Paul Watts and Kristján Kristjánsson
The Nature, Importance, and Current State of Character Education We understand the term “character education” in this chapter to encompass any form of holistic moral education focusing on the systematic development of virtues as stable traits of character, with the aim of promoting human flourishing (qua objective wellbeing) and founded on some general virtue theory, be it philosophical (about virtues as morally valuable universally) or psychological (about virtues as universally valued morally). On this understanding, character education forms a specific subset of moral education which, in turn, forms a subset of general values education.
Character education has had a checkered and tumultuous history (Arthur 2020) and continues to accommodate fairly different theoretical, disciplinary, and practical perspectives. We want to do justice, as far as possible, to the multi-dimensionality of character education in what follows.
The most obvious answer to the question of why character education is important is: “because character is important.” But why is character important? We know that people spend a lot of their time reflecting upon, discussing, and gossiping about other people’s character; moral character traits like honesty register higher with users of dating sites than any of the amoral Big-Five personality traits; many employers are more interested in the potential character of employees than their formal qualifications; and character education at school has been shown to elicit (modest) increases in grade attainment (Berkowitz & Bier 2005). While these are practical considerations, recent academic work has also highlighted the way in which good character is both conducive to and constitutive of overall wellbeing, which is widely considered the “ungrounded grounder” of all human efforts, including educational ones (Aristotle 1985; Peterson & Seligman 2004).
While scholarly interest in character education has traditionally been confined mostly to specialists in Ancient Greek moral philosophy (Annas 2011), educational philosophers (Curren 2010), and educationists (Berkowitz 2002), psychology has recently become its greatest growth industry (Fowers et al. 2021; Wright et al. 2021). This retrieval of character-and-virtue research in psychology, referred to as a new “science of virtue” (Fowers et al. 2021), has been spurred on by the advent of positive psychology and in particular its research into universal character strengths (Peterson & Seligman 2004;
McGrath 2015). Defying historic anti-virtue catechisms in psychology (Kohlberg 1981), positive psychologists have conducted extensive research into the role of good character in the flourishing life (Seligman 2011). However, renewed efforts at integrative and interdisciplinary work on character education have left various mines in the ground, to be excavated in subsequent sections. As an edu- cational phenomenon, there has been something of a revival of character education in the past ten
years, including in Asia and South America where character education is underpinned by a variety of philosophical approaches and cultural contexts. Character education now has a place within school timetables as part of formal or informal education curricula – for example in Singapore, Japan, Korea, and the United Arab Emirates. Closer to the present authors, since 2012, character education has featured as a priority set out by Secretaries of State for Education in the U.K. An outcome of those efforts is that character education now features in government guidance for school leaders in England (Department for Education 2019) and within the school evaluation criteria set out for school inspectors (Ofsted 2019). Major funders such as the John Templeton Foundation and Kern Family Foundation have helped establish a strong research base for character education, both in the U.S.A. (where character education is also undergoing a retrieval) and internationally, and, as a result, approaches have become better grounded theoretically and empirically.
Some Key Concepts and Unique Features of Character Education
The key foundational concept in character education is typically not “character” but rather
“flourishing” or “living well” (eudaimonia). Normative and empirical claims are then made about how flourishing requires (or at least is taken to require by most people) the actualization of certain traits or states of character, called virtues. Character is here understood to comprise a certain subset of more general personality traits: namely, that part of personality which is reason-responsive, morally evaluable, and educable. General personality traits, such as the Big-Five ones of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, are to a large extent genetic and not amenable to education; however the character traits are taken to be more malleable, context- sensitive, and responsive to coaching (Kristjánsson 2015). That said, the more general personality traits can facilitate or hinder the development of character traits. For instance, a person con- stitutionally prone to agreeableness may find it more difficult to develop the virtue of honesty but easier to exhibit compassion.
The most basic kinds of character traits are typically called “virtues” and “vices”; hence character education can be described as education “in” or “for” virtue. Virtues are here taken to be settled (stable and consistent) traits of character, concerned with praiseworthy conduct in specific (sig- nificant and distinguishable) spheres of human life. Each character trait of this sort typically com- prises a unique set of attention, emotion, desire, behavior, and a certain comportment or style of expression. The compassionate person thus notices easily and attends to situations in which the lot of others has been undeservedly compromised, feels for the needs of those who have suffered this undeserved misfortune, desires that their misfortune be reversed, acts for the relevant (ethical) reasons in ways conducive to that goal, and exudes an aura of empathy and care (Kristjánsson 2015).
The terms “virtue” and “vice” strike some people as old-fashioned, outdated, or even religiously tethered (Allen & Bull 2018). However, “virtue” can be replaced with words such as “character strength” or “positive character quality” if doing so is necessary to making it more linguistically palatable.
