Intellectualist Aristotelian Character Education: An Outline and Assessment
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| Title: | Intellectualist Aristotelian Character Education: An Outline and Assessment |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Ferkany, Matt, Creed, Benjamin |
| Source: | Educational Theory. Dec 2014 64(6):567-587. |
| Availability: | Wiley-Blackwell. 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148. Tel: 800-835-6770; Tel: 781-388-8598; Fax: 781-388-8232; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 21 |
| Publication Date: | 2014 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Evaluative |
| Descriptors: | Values Education, Intelligence, Philosophy |
| DOI: | 10.1111/edth.12084 |
| ISSN: | 0013-2004 |
| Abstract: | Since its resurgence in the 1990s, character education has been subject to a bevy of common criticisms, including that it is didactic and crudely behaviorist; premised on a faulty trait psychology; victim-blaming; culturally imperialist, racist, religious, or ideologically conservative; and many other horrible things besides. Matt Ferkany and Benjamin Creed examine an intellectualist Aristotelian form of character education that has gained popularity recently and find that it is largely not susceptible to such criticisms. In this form, character education is education for practically intelligent virtue, or the intrinsically motivated and psychically harmonious exercise of robust and stable traits involving practical intelligence conducive to individual and collective human flourishing. |
| Abstractor: | As Provided |
| Entry Date: | 2014 |
| Accession Number: | EJ1046490 |
| Database: | ERIC |
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| FullText | Links: – Type: pdflink Url: https://content.ebscohost.com/cds/retrieve?content=AQICAHj0k_4E0hTGH8RJwT4gCJyBsGNe_WN95AvKlDbXJGqwxwHgFA7-wr3JFS4L85gnpC8JAAAA4jCB3wYJKoZIhvcNAQcGoIHRMIHOAgEAMIHIBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwHgYJYIZIAWUDBAEuMBEEDJSAGXBHNJqr_fiJngIBEICBmqs2nj2CS4jDkH1-ulU7E2W4vo-3Nap1Kk4MR_LsXFEy76nBaP3Egma_zJ_6h7wNUpPVXF9vc9iTU4LyL5z3ooXSG65tZQWiyxwI9k4YdJ1jGMwVdMk4h8_X3Y5dh5P43-w-fIVb8DL-tvwYdluGn_GBXg3PoGUBqtDsfIl4b8HDLW3SkdIQYYz7-keCEc0UmSQp0lHrWQP5G8E= Text: Availability: 1 Value: <anid>AN0099710115;ety01dec.14;2018Jul06.12:31;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0099710115-1">Intellectualist Aristotelian Character Education: An Outline and Assessment. </title> <p>Since its resurgence in the 1990s, character education has been subject to a bevy of common criticisms, including that it is didactic and crudely behaviorist; premised on a faulty trait psychology; victim‐blaming; culturally imperialist, racist, religious, or ideologically conservative; and many other horrible things besides. Matt Ferkany and Benjamin Creed examine an intellectualist Aristotelian form of character education that has gained popularity recently and find that it is largely not susceptible to such criticisms. In this form, character education is education for practically intelligent virtue, or the intrinsically motivated and psychically harmonious exercise of robust and stable traits involving practical intelligence conducive to individual and collective human flourishing.</p> <p>Imagine that Jones has been asked to join a committee tasked with setting the mission, curriculum, and pedagogical principles for a new public school. To help start this process, the committee is presented with a draft that its members may choose to adopt outright, add to, or build upon. Among the draft mission options, Jones finds enabling students to lead flourishing lives, exercise good practical judgment, and generally become the best persons they can be intellectually, morally, civically, and in their own pursuits. Coupled with this, she finds various options for suffusing the curriculum, classrooms, and general school climate with activities, talk, and messages intended to make the school's value mission explicit and its pursuit a living practice. The suggestions here are varied but range from the familiar (teachers should explicitly incorporate engagement with mission values into their teaching) to the novel and rare (teaching intellectual virtues like open‐mindedness and love of knowledge, requiring music or art, or limiting sport options to those that are only intrapersonally competitive, like swimming).</p> <p>What weight should such suggestions have on Jones's thinking? To those who have not previously encountered them, they may seem quite innocuous. What school shouldn't have students' flourishing, practical judgment, and excellence as (at least part of) its mission? And how else should schools accomplish that mission besides mixing direct instruction in those values with a school culture that expresses their importance and makes a living practice of realizing them? But in fact these two suggestions form the core of an increasingly popular form of character education, a eudaimonistic form grounded in Aristotelian virtue ethics, virtue epistemology, and positive psychology. In this form, character education is education for practically intelligent virtue, or the intrinsically motivated and psychically harmonious exercise of robust and stable traits involving practical intelligence conducive to individual and collective human flourishing.