Character Education Ethical Choices

1. Character Education Ethical Choices National Organization Character Counts! www.charactercounts.org Complied by: Joy Rousseau, 2003

2. True Education • “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically... Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.” — Martin Luther King Jr., Nobel Prize-winning 20th-century American civil rights leader

3. Real Character • “The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.” — Baron Thomas Babington Macauley, early 19th-century English historian

4. Education • "To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society."— Theodore Roosevelt, 19th/20th century American adventurer and politician, Nobel Prize-winning U.S. president

5. Training • "Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it." — Proverbs, 22:6

6. What is it you want your students to be when they graduate from your high school? • In groups of 3 discuss characteristics you think students should have when they graduate from your high school (3 minutes) • Select a spokesperson to share these characteristics with the rest of the class (5 minutes) • Compare the characteristics you have listed with those listed by fortune 500 companies.

7. What is it that Employers Want?List skills from most wanted to least. (handout) • Interpersonal Skills • Leadership • Writing • Teamwork • Oral Communication • Reading • Computation • Problem-Solving • Listening • Creative Thinking

8. Answers • Teamwork (SCANS) • Problem-solving (TAKS & SCANS) • Interpersonal Skills (SCANS) • Oral Communication (SCANS) • Listening (SCANS) • Creative Thinking (SCANS) • Leadership (SCANS) • Writing (TAKS) • Reading (TAKS)

9. SCANS (Handout) Secretaries Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills • Foundational Skills (TAKS) • Competency Skills (Life-Long Skills) • Allocation of Resources – Team Work • Allocation of Information -Life-long Learning, Research, and Communication • Interpersonal Skills – Six Pillars • System Thinking – See the big picture (integration of real-world skills) • Technology Skills

10. 6 Pillars of Character • Respect • Responsibility • Fairness • Caring • Civic Duty (Citizenship) • Trustworthiness

11. Domains involved in the Development of Character • Cognitive • A Cognitive domain – intellectual abilities – Bloom’s Taxonomy • Rote memorization • Knowledge & Comprehension • Application • Synthesis • Evaluation & Judgment

12. Domains involved in the Development of Character • Domain for Creative & Critical Thinking • F7 Creative Thinking - Uses imagination freely, combines ideas or information in new ways, makes connections between seemingly unrelated ideas, and reshapes goals in ways that reveal new possibilities.

13. Domains involved in the Development of Character • F8 Decision Making - Specifies goals and constraints, generates alternatives, considers risks, and evaluates and chooses best alternative. • Determine the decision to be made • Gather information that will help make the decision • Determine several options or choices • Weigh (evaluate) the options or choices • Select and carry out one option • Reflect on the results of your decision to help you in future decisions

14. Domains involved in the Development of Character • F9 Problem Solving - Recognizes that a problem exists (i.e., there is a discrepancy between what is and what should or could be); identifies possible reasons for the discrepancy; devises and implements a plan of action to resolve it; evaluates and monitors progress; and revises plan as indicated by findings.

15. Domains involved in the Development of Character • F10 Seeing Things in the Mind's Eye - Organizes and processes symbols, pictures, graphs, objects or other information; for example, sees a building from a blueprint, a system's operation from schematics, the flow of work activities from narrative descriptions, or the taste of food from reading a recipe.

16. Domains involved in the Development of Character • Fll Knowing How To Learn - Recognizes and can use learning techniques to apply and adapt new knowledge and skills in both familiar and changing situations and is aware of teaming tools such as personal teaming styles (visual, aural, etc.), formal learning strategies (note taking or clustering items that share some characteristics), and informal teaming strategies (awareness of unidentified false assumptions that may lead to faulty conclusions).