In traditional character-and-virtue theories, such as those of Aristotle and Confucius, each virtue is considered to form a medial state between two extremes of deficiency and excess (with courage qua golden mean between cowardice and foolhardy fearlessness given as the standard example).
Moreover, at least in Aristotle, each virtue is contextualized vis-à-vis developmental level, social position, and individual constitution. For example, emulousness is a virtue for young people whereas adults ideally do not need to emulate role models. Magnanimity (megalopsychia) is a virtue for people blessed with unusually abundant material resources but not for ordinary folks. Temperance in eating is not the same for the Olympic athlete as for a novice athlete, because what is intermediate in virtue is relative to the individual, “not in the object” (Aristotle 1985: 43 [1106b1–7]). And, from an educational perspective, a boxing instructor will not “impose the same way of fighting on everyone”
(1985: 295 [1180b9–11]). When coupled with the Aristotelian thesis that each individual needs an intellectual meta-virtue to secure the successful integration of potentially conflicting moral virtues (Darnell et al. 2019), this concession about the individualization of one’s virtuous make-up imports difficulties when trying to administer characterological interventions across groups of different in- dividuals, such as all students in a given classroom.
Various different virtue taxonomies exist. One of the more prominent ones divides virtues into four categories of moral, civic, performative, and intellectual – with one of the intellectual virtues, namely phronesis, also accorded a special metacognitive place as a virtue adjudicator (Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues 2017). This taxonomy derives strength from its historic grounding in Aristotle’s distinction between moral virtues, intellectual virtues, and technical skills, although he did not distinguish as cleanly between moral and civic virtues. More recently, a 3-or-4 factor taxonomy along similar lines has garnered support from empirical analyses of millions of people’s self-reported character strengths across the world (McGrath 2015), although the self-report instrument in question was originally built upon a different 6-factor taxonomy (Peterson & Seligman 2004).
Philosophically, character education is perhaps best described as the educational incarnation of virtue ethics. According to virtue ethics, an action is right not because it is required as one’s duty in accordance with a formalistic principle (as in Kantianism) or because it has desirable overall con- sequences (as in utilitarianism) but because it exhibits good character. In contrast to other moral theories, the concept of good character is thus what is foundational in virtue ethics, rather than the concepts of duties or consequences, and what defines acting well is derivative or a matter of what is consistent with good character. However, the term “virtue ethics” needs to be understood quite permissively, as the term has been ascribed to philosophers as distinct as Plato, the natural-law Stoics, and Nietzsche. For present purposes, the sort of virtue ethics that need concern us is mainly of the Aristotelian kind, according to which an action is right when it enhances virtue and contributes to a flourishing (eudaimonic) life, or simply “living well” (Curren 2015) – as opposed to a languishing or floundering one. Here, the focus is no longer so much on the correctness of individual actions as on their role in the well-rounded life and their roots in the “inner world” of the agent: in stable states of character that incorporate motivational and emotional elements. What matters in the end for moral evaluation is not merely observable behavior, but the emotions with which an action is performed, the motivation behind it, and the manner in which it is performed. Since Aristotle-inspired char- acter education is about the development and enhancement of virtue, it is not concerned with
“prosociality” in the same sense as many other paradigms of moral education. “Prosociality” is a behavioral concept, and behavior can be prosocial without being virtuous (e.g., uncritically and unreflectively following another person’s lead to do a good thing) and virtuous without being prosocial (e.g., showing justified anger which happens to upset and alienate people).
Although the recent surge of interest in character education coincides with the rising profile of virtue ethics, especially of the Aristotelian kind (Curren 2010), in moral philosophy (harking back to Anscombe 1958), it would not be far-fetched to design character-educational interventions also along the lines of the consequentialist Mill or the deontologist Kant, as neither theorist expunged virtues completely from their moral theories. Indeed, on closer inspection, the aforemetioned characterization of character education as the incarnation of Aristotelian virtue ethics invites various difficulties. First, the very idea of a moral theory informing and guiding a developmental/educa- tional program is itself problematic (Curren 2015). Second, Aristotle never saw himself in the business of designing an ethical theory, with eliciting from it an educational theory as a subsequent independent task. He did not consider the task of ethical inquiry to be theory-construction in the first place, but rather considered it a branch of practical inquiry that he described as “political science”
(1985: 2 [1094a27–28]).
Third, the characterization of Aristotelian virtue ethics as a “moral theory” and Aristotelian character education as a theory of “moral education” is misleading in various ways: most conspicuously
because Aristotle did not have the term “moral” (on a modern understanding) at his disposal in the first place. He was interested in ethical (meaning, in ancient Greek, “having to do with character”) and civic (social, communal) virtues, but he had no term like “moral” to either combine them under a single umbrella or to limit their meaning with respect to various other aspirations that moderns would consider non-moral (for example, related to psycho-physical health). Aristotelian character education is about “living well” in a much more general sense than that captured by most moral theories and theories of moral education. This is why Aristotle would find a modern minimalist justification of moral education (such as offered by Hand 2018) strangely limited at best, seriously misguided at worst.