[<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref1">1</reflink>] Because on this approach virtues are understood teleologically, as aiming for flourishing, character education so conceived is also intended as a form of education for living. Typically, this means emphasis is placed on virtues needed for excellent individual functioning and social cooperation, such as the four cardinal virtues (justice, temperance, practical intelligence, and courage), empathy and care, and practical intelligence and associated intellectual virtues (like curiosity, open‐mindedness, and intellectual humility).</p> <p>Since its resurgence in the 1990s, character education has been subject to a bevy of common criticisms, including that it is didactic and crudely behaviorist, psychologically implausible, victim blaming, culturally imperialist, racist, religious, or ideologically conservative, and many other horrible things besides. This intellectualist Aristotelian form of character education (or IACE), we believe, is not guilty of such charges.[<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref2">2</reflink>] To that extent, Jones has good reason to interpret the suggestions she encounters in an intellectualist Aristotelian way and to build on them in her planning. In making our case, we first outline the core ideas of IACE as we understand it, then argue that a range of stock criticisms of character education do not apply to IACE so understood. We then address two more serious criticisms and conclude with some further outstanding issues.</p> <hd id="AN0099710115-2">Intellectualist Aristotelian Character Education</hd> <p>“Character education” is a term of art that can mean (and has meant) different things in different hands. IACE involves a few fundamental ideas: that good character consists of the psychologically harmonious exercise of practically intelligent virtue (including moral, civic, and personal virtues), that such virtue is fundamental to living well, and that virtue is “caught” by active participation in a community of virtue as much as learned via direct instruction.[<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref3">3</reflink>] As such IACE is committed to the familiar eudaimonistic idea in which virtues are traits that humans need in order to flourish. At a deeper level, and barring supplementation, it is also committed to the idea that right action is uncodifiable, that is, no single principle or set of ordered principles for right action can be a complete guide to how we ought to live our lives and what we ought to do in all situations. What is right in any given situation will simply be whatever is virtuous. While in most cases this will probably conform to some rule of thumb (for instance, honesty is the best policy), it will take the deployment of practical intelligence to decide whatever this is in each case.</p> <p>To further elaborate, consider Alan Lockwood's claim that “character education is any school‐directed program designed to shape directly and systematically the behavior of young people by teaching explicitly the nonrelativistic values believed to directly bring about good behavior.”[<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref4">4</reflink>] There are a number of ideas here: Character education is (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref5">1</reflink>) school‐directed; it is (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref6">2</reflink>) designed to directly and systematically shape behavior, (<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref7">3</reflink>) particularly the behavior of the young; and it does so via (<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref8">4</reflink>) explicit instruction in (<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref9">5</reflink>) nonrelativistic values that (<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref10">6</reflink>) are believed to “directly bring about good behavior.” Though IACE satisfies some of these conditions, this definition does not well characterize it.</p> <p>First, explicit instruction in the virtues (naming, describing, and discussing them, and the like) has an important but limited role in IACE.[<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref11">5</reflink>] It is a commonplace of Aristotelian moral education that virtue is learned, first, by making a habit of virtuous behavior, or doing what virtuous persons do. This habituation is needed partly because virtue is a practical excellence, the sort humans tend not to learn without, well, practice.[<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref12">6</reflink>] But it is also needed because without the experience it provides, the learner has no firsthand insight into the connection between eudaimonia and the virtues, and thus cannot be moved to conform his or her behavior to virtue by appeal to reason. That I can benefit my friend by doing something (X), I can see as in itself a reason to do X only if I can see how this action will benefit my friend and also understand why intrinsic friendship (friendship for its own sake and not merely for pleasure or advantage) is a good. Intellectualist Aristotelian educators wholeheartedly endorse this rule and endorse techniques broadly intended to give the learner (a) practice exercising the virtues, (b) some experience of the delights and attractions of their exercise, and (c) some conscious understanding of what the virtues are, when they are needed, and why they are good. Direct instruction plays the lesser role here insofar as experiential insight into the good of virtue, as well as practice in it, is fundamental.