Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/character-education-an-ineffective-luxury/5012406/
Character education is a luxury that we cannot afford. It has absolutely no demonstrated benefits and consumes precious instructional time that could be put too much better use. Today's teachers are already overwhelmed with demands to get students to meet state mandated academic standards as well as to teach drug, multicultural, and antibias curricula. In this pressured climate, character education is a needless additional burden. The truth is that the effort to put character education into our schools is driven by moral, rather than academic, concerns. These curricula are advocated because the larger society feels that its traditional values are threatened and that delinquent behavior appears to be spiraling out of control.Before I make my case that character education is a time-consuming frill, however, a bit of history is necessary to demonstrate its societal, rather than its pedagogical, origins.
Character Education Since the Beginning of the Century
Character education was initially introduced as a curriculum into our schools around the turn of the century and was retained for a few decades thereafter. The waves of immigration of that time worried many established Americans who feared the immorality and lawlessness of the incoming hordes. Moral education in the schools was one way to help ...