Character Education is Experiential
[In an essay published in Independent School magazine, history teacher Gwen Sneeden reflects on the challenges in "character education," and argues that character cannot be taught through intellectual means. Below are excerpts from the full essay.]
Today, schools are pushing hard to get teachers to embrace character education. [But] when it came to developing moral fiber as a child, I was on an installment plan. Much of what I learned about right and wrong was not through a religious upbringing, but more from a passive communal effort among my parents and neighbors, most of whom had small family farms with livestock. As kids in this southeastern Massachusetts farming neighborhood, we learned about birth and death and caring for other sentient beings by being part of 4-H Clubs. Watching a sow give birth teaches patience, compassion, and respect. Stealing a cigarette, smoking it, and scorching an entire hayfield by accident (and then lying about it) teaches that something is wrong when others suffer the consequences of your actions. Trying to ride an unhappy cow just for fun and being accused by the cow’s owner of lacking moral qualities also serves to instruct. I cannot say the same for the schools I attended.
Today's teachers are asked to embed "character education" into the curriculum, but my own experience shows me that learning to "be good" needs to be habitual rather than something acquired by intellectual means. Internalizing one’s own moral compass happens experientially, and if the expectation is for me to teach my students how to have that experience, then the strategies and pedagogies I embrace must possess a powerful element that fosters empathetic thinking and feeling.
Cultivating caring students helps them develop a moral sensibility, but they need the freedom to feel what is right or wrong. They need immersion in something that brings them nose-to-nose with an ethical dilemma so they are forced to appeal to their emerging moral sensibility, and to defend the emotions with which they contend when their values cannot be separated from what they are feeling.
My students have a promising capacity for moral intellect and honorable-minded behavior, but they often get in their own way of practicing it. And it is usually exercised behind the digital scrim of the social media platform du jour. They are not always confident about what's right and what's wrong, but, given the mixed-message bombardment from the critical spaces in their lives (home, school, Internet), one can hardly blame them for their confusion. In such a context, directly teaching students something as abstract as a sense of honor with the teacher standing on her soapbox makes no sense. Setting in motion the necessary foundation so kids can engage in difficult conversations in the classroom takes careful, thoughtful frontloading of material.
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Today, schools are pushing hard to get teachers to embrace character education. [But] when it came to developing moral fiber as a child, I was on an installment plan. Much of what I learned about right and wrong was not through a religious upbringing, but more from a passive communal effort among my parents and neighbors, most of whom had small family farms with livestock. As kids in this southeastern Massachusetts farming neighborhood, we learned about birth and death and caring for other sentient beings by being part of 4-H Clubs. Watching a sow give birth teaches patience, compassion, and respect. Stealing a cigarette, smoking it, and scorching an entire hayfield by accident (and then lying about it) teaches that something is wrong when others suffer the consequences of your actions. Trying to ride an unhappy cow just for fun and being accused by the cow’s owner of lacking moral qualities also serves to instruct. I cannot say the same for the schools I attended.
Today's teachers are asked to embed "character education" into the curriculum, but my own experience shows me that learning to "be good" needs to be habitual rather than something acquired by intellectual means. Internalizing one’s own moral compass happens experientially, and if the expectation is for me to teach my students how to have that experience, then the strategies and pedagogies I embrace must possess a powerful element that fosters empathetic thinking and feeling.
Cultivating caring students helps them develop a moral sensibility, but they need the freedom to feel what is right or wrong. They need immersion in something that brings them nose-to-nose with an ethical dilemma so they are forced to appeal to their emerging moral sensibility, and to defend the emotions with which they contend when their values cannot be separated from what they are feeling.
My students have a promising capacity for moral intellect and honorable-minded behavior, but they often get in their own way of practicing it. And it is usually exercised behind the digital scrim of the social media platform du jour. They are not always confident about what's right and what's wrong, but, given the mixed-message bombardment from the critical spaces in their lives (home, school, Internet), one can hardly blame them for their confusion. In such a context, directly teaching students something as abstract as a sense of honor with the teacher standing on her soapbox makes no sense. Setting in motion the necessary foundation so kids can engage in difficult conversations in the classroom takes careful, thoughtful frontloading of material.
[I believe] that acquiring the ability to establish some moral reasoning can happen in a student-centered setting in which everyone — students and teachers alike — engage in dialogue daily. My students may not reach any sort of complete ethical comprehension while in school, but they will know how to be confident and straightforward when considering moral choices in their lives, ready to defend their opinions because they know they draw it from a deep well of careful, considerate reasoning and thought.
And the conversation does not stop at the classroom door. It invites kids back in at any time during the day — recess, lunch, free period, even years after they have graduated. It gives them permission to struggle with their emotions, which are genuine and worthy of investigation, but which they can hardly handle alone. [That dialogue] is the core of developing moral sensibility. Taking your time, working your way through something and articulating it — that is the way to "teach" character.
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Upper and Lower Schoolers at Field Day
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A discussion around Sneeden's Harkness table
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Working on stage with the Boston Theatre Company
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At the Mountain School in Vershire, VT
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