</p> <p>Second, and maybe most importantly, IACE is not designed to directly and systematically shape behavior. It is designed to shape character, or Aristotelian hexeis, which consists of stable suites of patterned cognitive, affective, and behavioral states, or “traits.” While good behavior is included and matters in this endeavor, the distinction between the character goal and the behavior goal is not, for a number of reasons, mere hair splitting. One reason is that behaviors, or behavioral dispositions, are not Aristotelian virtues. I have a disposition to jerk my leg when tapped on the knee, but this is not a virtue. Because they concern actions and states connected to happiness for which we can sometimes be praised or blamed, Aristotelian virtues are features of the “soul” or psyche, and particularly those in which cognition, affect, and desire — the will, in other words — are engaged.[<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref13">7</reflink>] Second, our wills can be more or less well aligned with the practical demands of virtue. How virtuous we are partly depends on this alignment. For Aristotle, being fully virtuous consists in the greatest possible alignment of the will with the practical demands of virtue, with continence and incontinence (and various phases of what might be called “pre‐incontinence”) constituting lesser stages in which (a) we must first wrestle with ourselves to do right (continence), (b) we cannot be counted on to do right even though we know what it is (incontinence), or (c) we do not even know what is right (pre‐incontinence).[<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref14">8</reflink>]</p> <p>Third, as mentioned previously, intellectualist Aristotelians deny that right action can be codified in a neat, tidy way. Consequently, no simple value or ordered set of values can be imparted to learners that would “directly bring about good behavior,” which distinguishes IACE from Lockwood's sixth criterion. What virtuous Aristotelian agents need is not a ready disposition to behave in some canned way when prompted, for example, to tell the truth whenever presented with an opportunity to lie. What they need is the discernment and judgment to decide what is required in the circumstances given the competing demands at play, for instance, what to do when standing on principle has serious costs for others. IACE is ultimately intended to bring about the practical intelligence through which individuals are able to do this.[<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref15">9</reflink>]</p> <p>The uncodifiability principle does not entail that just anything goes. Grounded as it is in a eudaimonistic account of the virtues, IACE is a naturalistic form of ethical objectivism. The moral properties of a thing — and particularly the virtuousness of a person's character, it is claimed — are objective, natural properties. A person's qualities are virtues or vices not because they are valued in his or her culture, nor because we (or some ideal observer) feel good (or bad) about them or like (or dislike) them, nor because they belong to a strict adherent to the Categorical Imperative or the principle of utility; qualities are deemed virtues or vices on the basis of whether they are or are not conducive to the person's flourishing in common with his or her fellow human beings.[<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref16">10</reflink>] Whether a given trait generally is a virtue must be settled by empirical study of how well people having it fare in life, such as the work currently being conducted by positive psychologists.[<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref17">11</reflink>] Insofar as this work shows that certain traits of flourishing persons are recognized as virtues cross‐culturally, it supports the eudaimonistic sentiment that there are some common human virtues. In this, IACE is aligned with Lockwood's claim that character education involves a commitment to nonrelativistic values. These nonrelativistic values are just the virtues as revealed through empirical investigation of the good life.</p> <p>This brings us to a final few points of contrast. While IACE is often discussed as one model for school‐directed moral education (including that offered by public schools), IACE can and does take place outside of schools. Children are habituated to virtue (or vice, as the case may be) by their parents and family, by friends, and by the shape of the broader social world. For this reason, some urge that school‐directed IACE be undertaken in collaboration with parents.[<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref18">12</reflink>] Others, such as Randall Curren, have argued that this grounds a need for state provision of an equal education in virtue for all citizens.[<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref19">13</reflink>] Insofar as certain important virtues, such as self‐confidence, have a basis in neurophysiological conditions formed in infancy and early childhood, some very important character learning may take place prior to schooling.