Every educator must, ex hypothesi, be in the business of helping students find ways to “live well.” Such efforts will by necessity transcend the boundaries of what moderns call “moral”; they relate to character development in a more general sense, and as such they are not “optional”; rather, they are what education is all about. Only the most serviceable strategies to achieve this remain a matter of choice.
Notice also that the current interest in anything character-related in some pockets of social science is not rooted in virtue ethics in a philosophical sense at all, but rather in an empirical virtue theory, which simply states that it so happens that more or less the same virtues are valued universally – without taking a stand on whether such valuing is philosophically warranted or not, because that is seen as an in- herently normative and hence an unscientific question (Peterson & Seligman 2004).
For philosophers of education, character education may be seen as an object of unique interest, as it combines insights from philosophy, education, and other areas of social science in ways that are fairly unusual in academia. However, here is the disappointing news for philosophically or- iented readers. Given its historical provenance in Aristotle-derived virtue ethics, one would expect the critical discourse about character education in the West to revolve around questions of how an ontologically realist and epistemologically rationalist moral outlook (such as Aristotle’s) can be justified practically, and how character educators will respond to the “self-centeredness”
and “non-action-guiding” objections standardly lodged against virtue ethics. However, those issues are rarely elicited in the literature, and it is even moot whether some varieties of character education, such as the positive psychological one, are morally realist rather than anti-realist or – with regard to virtuous emotions – rationalist rather than sentimentalist. This does not mean that character education is uncontroversial academically (see subsequent section on controversies); it simply means that the areas of discord are not necessarily those that will be topmost in the minds of academic philosophers.
Different Approaches to Character Education
Some recent criticisms of character education assume that there is a single network or community of thinkers promoting this approach (Allen & Bull 2018). However, that is an over-simplification.
Indeed, the divisions among proponents of character education are no less prominent than any common assumption that may seem to unite them under a single umbrella. Notably, each of the
“varieties” or “approaches” on offer comes with its distinctive pros and cons. We only have space to address four approaches.
US-style Character Education in the 1980s–1990s
This approach, often associated with Thomas Lickona’s influential work (1991), signaled the re- suscitation of a characterological emphasis after decades of neglect, during which rationalist approaches ruled the roost in moral psychology and moral education (Kohlberg 1981). Lickona’s book offers a treasure trove of methods for classroom implementations and in many ways paved the way for all subsequent efforts. Yet, this approach came under criticism for being behavioristically (rather than virtue ethically) grounded, conservative, individualistic, and religiously motivated (Kohn 1997).
Confucian Character Education
Character education along Confucian lines is rooted in an ancient Chinese tradition that has, re- cently and somewhat unexpectedly, been retrieved in mainland China. While similar in many ways to the Aristotelian approach to character education fleshed out later, Confucianism has more to say on moral learners’ “spiritual” and “enchanted” attachments to abstract moral ideals (Yu 2007). On the other hand, it does not lend itself as easily to scientific inquiry as does Aristotelianism, nor does it account as well for the social determinants of virtuous conduct, assuming rather that no external exigencies can harm the morally good individual. Moreover, some concepts in Confucianism, such as “Heaven” and “the Way,” will appear alien to non-Chinese educators and students.
Positive Education
Character education forms a substantial part of what is known as the educational incarnation of positive psychology, called positive education (Seligman 2011), although it also includes non- characterological elements. As it is meant to absorb the best of traditional approaches, positive education reproduces many of the merits of Confucianism and Aristotelianism. However, it makes do without any meta-virtue of phronesis, as well as without a theory of virtue as a golden mean, assuming rather that “the more is better” in any virtue. For example, gratitude as a virtue (on which a lot of positive psychological work has fastened) can and should evidently be boosted indis- criminately, without fear of any “gratitude excess.” Moreover, positive psychologists’ ambivalent attitude towards questions of normativity and their predominantly instrumentalist stance (see next section) tend to alienate philosophically oriented educationists (Kristjánsson 2015).
