview with Neil Postman), January 19, 1981, pp. 43-45.

The word "character" is derived from a Greek word meaning "to mark," or "scratch." The derivation suggests the visible nature of the traits which comprise a person's character and this element of visibility is a useful starting point for considering the matter of trends in U.S. youth character.

WHY VISIBILITY

As many of us recognize, the question of what constitutes "good character" is properly a subject of some controversy. Such controversy is not purely abstract. It can finally determine the framework of many practical problems, such as how to identify good character, how to measure it, and even how to manage schools, classrooms, and other youth-shaping entities so as to generate good character in the young. But, if we accept the concept of the visibility of character as a starting point, a certain foundation is established: We should be able to look around us and see whether children and youths display good character traits. Conversely, we should be reluctant to infer the existence of good character from the existence of internal states of mind.

Of course, the preceding discussion will lead us to recall some of the themes of behavioristic psychology. This approach stressed the study of observable conduct as the basic unit of psychological analysis. And that parallel has some logic. However, the concern with observable traits has a far more ancient background than behaviorism. Many institutions and character-oriented traditions--ranging from the Boy Scouts to Poor Richard and the Ten Commandments have stressed the importance of right conduct. Conversely, these same traditions have often depreciated the significance of words without deeds; there are a number of benefits to the focus on conduct as the essence of character. These benefits should be briefly mentioned.

Conduct is visible, and can often be easily observed. And it is important that character traits be observable. We can only help try to form the character of the young if we have an efficient form of feedback. Thus, if we see someone steal (or "catch" them), we become able to rebuke them, punish them, or take other action. Or. if they are kind, we can thank them. Again, it is fairly easy to teach people to identify many forms of conduct; it is far harder to develop systems so different people may reach common conclusions as to someone's state of mind. But, without such common conclusions, people--like teachers in a school--cannot work together to form the character of others. These practical factors have much to do with the widespread acceptance of the traditional conduct approach to character. Indeed. the recent academic interest on states of mind as a main aspect of character development is probably partly due to the development of psychological instruments and techniques which allegedly accurately portray the state of mind of subjects. But, even assuming that such measures are valid, they hardly provide as expeditious feedback as can be generated by simply looking to see if students in a school are displaying courtesy to adults (and each other), or are vandalizing bathrooms.

Another relevant aspect of visibility is the traditional concept of "scandal." Formerly, scandal meant undesirable conduct which might tempt others to act likewise, or which might place a public institution into disrepute. It suggested the theme of bad example. The concept of scandal implied that special constraints should be applied to visible conduct--as compared with secret conduct, or undisclosed states of mind. The reality was that the social nature of potentially scandalous conduct could have more grave ramifications than private disorder. Thus it needs more careful monitoring. Finally, we must realistically consider that the good or bad character of others assumes most importance to us when it becomes visible. Virtuous or evil thoughts which are not acted on have only academic interest to most of us. In our world, time and energy are usually scarce resources. Therefore, it is understandable that many able and responsible people will not become concerned about the character of others until it is displayed through evident conduct.

It should be emphasized that the visible is not all. Any serious concern with character has to go beyond a naive behaviorism. Thus, traditional character building approaches were often also concerned with states of mind, and recognized that internal factors can significantly affect conduct. But, when traditional systems of character-building tried to affect the state of mind of the young, they relied largely on didactic techniques, exemplary literature, and the study of role models. More introspective techniques, and exegetical analyses were reserved for persons whose virtuous conduct had already been demonstrated by the course of events. Thus, the Hindus encouraged mature adults, who had raised families, to abandon their homes and go into the forests or on the road, in a quest for deep knowledge; Aristotle implied that what he called political science would be taught only to persons over forty; and the formation processes of Catholic religious orders did not bring philosophy into play until the initiates had passed through lengthy trials as a novice.

Despite the traditional and practical merits of the visible conduct approach, some additional remarks are necessary regarding its use as a concept for looking at the character of the young. It is important to remember that words themselves constitute a form of conduct. Politeness, telling the truth in the face of temptation, verbally confronting liars or engaging in lying, are all verbal acts. Such acts constitute conduct. In fact, words often lead to more conduct--accepting justified punishment, withstanding coercion, or accompanying solicitous words with appropriate deeds. Finally, some people may fail to meet the obligations generated by their own public words. But, even where there is a gap between public words and deeds, the culpable party--who has orally taken a stand--has made himself vulnerable to various modes of retaliation. And so we generally recognized that certain responsibilities are tacitly generated by words; and acts which create responsibilities have ramifications for character development.

