Aristotelian Character Education

Kristján Kristjánsson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317619062
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildung Allgemein

This book provides a reconstruction of Aristotelian character education, shedding new light on what moral character really is, and how it can be highlighted, measured, nurtured and taught in current schooling. Arguing that many recent approaches to character education understand character in exclusively amoral, instrumentalist terms, Kristjánsson proposes a coherent, plausible and up-to-date concept, retaining the overall structure of Aristotelian character education.After discussing and debunking popular myths about Aristotelian character education, subsequent chapters focus on the practical ramifications and methodologies of character education. These include measuring virtue and morality, asking whether Aristotelian character education can salvage the effects of bad upbringing, and considering implications for teacher training and classroom practice. The book rejuvenates time-honoured principles of the development of virtues in young people, at a time when 'character' features prominently in educational agendas and parental concerns over school education systems.Offering an interdisciplinary perspective which draws from the disciplines of education, psychology, philosophy and sociology, this book will appeal to researchers, academics and students wanting a greater insight into character education.

Chapter 1 Introduction What is Aristotelian character education?

DOI: 10.4324/9781315752747-1

Retrievals of character

This book is about an idea, one that is growing clearer and gathering momentum in classrooms and clinics and labs and lecture halls […] According to this new way of thinking, the conventional wisdom about child development over the past few decades has been misguided. We have been focusing on the wrong skills and abilities in our children, and we have been using the wrong strategies to help nurture and teach those skills.

(Tough, 2013: xv)

These rousing words from Paul Tough’s recent bestseller on the power of character building are indicative both of the fervour and panache of his rhetoric and the inherent pull of the core idea he wants to get across: that the magic bullet for helping children to ‘succeed’ may be character rather than subject knowledge. I explain below the timeliness of this idea and why it has struck a chord with parents, teachers and policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet, after reading Tough’s book, I did not put it down any lighter of heart. Much as I admire the good intentions behind it, I consider his core idea to be saddled with a philosophy that is at best unhelpful, at worst calamitous. More specifically, although Tough’s book is meant as an antidote to fears that schools have become spoon-feeding factories, Tough’s instrumentalist, performance-driven and amoral view of character makes his message about the power of character development vulnerable to the very vice it was created to resist. Being something of an if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them pragmatist myself, I understand where Tough is coming from. He does not think that his message will carry the day unless it is couched in terms of goals that laypeople and politicians will understand: the Holy Grail of grades and jobs. However, being conciliatory is one thing, ceding most of the territory to your supposed opponents is quite another. Or to put it in terms of a famous metaphor, what is the use of straining at a gnat if you swallow a camel?

Do not misunderstand me. The book you have just opened does not offer a running, critical commentary on Paul Tough’s work, although I shall be giving it further attention shortly. It is instructive, however, to use Tough’s bestseller as a springboard to explain the gestation of the present work, because it was after reading his blueprint for character, on how to Tough-en up kids through grit, persistence, self-control and injections of self-confidence (2013: xv), that I decided to fashion an alternative view of what character is and why and how it should be promoted in education. This alternative view is based on time-honoured – if by no means uncontroversial – Aristotelian principles about the intrinsically and irreducibly moral nature of character; hence the title Aristotelian Character Education. Although I have explored the nuts and bolts of such character education from various angles before (see, especially, Kristjánsson, 2007 and 2013, and more journal articles than I care to recall), I have never attempted a systematic, holistic account of it that would be accessible to readers without a ready-made Aristotelian philosophy in their pockets. This is precisely what I aim to do here. I am motivated by the belief that although Aristotelianism is not the only possible foundation for programmes of character education (perhaps Confucianism or a sophisticated virtue-based utilitarianism in the style of John Stuart Mill could work equally well, for example), using Aristotle’s general character-and-virtue framework as a prism through which to shed light on character and its cultivation enables us to refract this light and send it out fully charged, ready for practical illumination in the home or the classroom.

To couch the remit of this book in slightly more academic terms, my aim is to flesh out a theoretical account of character education – as a form of moral education focusing on the development of virtues – designed along broadly Aristotelian lines. I also aim to elicit some of the practical ramifications of Aristotelian character education for working with young people, although a full manual of classroom tools and techniques will remain a topic for another day (and it is, indeed, on the to-do list of the Centre where I am working). The targeted readership comprises theoretically minded educationists, professionals and parents, but also moral psychologists and those moral philosophers who are interested in the practical application of character-and-virtue constructs. As what is on offer here is to a considerable extent ‘reconstructed Aristotelianism’ (explained in in the penultimate section of this chapter), this book is not primarily an exercise in Aristotelian scholarship, any more than my 2007 book, Aristotle, Emotions and Education, which explored the relevance of an Aristotelian theory of emotion for education. The challenge of writing a book of this kind is to avoid making it too cheaply practical for the theorist and too abstractly theoretical for the practitioner. That is the challenge I take on in what follows.