17. Domains involved in the Development of Character • Knowing how to Ask Questions, asking the right questions, Research Skills. Knowing how to determine when a topic has been adequately researched

18. Domains involved in the Development of Character • F12 Reasoning - Discovers a rule or principle underlying the relationship between two or more objects and applies it in solving a problem; uses logic to draw conclusions from available information; extracts rules or principles from a set of objects or written text; applies rules and principles to a new situation or determines which conclusions are correct when given a set of facts and a set of conclusions. [This skill definition is not yet completely developed

19. Domains involved in the Development of Character • Psycho-motor Domain: physical skills and the new brain research which tie these together to improve reading and comprehension skills. Kinesthetic movement assists the brain in long-term memory. How many of you have ever been to Grand Canyon? Name a book you read in the fall of your third year in school.

20. Domains involved in the Development of Character • . Kohlberg's Six Stages of Moral Development: • which reflect Bloom’s cognitive taxonomy.

21. Kohlberg's Six Stages of Moral Development: • Stage 1 Pre-conventional Phase (Egocentric Stage age 4) – • punishment & obedience phase where you are only concerned about yourself and “not getting caught by authority”. • Fear of punishment dominates motives. One sees outside forces as being dominating. • Actions are judged in terms of their physical consequences….spankings, time in a corner, loss of money….not in terms of right or wrong.

22. Kohlberg's Six Stages of Moral Development: • Stage 1 Pre-conventional Phase (Egocentric Stage age 4) – • punishment & obedience phase where you are only concerned about yourself and “not getting caught by authority”. • Fear of punishment dominates motives. One sees outside forces as being dominating. • Actions are judged in terms of their physical consequences….spankings, time in a corner, loss of money….not in terms of right or wrong.

23. Kohlberg's Six Stages of Moral Development: • Stage 2 (Unquestioning Obedience K-5) One-way concern about another person (how I act so that I will benefit) • Looking out for #1.The basic motive is to satisfy my own needs. I do not consider the needs of others, unless I THINK IT will benefit me. • Sometimes called instrumental/relativist ---- “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” • Motive is to just to STAY OUT OF trouble.

24. Kohlberg's Six Stages of Moral Development: • Stage 2 (Unquestioning Obedience K-5) One-way concern about another person (how I act so that I will benefit) • Looking out for #1.The basic motive is to satisfy my own needs. I do not consider the needs of others, unless I THINK IT will benefit me. • Sometimes called instrumental/relativist ---- “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” • Motive is to just to STAY OUT OF trouble.

25. Kohlberg's Six Stages of Moral Development: • As people mature, then hopefully we move to more CONVENTIONAL Moral values by performing good or right roles, in maintaining the conventional order, and in meeting others’ expectations

26. Kohlberg's Six Stages of Moral Development: • Stage III (is call the “black & white” stage • Concern about groups of people, and conformity to group norms. • There is a two-way relationship (we are good to each other). • Motive is to be a “nice guy or gal”, to be accepted. • Affection plays a strong role. We will visit the Affective Domain Next. • This stage becomes frustrating because we are always trying to follow everyone else’s rules and to please everyone…which of course, cannot be done.

27. Kohlberg's Six Stages of Moral Development: • Stage IV Concern for order in society. Honor & duty come from keeping the rules of society. • The focus is on preserving the society….not just obeying it. • Being Dutiful plays a part here. • During stage IV, the individual looks to rules, laws, or codes for guidance in dilemma situations • the laws have wisdom and are the positive glue of society.

28. Kohlberg's Six Stages of Moral Development: • The final stages deal with a Basis of Judgment – Bloom’s uses this as his highest level of cognitive thinking.

29. Kohlberg's Six Stages of Moral Development: • Stage V: Is characterized by Autonomy. It is called the social contract, legalistic orientation. • What is right is what the whole society decides. There are no legal absolutes….everyone must agree …then it is OK. • Changes are made in the law for reasons that suit the common or greatest good for the greatest number of people. • This is the problem-solving stage. How to make it work for everyone. • Reasoning at this level requires the ability to think abstractly (to view laws as a system of governance), to weigh competing claims, to take a stand and yet remain open in the future. • This moral level may take place only when children can see more than one POINT OF VIEW..