In sum, character is conduct, and the history of U.S. youth conduct is a form of the history of U.S. youth character. Now, there is a popular conception that contemporary youths are displaying especially poor character. For instance, "pupil discipline" was rated the top educational problem in the nation in 14 of the 15 annual Gallup polls of public opinion about education. (Interestingly enough, in the last poll, the second-rated problem was pupil drug use.) And most of us have heard a variety of "horror stories"--either first hand, or in the media--about delinquency and disorder among our young, especially around schools. But opinion polls and occasional anecdotes do not provide the sort of historical, comparative, long-term, hard data that are desirable for any serious discussion about patterns of youth conduct. And only with such data can we have an adequate base for analyzing our youth situation. For, as Lincoln said, in the opening sentence of his "House Divided" speech, in 1858, "If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could know what to do and how to do it."

Fortunately, a considerable body of reliable, long-term information about U.S. youth conduct is available. Much of this information is found in the national mortality tables. These tables annually disclose national rates of death by age and sex, for various specified causes. In a modern industrial country, such as the United States, we can assume that almost all deaths are noted and tabulated. Of course, there will be occasional exceptions to this principle, but the number of such exceptions is likely to be small. The rates are calculated in numbers of deaths per 100,000 persons in the age group; in other words, year-to-year comparisons can be made even though the absolute numbers of persons has changed over time.

HOMICIDE STATISTICS

We have available long-term trend data about rates of death by homicide for white males and females, between 15-24, from 1914 to 1983 (the year most recently available). The data disclose that the rate of male youth death by homicide is: (1) slightly below the highest point since we began compiling national statistics in 1914 (the high point was in 1980), (2) in 1980, it was 203 percent: higher than the low of 1951, and (3) in 1980, it was 22 percent higher than the previous high years of the early l930s. The precise pattern of these changes is presented in Figure 2.1^.1

The data discussed below refers only to whites. This system of tabulation was adopted in this presentation to focus on the conduct patterns of the majority population--the group least affected by poverty and racial discrimination. Presumably, this advantaged group would be less inclined to display character problems.

The death certificates of the homicide victims do not contain information about the murderers. Thus, we do not have details about who the people are committing these murders. However, the majority of murders are committed by persons familiar with the victim, and it seems likely that this applies to the young. Thus, the increase in youths' deaths by homicide represents a rise in murderous conduct by young persons. Surely :his is a sign of character decline. We might also speculate that many homicides of young persons represent disorderly acts affecting both the murderer and the victim, for example, the murderer and "murdered" were drinking together, or brawling. This is not to excuse the murderer. Still it suggests that youth murders often involve acts of collective disorder, as compared with the simple victimization of helpless innocents. The rate of increase in homicide for young whites (ages 15-24) is higher than that for all whites as a group. (Incidentally, the rate of increase in the homicide rate for young white females is nearly the same as that for young males, but the female homicide rate has started from a much lower base point). Although we lack accurate national statistics about the pre-1914 homicide rates, it is notorious that crimes such as homicide are often related to trends such as urbanization. Thus, we may infer that the 1980 rate for young whites is at the highest point since the first European white settlements in this country in 1607.

SUICIDE STATISTICS

Another important youth mortality trend is disclosed in the statistics about youth rates of death from suicide. These data, in Figure 2.2. include ail white males and females between the ages of 15-24, from 1914 to 1982 (the most recent year available).² They disclose that the rate of white male youth death by suicide is (1) near the highest point since we began compiling national statistics in 1914, and possibly at the highest point since 1607, (2) in 1977, it was 126 percent higher than the previous low year of 1944, and (3) in 1977, it was 78 percent higher than the previous high year of 1914. Unlike the homicide data--where both the youth and adult rates have tended to rise--the youth suicide rates have been rising while the adult rates have remained relatively stable.