A number of misgivings have been expressed about the viability of character education in general, and its Aristotelian variant in particular, for use in today’s schooling. While I consider some of those misgivings misjudged, my objective is to offer an account that is sensitive to a number of salient concerns or, more specifically, an account that ameliorates shortcomings of previous (classic and contemporary) versions of Aristotelian character education. In the penultimate section of this chapter I outline these shortcomings in more detail and relate them to the aims of subsequent chapters. Prior to that, however, more extensive scene-setting is required in order to explain how my general aim is motivated by, and responds to, recent pleas for a retrieval of character-based approaches to education in public, political and academic discourse (the remainder of this section); to introduce some of the concepts that are typically aired in this discourse (the second section); to expand upon what characterises a genuinely Aristotelian approach to character education and makes it appealing (the third section); to acknowledge what its main putative shortcomings may be and how I aim to rectify them (the fourth section); and finally to offer some personal considerations that have motivated my journey (the final section). In my view, the best way to argue for the pros of a position is often to explore its potential cons – the actual or possible counter-arguments that have been or can be lodged against it – and then try to respond to them. This is very much the method adopted in ensuing chapters, after laying out the basics of Aristotelian character education in this one.

As indicated above, a groundswell in favour of character seems to be evident among policy makers and the general public on both sides of the Atlantic. For example, in December 2012, two reports were published: one by the Central Bureau of Investigation (the UK’s top lobbying business organisation), based on discussions with business leaders, teachers, school leaders and academics, which argues that through its narrow focus on achievement as measured by grades in academic subjects, the education system is failing the majority of children (CBI, 2012). The second, by Russell Sojourner, Director of the US Leadership, Development, Character Education Partnership, documents the widespread call for a more character-based focus on teaching. The paper even generates a sense of anxiety that if this is not comprehensively achieved, social crisis will ensue (Sojourner, 2012).

Yet the aim of cultivating character in schools continues to be described as controversial (see e.g. Evans, 2012). For those unfamiliar with the historical and often politically partisan discourse on character and virtues, the controversial nature of this aim may seem baffling. After all, the Final Report of the Riots Communities and Victims Panel (2012), published in the wake of the August 2011 UK riots – a report which inter alia recommended new school initiatives to help children build character – seemed to have been warmly received by the media and the general public. Nagging doubts and suspicions remain, however, in academic circles and among politicians on both the ‘left’ and ‘right’, and I address some of the most persistent and ‘myth-like’ in Chapter 2. Those enduring ‘myths’ make it even more surprising why so many politicians, in the UK at least, are now willing to jump on the character bandwagon. A quick look at recent manifestos and speeches by spokespeople of the two leading political parties in the UK indicates, at least at the time of writing (in late 2014), that in the next general elections, ‘character’ will feature high on educational agendas across party lines (although, admittedly, it seems to be understood more in Toughian than Aristotelian ways). Most often cited is evidence showing that when students enter the rough and tumble of the workplace and ‘the real world’, school grades seem to have only modest value in predicting how well they will do in their work, let alone in predicting their general well-being. An optimistic view also tends to be showcased about how character can both be taught directly in the classroom and conveyed more indirectly (or ‘caught’) through a positive school ethos.

Parents concur with this message. In a recent UK poll of 1000 parents, nearly nine-in-ten agreed that schools should develop character rather than just deliver academic results. Ninety-five per cent of parents agreed that it is possible to teach children values and shape their characters in positive ways, and 84 per cent believed that it is the teacher’s role to encourage good morals and values in their students. Importantly, that minority of parents who expressed doubts or disagreed did so not because they thought grades matter more than character, but because they considered themselves better equipped to instil character than teachers (Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, 2013). This is by no means the first poll to show overwhelming parental support for character education. Yet parents may be less than apt in getting their view across, as children and teachers often seem to think that, when push comes to shove, parents only care about grades.

One can only make an educated guess as to what has motivated the recent public and political turn towards character. Below is an unsystematic collection of some possible (but by no means exhaustive) explanations:

• A perceived increase in youth depression and social disaffection, culminating in events like the London 2011 riots, indicates problems that many commentators interpret as a sign of moral decline in need of rectification.
• Internationalisation and multiculturalism have created a need for cosmopolitan values.
• More secularisation and individualisation (witness the so-called ‘me’-generation) have formed the perception of a spiritual void or a ‘value gap’ that needs to be filled.
• More female employment has led to increased demands on schools to help ‘bring up’ children.
• Finally, the 2008 financial crisis was a wake-up call for many theorists and politicians, who viewed it as being caused more by general character flaws than financial bad judgement.

But what do public-policy makers really understand by the magic bullet of ‘character’? In the corridors of Whitehall, at least, it tends to be referred to – somewhat euphemistically – by the labels of ‘soft skills’ or ‘non-cognitive competences’, but neither label is particularly well suited. The so-called ‘soft skills’ do not seem ‘softer’ in terms of being easier to administer or learn than their allegedly ‘harder’ counterparts. Moreover, what is being talked about here, even on Tough’s amoral view, are surely not raw feelings and desires, but rather certain attitudes based on complex self-beliefs and beliefs about the world. These are anything but non-cognitive! For example, self-confidence is not just a non-cognitive feeling, like a toothache, but involves ‘cognitions’ (beliefs, judgements) about what future tasks people think they can master. Perhaps, then, ‘non-cognitive’ is simply meant to denote ‘non-academic’ – but this is a different notion altogether. Anthony Seldon (2012), the colourful ex-headteacher of Wellington College, and some of his colleagues both in the independent and state school sector have long argued that there is nothing mysterious about this magic bullet, and that it should simply be called what the layperson knows it as, namely ‘character’.