[<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref20">14</reflink>] But much will take place after schooling, too. The goal of IACE — practically intelligent virtue — if it is achievable at all, is probably not easily achieved and is learned over the course of a lifetime. For one thing, the height of its achievement is the (practically intelligent) unity of the head, heart, and hands that distinguishes the virtuous person from the merely continent or incontinent person. While scholars may disagree about the alignment of these states with stages of human development, incontinence and continence are probably common states for fully mature adults.[<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref21">15</reflink>] Practical intelligence is also itself a complex of other virtues needed for practical deliberation and decision making, including comprehension, or the ability to read one's situation correctly; “sense” in assessing what is reasonable or unreasonable; nous, or the ability to grasp which particular actions are required to achieve general ends (for example, trust or generosity) in particular circumstances; and the cleverness needed to identify efficient means to one's ends.[<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref22">16</reflink>] These capacities surely take a lifetime to acquire and can be continually honed by experience and continued study of virtue.</p> <hd id="AN0099710115-3">Perennial Criticisms of Character Education</hd> <p>Since its resurgence in the 1990s, character education has been subject to numerous criticisms:</p> <p>It is didactic and crudely behaviorist (call this the behaviorist criticism).[<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref23">17</reflink>]</p> <p>It presupposes the existence of psychological features, or character traits, that either do not exist or that do not predict moral behavior anyway (the situationist criticism).[<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref24">18</reflink>]</p> <p>It is insensitive to developmental differences between younger and older children (the developmental criticism).[<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref25">19</reflink>]</p> <p>It is not action‐guiding and fails to teach moral reasoning and decision making (the decision‐making criticism).[<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref26">20</reflink>]</p> <p>Its deployment in urban schools is a victim‐blaming solution to problems urban children face (the victim‐blaming criticism).[<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref27">21</reflink>]</p> <p>It is culturally imperialist, racist, religious, or ideologically conservative because it valorizes a particular set of (mostly WASP‐ish) values as objective human virtues, whereas what counts as a virtue, or as a vice, varies cross‐culturally (the cultural imperialism criticism).[<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref28">22</reflink>]</p> <p>Several of these criticisms have some basis in conceptions like Lockwood's and quasi‐Aristotelian perspectives advanced in the 1990s. By defending the need for character education on grounds that problems such as youth violence, teen pregnancy, and peer cruelty are worsening, William Kilpatrick, Edward Wynne, Kevin Ryan, and Thomas Lickona imply that youth (or their parents and teachers anyway), not something about society, are to blame for the problems they face.[<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref29">23</reflink>] In developing their views about how we teach good character, some of these writers also interpret Aristotle's idea that becoming virtuous involves habitually behaving virtuously in what seems like a crudely behaviorist way.[<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref30">24</reflink>] While relegating moral reasoning to the backseat, they extol the value of more didactic techniques like display cases, the study of morally significant literature, and systems of rewards and punishments. Wynne and Ryan, for instance, write that a major “cause of discipline problems is a lack of incentives, or rewards or punishments, to encourage pupils to behave correctly.”[<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref31">25</reflink>] Consequently, they endorse extensive use of both punishments for bad behavior (including “moderate corporal punishment” for older children) and rewards for good behavior. They also maintain that the aim of moral education in schools is “to transmit to pupils the community's best values and ethical ideals.”[<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref32">26</reflink>] They endorse as part of that mission that teachers (a) foster love of the good by using literature, role playing, biographies, and display cases to celebrate heroic historical figures; and (b) foster moral knowledge and action by engaging in a laudatory sort of “preaching,” or talk in which they “remind [students] what is right, and in a firm but kindly manner, tell them to go and do it.”[<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref33">27</reflink>]</p> <p>The writers of the 1990s movement should not be read — as some critics seem to read them — as speaking with one voice.[<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref34">28</reflink>] They disagree about important matters, including, for example, the use of incentives (something about which Lickona recommends caution), and also about the importance of moral reasoning (something about which Kilpatrick is more skeptical than others).