Increased rates of death by suicide are a measure of character changes. Theoretically one cannot simply say that all young persons who commit suicide have serious character defects. One can imagine circumstances in which suicide is a rational and appropriate response by someone of strong character to some extraordinarily distressing circumstances, for example, to avoid a slow, painful death through cancer, or to shield another person from an intense pain. However, common sense indicates that there has been no notable increase in the levels of physical pain visited on our young, nor have our young been increasingly shouldered with enormous responsibilities or duties, for example, supporting their younger siblings. The more plausible conclusion implied by the suicide data is that [insert chart 2.2] contemporary young persons have essentially become less adept at handling the moderate stress incidental to social life. In other words, the rising rates of youth suicide undoubtedly represent a terrible tragedy. But it would be unrealistic to conclude that this increase is due to a vast increase in powerful, crushing external demands ,placed on adolescents, for example, extraordinary homework obligations, arduous household chores. The changes in the adolescent suicide rate are probably more due to changes in the psyches of successive cohorts of youths involved, as compared with more strenuous requirements for conformity placed on persons with relatively resilient psyches. Youth character has apparently become more fragile and less resistant to hardship.

OUT OF WEDLOCK BIRTHS

One other important official national statistic deserves attention: the rate of out-of-wedlock births. This rate is expressed in terms of the number of out-of-wedlock births for each 1,000 unmarried females in the age group. The first year for which national data are available (broken down by race and age) is 1940. Between 1940 and 1987, the rates of out-of-wedlock births for white females between the ages of 15-19 increased 476 percent. This shift is also portrayed in Figure 2.3.³ The data for the most recent year, 1983, show the highest rate of adolescent out-of-wedlock births tabulated so far. Although the rates for white adolescents and all whites has also risen, the adolescent rate has increased at a far faster pace.

In considering the changes in conduct portrayed in out-of-wedlock births, it is useful to realize that the years from 1940 to 1983 were a period during which increasing anti-birth resources were made available to young females. New contraceptives and techniques were developed, means of distribution of these developments were elaborated, sex education courses were adopted in schools, and abortion was made more widely available. Many observers, if they were informed only about the anti-pregnancy and anti-birth activities, would probably assume that the rates of out-of-wedlock births would have tended to decline among the young. Those observers would be wrong. Instead of declining, the rate of out-of-wedlock births increased to probably the highest point in our history. Evidently the social forces making for the increases in out-of-wedlock births are peculiarly powerful.

PREMARITAL SEX

A synthesis of the research on the rates of engagement of adolescents in sexual intercourse is informative, even though the studies involved do not use official statistics. The synthesis (see Figure 2.4} covered 18 separate studies (by different researchers) of different groups of young persons.⁴ The studies were conducted for different periods of time between 1958 and 1976. Not all of the respondents were unmarried. However, given the comparatively young age of the respondents involved (the oldest of them were college undergraduates), it is likely that either (1) the great bulk of them were unmarried, and/or (2) that the proportion of married respondents probably stayed constant between the first and follow-up surveys. The surveys disclose a high pattern of overall consistency: There was a steady increase in the proportion of youths who engage in premarital sex.

The connection between the increases in both out-of-wedlock births and premarital intercourse is self-evident. And the character implications of the out-of wedlock births are also clear. The typical perspective is that it is undesirable for an unmarried female to bear a child (or a male to father such a child), since a one-parent family is not an ideal foundation for child rearing. This perspective is especially valid with regard to adolescent mothers. In other words, unmarried female adolescents who become pregnant, and males who cause such pregnancies, are revealing serious character defects. They are not accepting personal responsibility for the foreseeable outcomes of their voluntary conduct.

In the abstract, the moral (or character-related) implications of premarital intercourse among adolescents may seem a more complex issue in our relatively permissive era. However, the parallels between rising out-of-wedlock birth and increasing premarital intercourse suggest there is much merit to even the traditional secular wisdom--that young persons are usually not able to handle the profound implications of premarital sex. Thus, the contemporary evidence argues for greater emphasis on youth premarital

abstinence: In general, it is wiser for unmarried young people to say No, both in their individual self-interest, and in the interest of potential out-of-wedlock children. And such a pro-No approach is inherent in the concept of good character development. Good character often is identified with the themes of self-denial and deferred gratification.

ILLEGAL DRUG USE

The illegal use of drugs and alcohol by adolescents is another important character-related trend to consider. Naturally. statistics about such conduct are not part of official records. But various measures are available.