30. Kohlberg's Six Stages of Moral Development: • Stage VI: Universal ethical Principals – “Golden Rule”. • What is right is a decision of one’s conscience, based on ideas about rightness that apply to everyone (all nations, all people) • A higher law. “Thou shall not kill”. • The most important ethical principles deal with justice, equality, and the dignity of all people. • These principles are higher than any given law….and one has the right to disobey unjust laws. • Saint Augustine said that, “an unjust law is no law at all” Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.

31. Kohlberg's Six Stages of Moral Development: • Kohlberg describes the Golden rule has having two parts. • 1. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you and (2) love your neighbor as yourself

32. Kohlberg’s Stages • *****Note: None of these moral stages (1-6) are “wrong”……..at an appropriate age level …all people should move through each of these stages… • Being “stuck” at a lower developmental stage while maturing in age, would be undesirable.

33. Kohlberg’s Stages • We KNOW that lack of development in the Cognitive Domain or even the Physical domain is tragic. • We must also see that lack of development is a tragedy in the Moral Development DOMAN.

34. Kohlberg’s Stages • Inversely, one must be careful not to push children who are not cognitively ready into a stage of moral decision-making for which they are not ready.

35. Kohlberg’s Stages • It is ridiculous to have small children arguing over moral dilemmas until they have developed a since of right and wrong. • “One precaution,” said Plato, “is not to let students taste of arguments while they are young, the danger being that they would develop a taste for arguments rather than a taste for truth. Young minds, like young puppies, said Plato, would only “pull and tear at arguments” • For Plato, it was much more important for young people to learn to love a virtue than to argue about it.

36. Kohlberg's Six Stages of Moral Development: • Piaget and Kohlberg believe that social understanding leads to moral motivation

37. Domain of the 7 Intelligences: ·    Verbal / Linguistic     Logical / Mathematical    Visual / Spatial ·   Body / Kinesthetic ·  Musical / Rhythmic ·  Intrapersonal (within one’s self – reflection, depth of thinking) ·  Interpersonal (cooperation, negotiation, collaboration – Six Pillars

38. What Character is and What it is NOT • Character is what you are when nobody is looking. • Character is the result of values and beliefs • Character is a habit that becomes second nature • Character is not reputation or what others think about you • Character is not how much better you are than others • Character is NOT RELATIVE

39. Ethics – What it is and What it is NOT • Ethics is not always what is done, but what OUGHT to be done.

40. Knowing to do good • Children are not born ethical giants • They do not learn it by osmosis. • Children learn more from what they see, than what they are told. • Conflicting ethical values tend to reduce to the lowest common denominator • High expectations & Accountability are corner stones for ethical maturity.

41. What Works • WHAT WORKS? Social understanding comes through • modeling, • reinforcement, • and an action plan for using education to steer ethical decisions.

42. Social Contract • As people come to understand the possibilities and conditions of cooperation, they come to appreciate their part in supporting social arrangements that follow moral principals.

43. Piaget & Kohlberg Believe • that education overcomes prejudice, • exposure to great minds (literature) fosters social responsibility, • and travel (experiential social contact) assists in the broadening of the mind. • Versus Vicarious Experiences of TV & Movies

44. CAUTION: • These findings tell us that moral judgment is not • a matter of MEMORIZING special terminology, • or of mastering certain tricks of argument, • or of being able to drop the names of moral philosophers;

45. Rather, • Moral judgment reflects basic natural growth of a guided good conscience …if it is not halted by outside circumstances or forces.

46. Research • The most fundamental research recognizes the way people naturally formulate their moral judgments has a lot to do with their underlying conceptions of cooperation in social settings.

47. Real Character Development • Students might pass a course by memorizing facts and learning empty academic games, but learning moral decision-making involves relating real behavior to decision making in a real-world setting. • Integrated over multiple settings….over time

48. Practice Makes Perfect • Making good ethical choices is the key to becoming a moral person. • Being allowed to make choices is essential then to becoming a person of character.

49. Affective Domain • What choices are made & how we FEEL after making those choices is a key feature of our last & final Domain.

50. Affective Domain • The Final Domain we will discuss today is the Affective Domain. • What is it we want our students to be when they leave our institutions of learning? • Children must be taught character with consideration for the appropriate age and mental capacity.