[<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref35">29</reflink>] Many understand good character in terms of knowing the good, loving the good, and doing the good, a conception not too distant from the intellectualist Aristotelian's.[<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref36">30</reflink>] Still, it is not impossibly difficult to see how critics could get the impression that there is a united movement here that reduces to a few dubious or simplistic ideas vulnerable to the perennial criticisms of character education.[<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref37">31</reflink>] Specifically, these boil down to the notions that (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref38">1</reflink>) social problems are grounded in a decline in virtue, particularly virtues of respect for others and virtues of taking personal responsibility for one's own fate; and (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref39">2</reflink>) these virtues are behavioral dispositions and all that is needed to fix both the kids and social problems like urban poverty and inner‐city violence is to teach children about the virtues, didactically extol their value, and, if all else fails, reward and punish as needed. It looks, in short, like Lockwood's conception of character education presented as a principal means of ameliorating social problems.</p> <hd id="AN0099710115-4">Spurious Criticisms of IACE</hd> <p>However innocent or guilty 1990s‐style character education is of the charges leveled in these stock criticisms, many simply do not apply to IACE. Any poorly implemented ideal of moral education can be (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref40">1</reflink>) victim blaming, (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref41">2</reflink>) a poor guide to action and useless for moral reasoning and decision making, (<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref42">3</reflink>) developmentally insensitive, and (<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref43">4</reflink>) crudely behaviorist. Properly implemented, IACE should be none of these.</p> <hd id="AN0099710115-5">IACE Should Not Be Victim Blaming</hd> <p>No advocate of this approach that we know of maintains that the purpose of IACE is to correct youth misconduct or urban social problems, and at least one organization explicitly denies that this is its aim.[<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref44">32</reflink>] Intellectualist Aristotelian educators who carefully think these issues through probably should reject this idea. IACE is ultimately intended to enable individuals to live well, not to fix society through fixing the kids, and it is intended to support individual flourishing by promoting excellence in pursuit of the best things in life and the natural learning effects of practice in the exercise of virtue. Intellectualist Aristotelians do endorse a perfectionist notion of flourishing in which being a good person, living well, and enjoying a just and prosperous social environment are tightly interconnected. According to them, one cannot live well without being a good person, and being a good person of course contributes to the creation of a desirable social world. If it is coherent, IACE should have the dual effect of enabling individuals to flourish and contributing to the creation of a just, thriving society.[<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref45">33</reflink>]</p> <p>However, if for writers of the 1990s a just, prosperous society depends on whether individuals have the virtues, for intellectualist Aristotelians the relationship between individual goodness, flourishing, and the good society is reciprocal and interdependent. Individuals cannot flourish without an environment that supports the exercise of virtue, and such an environment cannot be sustained without virtuous, flourishing persons. This is partly encapsulated in the idea that “character is caught.” Becoming virtuous requires a good social environment (inside and outside of school), and it does not come out of sheer force of will, for example, to resist temptations or check one's baser impulses (that's mere continence). It comes out of having had opportunities to experience the best things in life — that is, activities and forms of association requiring the virtues — and coming to appreciate their attractions. While different accounts of flourishing or the virtues will yield different accounts of what these “best things” are, social support in terms of the external resources required to create such experiences will likely be quite extensive, as will the redistributive implications if these opportunities are to reach all citizens equally (as they should in public schools).[<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref46">34</reflink>] An education rich in opportunities for (in no particular order) intellectual engagement, sport, creative activity, friendship, and family involvement is not cheap, nor can space be made for it when learners' lives are dominated by work, discrimination, or oppression. Families need resources in terms of time and knowledge for involvement in children's education, and the school curriculum must be more expansive than preparation for testing in reading and math. Given these considerations, far from being a substitute for addressing the systemic problems the urban and rural poor face, IACE as a model for character education in the public schools is not likely to be possible without simultaneously addressing those problems.