One good resource is local surveys, anonymously asking students or other youths about their patterns of drug use. The San Mateo (Calif.) Department of Public Health conducted such annual surveys among the students in county schools from 1968 to 1977. Almost all of the students covered in the survey are white. To provide an adequate perspective on developments in the county, two tables are presented. Table 2.1 deals with marijuana use among either male or female students between the ages of approximately 12 and 17. (NA means no statistics are available.) Of course, there is a wide range in the frequency of marijuana use. Still, many of the students use it quite regularly; in 1977. 23.3 percent of :he students covered by the survey reported that they used the drug 50 or more times a year.⁵

Table 2.2 deals with a different category of San Mateo students--the "non-users." These are defined as students who have not used either alcohol, amphetamines, LSD, marijuana or tobacco during the past year. As we can see, the proportion of non-users has steadily declined, especially among lower-age groups and females. The lower half of Table 2.2 covers students who report "no significant use" during the past year--and the table and questionnaire precisely define what is meant by "significant use." As we can see, over the nine years covered, the proportion of those from all grades and both sexes reporting no significant use declined from 48.8 percent to 37.1 percent.⁶

California may be termed an untypical state, and San Mateo, an affluent suburban area, may be especially prone to drug problems. And the data stop in 1977. Because of these potential statistical deficiencies, it is also important to consider the trends in youth drug and alcohol use in a wider perspective. One means of acquiring such perspective is a series of surveys of an anonymous national sample of the high school graduating classes from 1975 to 1982.⁷

The figures presented are not quite as high as those from San Mateo--63 percent of the San Mateo seniors used marijuana in 1977, while the national figure for that year was 51 percent. Still, the San Mateo and national trends display many parallels. We should also recognize that trends in adolescent drug use are somewhat variable. Thus, the national survey revealed that reported use of hallucinogens (e.g., PCP, LSD) declined from

* Cumulative levels or use reported by junior and senior high school students, 1968-1977, by school grade and sex of respondent, specific rates per hundred responses.

16.3 percent in 1975 to 10.3 percent in 1982, while the use of cocaine rose from 9 percent in 1975 to 17.3 percent in 1985. But despite these variations, the statistics only disclose the relative stabilization of adolescent drug use at historically high levels. It is true that the statistics do not go back beyond 1975, but a simple inquiry can demonstrate the nature of the long-term changes regarding drugs and the young. Just ask any adults over forty whether it was possible or easy for them to purchase marijuana or cocaine when they were high school seniors. Eighty-five percent of the 1985 class reported that it was "fairly easy," or "very easy" for them to get marijuana; the comparable figure for cocaine was 4.8 percent. One can be confident that the comparable figures for the period before 1959 were far lower.

The character-related implications of this increased youth drug and alcohol use are clear. Persons using drugs are comparatively disengaged from the realities around them. But good character is developed, and applied, through engagement. Furthermore, drug use is essentially a way of pursuing immediate gratification, by means of escaping reality, and withdrawing into a private fantasy world. Indeed, as Nicgorski and Ellrod have pointed out, the Aristotelian tradition of ethics gives great emphasis to the importance of habits such as self-discipline for maintaining character. We have to manage ourselves so as to stay engaged with events around us. Drug and alcohol use also constitute illegal conduct, per se--and, indeed, many youths engaged in such usage also encourage others to become violators, or even to further and sell illegal substances to other youths. Finally, it is notorious that many irresponsible and criminal acts are committed by youths under the influence of drugs and alcohol. We can thus conclude that the long-term rise in youth drug use represents an objective decline in youth character.

DELINQUENT CONDUCT

The adolescent crime rate is also an indicator of youth character. Statistics about changes in the levels of crime must be considered with caution. It is notorious that changes in reported crime rates may be attributed to other causes than a real increase in actual crimes. For example, the changes may be partly due to changes in police arrest or tabulation policies. Still, long-term trend data and statistics making comparison among different age groups can be instructive. Figure 2.6 presents such data for all persons (including blacks) for the years 1932 to 1983 (the most recent year available) and for the specified age groups.⁸ The statistics have been weighted to allow for shifts in age group size.

It is evident that these rates have increased remarkably, especially for younger groups over the years portrayed. For instance, between 1930 and about 1982 the rate for the group age 26 and over increased 13-fold, the rate for the group ages 18-24 increased 79-fold, and the rate for the age groups under 18 increased 100-fold. Undoubtedly, these increases reflect the effects of a variety of trends, for example, better record collection, more formalized

police procedures. But it is noteworthy that the greater rates of increase occurred in younger age groups.