Aristotelian Character Education
Neo-Aristotelian thinking characterizes some of the most prominent and popular approaches to character education in recent times, as already indicated. Its appeal lies in various factors, such as (a) a naturalistic methodology according to which all moral and educational theorizing is answerable to empirical research and hence revisable; (b) its explicit grounding in a blueprint of the good life qua flourishing; (c) the nuanced developmental story it tells about how virtues are acquired; (d) its focus on critical thinking and reflection at the post-childhood stage of character development, hence deflecting worries about indoctrination and lack of autonomy; (e) its emphasis on the need for intellectual virtues (Roberts & Wood 2007), not least to oversee metacognitive virtue adjudications;
(f) its sensitivity to socio-political contexts and its rejection of a purely individualist stance, hence offering a bridge from character education to civic education; (g) its highlighting of the emotional features of good character; and (h) its practical down-to-earth stance which resonates well with teachers and other practitioners (Curren 2010; Annas 2011; Kristjánsson 2015, 2020; Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues 2017; Peterson 2020).
However, neo-Aristotelian character education also has its potential weaknesses: (a) Because of its early-years determinism about character cultivation, it may seem to have little to offer people
“brought up in bad habits,” nor be able to make sense of radical moral transformations later in life;
(b) it leaves the transition from early-years habituation to subsequent critical phronesis-guided moral thinking explanatorily underdeveloped; (c) it does not account for the idea of personal authentic purpose as part of a flourishing life (because the concepts of a personal purpose and authenticity originated much later than Aristotle’s time); and (d) it does not address questions about how virtue (development) can be evaluated.
It could be argued that those weaknesses only hit at traditional Aristotelian, rather than neo- Aristotelian, character education, as the earlier-mentioned naturalistic methodology should enable us
to figure out contemporary solutions to them. Nevertheless, the discussion in this section is meant to alert readers to the fact that there are various approaches to character education competing for allegiance, and there is no reason to think that the “best” one has yet been developed fully.
Why is Character Education Controversial?
Character education remains controversial, both politically and academically. Politically, character education finds itself in a precarious position in the politico-educational landscape. More precisely, it often ends up in the squeezed-middle position of coming under attack from both the political left and the political right. Leftists accuse it of disregarding social structures and focusing instead, in politically naïve or even reactionary ways, on fixing individual students (Suissa 2015). Right-wingers renounce character education for importing one more brand of “psycho-babble” into classrooms, at the expense of pedagogic rigor (Young 2014). Interestingly, character education in the U.S.A. tended to be cri- ticized more from the left (e.g., Kohn 1997), because of its association with conservative politics, but character education in the U.K. from the right (Young 2014), because of its historic links to left-wing politics. Recently, however, the U.K. has also seen criticisms emerge from the left, alleging that character education is grounded in a neoliberal ideology (Jerome & Kisby 2019).
Insofar as neo-Aristotelian approaches have gained traction recently both in the U.S.A. and the U.K., and insofar as the criticisms from the left and the right are targeted at those approaches, they seem curiously misdirected, however (Kristjánsson 2021). With regard to the former, Aristotelian politics has historically been criticized for being too collectivist rather than individualist, and it appears as more socially progressive than conservative by today’s standards (Peterson 2020). With regard to the latter, neo-Aristotelian character education is not grounded in a paradigm of the fragile child who needs to be shielded from academic rigor, but rather in a paradigm of the flourishing child who needs to be challenged further (Walker et al. 2015).
To turn to academic debates, those are varied and concern a multiplicity of issues that are at the heart of character education (Kristjánsson 2015: chap. 2); we can only offer some glimpses here. To begin with debates that are internal to the character education camp – insofar as it can be seen as a single camp – those have recently become crystallized along a single main dividing line, separating a positive psychological model from a virtue ethical, Confucian, or Aristotelian, one. To summarize and simplify the differences between these models, the first one – which tends to be promoted by business organizations, civil servants, politicians, and many practically minded social scientists – understands character as encompassing the “non-cognitive” side of personality skills (so-called “soft skills”), whereas the virtue ethical model understands character in terms of the morally evaluable part of personality. The main substantive focus in the first model is on performance virtues such as grit, resilience, and self-confidence, and on how those broaden and build personal resources, whereas the second model prioritizes moral and civic virtues such as compassion, justice, and honesty.
Accordingly, the first model considers the main value of the virtues to lie in their instrumental benefits for better behavior, higher grades, and better workplace performance, while the second model highlights the intrinsic value of the virtues for the flourishing life of which they are con- stitutive (although grades and performance will also supposedly improve as a happy side-effect).
Finally, the positive psychological model assumes that a chain of virtues is as strong as its strongest link, with little attention paid to virtue conflicts, trade-offs, and painful adjudications. In contrast, the virtue ethical model assumes that too much of a virtue becomes a vice, just like too little, and that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link – with significant attention being paid to virtue conflicts (Kristjánsson 2015). To outsiders, at least, the relationship between these two “sub-camps”
may appear confusing and ambivalent (Jerome & Kisby 2019). On the one hand, harsh critiques by one camp of the other are common (e.g., Arthur et al. 2016); on the other hand, efforts seem to be afoot to synthesize the insights of the two factions (e.g., Arthur et al. 2021).