This is, however, the right juncture to revisit Paul Tough’s work, for Tough has been pivotal in promoting the language of ‘non-cognitive skills’ for character – derived from the work of economist James Heckman (Tough, 2013: xvi–xxi). Tough is particularly excited about the focus on a particular subset of character skills in the so-called KIPP (‘Knowledge-Is-Power-Program’) charter schools in the United States and how this focus has transformed the lives of disadvantaged kids in terms of their future study and career prospects, by enabling them to ‘climb the mountain to college’ (2013: 50). The main skills in question are grit/resilience and self-confidence. Tough is impressed by the way in which character has here been severed from ‘finger-wagging morality’ and how the new approach is ‘fundamentally devoid of value judgment’ (2013: 60; ‘value judgment’ must mean ‘moral judgement’ in this context, for clearly grit and self-confidence are values!). Tough does not doubt that some schools may benefit from a focus on the moral features of character; those for privileged kids who already come to school equipped with the necessary psychological tools to do well. However, for those who lack these basic skills, schools that concentrate on the performance aspects of character will be more useful (2013: 78–81).

Tough rests his theory of two facets of character – ‘moral character’ and ‘performance character’, between which schools can and must choose according to the habitus of their students – on a document by the Character Education Partnership (2008) explicating and defending ‘performance values’. However, Tough seems to have misunderstood this document completely. Its remit is not to suggest a bifurcation of – let alone a dichotomy between – performance values and moral values, nor is there any hint in it about schools being able, with impunity, to divorce performance from morality and focus only on the former. Quite the contrary, the document repeatedly stresses that moral values must ‘remain foundational’ in a ‘life of character’ (p. 1), and while the cultivation of performance matters in addition to moral coaching, performance only has value in so far as it complements moral aspirations and makes them more serviceable.

From an Aristotelian perspective there is a deeper worry here than whether or not Tough has read the document in question correctly or how useful a certain programme of character education is in getting kids into college. To be sure, resilience helps us bounce back from negative experiences and self-confidence makes us more efficacious in achieving our ends. The deeper worry is, though, that those ‘virtues’ can be positively dangerous if they are untethered from moral constraints. The missing element in the character make-up of the ‘banksters’ in the run-up to the financial crisis, or the average heinous dictator, is clearly not a higher level of resilience and self-confidence. What we want to instil in kids is not the grit of the repeat offender. The truth is, as the proverb has it, that the higher the ape climbs, the more he shows his tail. If the choice is between an immoral high climber and a moral low climber, the Aristotelian will opt for the latter. This is not just an obscure Aristotelian observation. In his debunking diagnosis of the KIPP ideology and Tough’s celebration of it, Jeffrey Snyder (2014) does not invoke any Aristotelian philosophy. Simply, he makes the point that ‘when your character education scheme fails to distinguish between doctors and terrorists, heroes and villains, it would appear to have a basic flaw’. For Snyder, the basic flaw lies in the vulgar sense of ‘climbing’ that is surreptitiously assumed here: ‘Character is treated as a kind of fuel that will help propel students through school and up the career ladder.’ Virtue has been demoted to a calculated, instrumental climbing device and is no longer ‘its own reward’. It is almost as if the Gradgrinds from Dickens’s Hard Times have returned.

Again we are not talking rocket science. Similar concerns were raised by the great seventeenth century educational reformer Comenius when he warned of the ‘unhallowed separation’ that follows if morality and efficiency are not ‘bound together as if by an adamantine chain. How wretched is the teaching that does not lead to virtue […]!’ And in much the same vein as Snyder a few hundred years later, Comenius remarks: ‘He who makes progress in knowledge but not in morality […] recedes rather than advances’ (1907: 74). Paradoxically, Paul Tough – the writer who has done more than most to give ‘character’ a new public profile and stifle some of the obsession with mere ‘academics’ – severs this ‘adamantine chain’ and buys into much of the underlying rhetoric of his supposed adversaries, a rhetoric implicitly motivated by a view of schools ‘not as communities or cultures in which children can be nurtured to some kind of moral and spiritual growth, but as factories or assembly lines with respect to which the dominant value is productivity’ (Carr, 2012: 11). This is why I wonder whether Tough has done the cause of character education more harm than good. What we need in order to replace the one-sided focus on league tables and high-stakes testing are educational institutions that foreground alternative values (cf. Sockett, 2012), not simply institutions that have devised new ways of harnessing grades through ‘character’. As Tough – himself a college dropout and a pretty successful one at that – should well know, getting into college is not the be-all and end-all of a flourishing life.

I realise that some readers m...