Apropos of delinquency, it is also pertinent to consider information about changes in students' conduct in and around schools, since these institutions are our most important youth socialization institution. Understandably, developing precise information about such trends is difficult; changes in patterns of conduct in individual schools over the years may be just as much a function of neighborhood changes as compared with changes in conduct among students from approximately similar family backgrounds. Still, even when this qualification is accepted, there are a variety of data sources which permit us to make some generalizations about student conduct trends on a national basis. Rubel, who has tried to most carefully analyze these statistics and derive trends, concluded that the level of in-school disorder that had evolved (by 1977) was at the highest point in the twentieth century.⁹

One researcher in the field of school discipline told me the following anecdote to portray the situation. During 1982, he was walking through the halls of a high school in a large Eastern city, accompanied by the chief of security forces for that school district. My friend noticed a student smoking a marijuana cigarette. He said to the chief. "You saw that. Aren't you going to do anything about it? There's one of your guards standing right over there." The chief replied, "What do you recommend I do? Don't you realize that my staff has to save their energies for more important problems?"

TEST SCORES

Another national development reflecting on youth character that should be considered is the long-term decline in the levels of measured cognitive learning in students. Of course, cognitive knowledge, per se, is not

synonymous with good character. But acquiring such knowledge is often associated with character traits, such as application and persistence. Thus,

significant decline in measured knowledge might be interpreted to signify a change in the character traits possessed by successive cohorts of youths. The test score decline can be portrayed through a variety of measures. First, there are the changes of the scores attained by test takers on the Scholastic Aptitude Test. That test is a standardized written objective examination administered annually to a high proportion of college oriented high school seniors. The test score patterns in this test between 1963 and 1985 are outlined in Figure 2.7.¹⁰

There are also a variety of other aptitude tests. Some are taken by college seniors interested in post-collegiate academic work, while others are taken by high school seniors in lieu of the scholastic Aptitude Test. Waters and Lawrence calculated the annual average rates of score decline (or increase) for these tests for the years for which national data are available. Their calculations for these tests (including the SAT) are presented in Figure 2.8.¹¹

Figure 2.8 Aptitude Measures. Vertical Axis: mean change per year. Horizontal axis: mean proportions of a standard deviation per year

[insert chart 2.8]

The scores on various standardized objective achievement tests are another objective measure of pupil learning. These tests are administered to students at different grade levels as they pass through elementary and high school. Waters and Lawrence also tabulated (Figure 2.9) the annual average rates of decline (or increase) for these scores on a different test between the dates recited in Figure 2.7.¹²

Figure 2.9 Achievement Measures. Vertical axis: mean change per year. Horizontal Axis: mean proportion of two standard deviations per year

The interpretation of the significance of these declines has been a topic of some controversy.¹³ Aptitude tests, after all, are not administered to a true sample of the student population, but only to students who hope to attend certain colleges and graduate schools. However, the achievement test: while not administered to all students, are administered to relative cross-sections of students. And their patterns of decline are essentially congruent with those of the aptitude tests. Waters and Lawrence, whose analysis seems the most thorough, concluded that there has been a steady incremental, nationwide decline in levels of pupil learning which slowed down--but did not stop--in the late 1970s.

In conclusion, it is appropriate to remark on the noteworthy--and distressing--internal consistency of the statistics presented. The rate of youth arrests rises--and the rates of youth homicide and drug use also rise. Premarital sex increases, and so do out-of-wedlock births. A great many forms of youth disorders increase, and measures of learning outcome decline (is it any surprise that disordered youth do poorly in school?). Whatever one's questions are about the accuracy of any particular measure of disorder presented, it is evident that the shifts in each measure tend to increase the credibility of all the others.

DISCUSSION

The conclusions and implications of the material presented in this chapter are both self-evident--and ambiguous. The character of typical U.S. youths has substantially declined over the past 20 to 30 years. This is not to say that all of our youths are displaying poor character. But it does mean that the overall level of poor character has dramatically increased. It is obviously desirable to devote more thought and energy to improving school (and college) policies that shape youth character. This is not to suggest that improving character-related education activities is the entire solution to the complex challenge before us. And here is where the matter of ambiguity arises. We do not know all of the causes of our problem, nor all the "solutions. Indeed, even if we knew many solutions, we might not be able to put them into effect. But despite our imperfect knowledge, there are some general themes that should be kept in mind.

First, we should note that certain general trends did not typify the period from the mid-1950s to 1980--the era of most character decline. To be specific, the following things did not happen:

- Per student expenditures for education did not decline.

- There was no decline in state or federal expenses for social welfare.

- There has been no increase in the standards of moral conduct expected of the young.

- The formal qualifications of teachers did not decline.

- The general standard of living did not decline.

- The nation has not been continuously affected with political stress--the late 1950s were notoriously quiescent, and the presidencies of Ford, Carter, and Reagan have not engendered dramatic unrest.

The point of the preceding list is that the decline of youth character is not evidently connected with many popularly alleged "causes"--the underfunding of education or social welfare programs, the oppression of the young, the spread of poverty, or general political stress. It is also significant that there are patterns of change which did increase or intensify throughout the entire period of character decline. In other words, the following things did happen:

- The average length of attendance of young people in school and college has increased, and educational institutions have become larger and more bureaucratic.

- Urbanization and suburbanization have increased.

- Per capita real income has increased.

- Family size has decreased, and both one-parent and two-parent working families have increased.

- Youth exposure to mass media has increased, and the content of that media has changed.

- Popular values have increasingly shifted in favor of "self-actualization," and most education institutions have abandoned the principle of in loco parentis.

- There has been increased judicial sympathy with protecting the rights of accused persons.

- The subject matter presented to students in schools has become inherently less sympathetic to causing students to have appropriate feelings about traditional values.

The exact connection between the preceding persistent trends and the youth character debate is problematic. Still, certain gross correlation is evident: The abandonment of traditional values, and their replacement with new, more individualistic ones, has been associated with the spread of youth disorder. This correlation would not simply justify the readoption of traditional approaches regarding the young, nor the rejection of more contemporary ones. Still, it does generate a certain intellectual obligation for proponents of more "open," approaches. Putting it bluntly, things (measured by conduct changes) have been getting worse as the influence of the new has spread. Promoters of more open approaches toward the young must recognize the implications of this parallel: In justifying their innovations, they must offer some theory as to why things have been getting worse while the force of tradition has declined, and the influence of openness has grown. In other words, by many measures, youth conduct was at its "best" in 1955--suicide, homicide, drug use, out-of-wedlock births were all at far lower rates than today. If traditional approaches toward the young were so bad, and more open ones better, why have things kept getting worse as we have moved further from the old and into the new? Don't the data suggest that further moves toward untraditional moral education will lead to even more youth self- and other-destruction?

This is not the place to settle some of the cause-and-effect questions just raised. For the moment, it is sufficient to recognize that the youth character situation is in a bad way. Schools are one of the important institutions of our society which can help to correct the problem. Obviously, schools alone cannot "solve" the problem. No single social institution can produce such an effect. But each such institution--the family, schools (and colleges), the government (at all levels), the media, the churches, and other community institutions all have important and constructive roles to play. It is time for them to become more strongly engaged. A first step can be to examine the

character of our young--to look carefully at day-to-day conduct--and see what can be done to help it change in more wholesome directions.

University of Illinois

Chicago, Ill.

1. U.S. Public Health Service, National Center for Health Statistics, Homicide in the United States, 1950-1964, Series 20, No. 6 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1967), and personal communication, 1986: U.S. Public Health Service, Death Rates by Age, Race and Sex. United States, 1900-1953, Homicide, 43 (31) (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1956).

2. U.S. Public Health Service, National Center for Health Statistics, Suicide in the United States, 1950-1964, Series 20, No. 6 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1969), and personal communication, 1986; U.S. Public Health Service, Death Rates by Age, Race and Sex, United States, 1900-1953, Suicide, 43 (30) (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1956).

3. U.S. Public Health Service, Vital Statistics of the United States, 1973, Natality 1 (Rockville, Md.: National Center for Health Statistics, 1973), and personal communication, 1986.

4. Kevin F. Perrotta and Kevin N. Springer, "A Revolution in Premarital Sex," Pastoral Renewal 6(12) (June 1982), pp. 92-93.

5. San Mateo County, Department of Public Health, Report: Survey of Student Drug Use, 1977 (San Mateo County: Department of Public Health and Welfare, 1977).

6. Ibid.

7. Lloyd Johnston, Jerold G. Bachman, and Patrick M. O'Malley, Highlights of Student Drug Use in America, 1975-1985 (Washington: Department of Health and Family Services, 1986), p. 37.

8. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1980 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1980); Historical Statistics of the United States from Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1973); Population Estimates by Age, Sex and Race, 1900-1959, Series P-25. No. 721 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1973); Population Estimates by Age, Sex and Race, 1960-1970, Series P-25, No. 519 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1973); Population Estimates by Age, Sex and Race, 1968-1977, Series P-25, No. 721 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1978); Population Estimates

by Age, Sex and Race, 1976-1979, Series P-25, No. 870 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1981).

9. Robert Rubel, The Unruly Scho