</p> <hd id="AN0099710115-6">IACE Is Action‐Guiding and Should Not Ignore Moral Reasoning and Decision Making</hd> <p>The revival of character education in the 1990s was inspired partly by the perceived failure of the cognitive‐developmental approaches that preceded it to impart substantive moral values and to educate for other aspects of mature moral agency, such as moral perception, empathy, and moral resolve. As a consequence, some early advocates of character education, such as Kilpatrick, tended to describe character education as an alternative to cognitive developmentalism and to dichotomize their respective aims.[<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref47">35</reflink>]</p> <p>This dichotomization is anathema to IACE. Practical intelligence is central to intellectualist Aristotelian virtue (hence the name) and this involves reasoning from principles. Sense and nous, for instance, especially involve being able to determine how general principles, such as the Golden Rule or “Be honest,” apply given the particulars of one's situation. It is true that intellectualist Aristotelians deny that any one general principle (or ordered set of principles) can be a reliable guide to right action in all circumstances and intellectualist Aristotelianism is not action‐guiding in this sense. But this is a strength of the view. Strict adherence to any such principle would inevitably lead to erroneous moral judgments. Intellectualist Aristotelian virtue ethics is action‐guiding in a different and apparently superior way. It provides us with a developmental trajectory for our moral growth and a model of the virtuous person whose qualities then set a standard to which we can hold ourselves accountable. Study of this model can advance our understanding of the kinds of goods and principles that should figure in our thinking and of their relationship to living well. Training in the virtues then shapes our decision‐making capacities in ways that sharpen our ability to reason from principles, but also to do other things absolutely crucial to good judgment, such as detect the morally salient features of our situation, exercise foresight, and engage others empathetically.[<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref48">36</reflink>] IACE not only requires promoting the sort of reasoning abilities cognitive developmentalists promote, but promoting important others that they ignore.</p> <hd id="AN0099710115-7">IACE Should Not Be Developmentally Insensitive</hd> <p>Intellectualist Aristotelian virtue does not consist of mere behavioral dispositions to which persons of all ages can and must be trained; rather, it consists of practical intelligence and harmony between the head, heart, and hands. These in turn require developed capacities for sensitivity to the morally salient features of one's situation, for regulation of the emotions, for reasoning and judgment, and all the other components of practical intelligence. Learners of different ages are at different stages of readiness to learn these and need different sorts of training, support, and instruction. Throughout all stages of advancement, and indeed in the maintenance of virtue itself, some routine practice, habituation, and training might be required. But this is just what we should expect of practical learning. Just as we would not expect to become and remain good basketball players or pianists without habitual practice, neither should we expect to become and remain good persons without habitually doing good things.</p> <hd id="AN0099710115-8">IACE Should Not Be Behaviorist</hd> <p>From the preceding discussion, it should be clearer how IACE is not crudely behaviorist. A proper intellectualist Aristotelian moral education must foster understanding, reasoning, emotional attunement and regulation, and a love of virtue for its own sake. The heart of the technique is to give the learner experience both with exercising the virtues through participating in worthwhile activities and with reflecting on them in ways that facilitate insight into the pleasures and attractions of virtue. Again, throughout this process there may be a need for the sort of continued routine practice and habituation through which we bring our emotions and wills into line with virtue. Incentives may be helpful here, particularly for very young learners. But the aim is not mere virtue‐conforming behavior, but progress in moving from stages of pre‐incontinence and moral ignorance to incontinence, from incontinence to continence and self‐control, and from continence to practically intelligent virtue. Incentives that are not helpful to that purpose have no place in IACE.</p> <p>IACE faithfully implemented should not be victim blaming, developmentally insensitive, useless for decision making, or crudely behaviorist. Still, it is a form of objectivist ethical naturalism involving a trait psychology. Does this make it culturally imperialist and psychologically implausible?</p> <hd id="AN0099710115-9">The Cultural Imperialism Criticism</hd> <p>As a form of ethical objectivism in which some character traits, such as honesty, justice, courage, and modesty, are held to be virtues universally or transculturally, IACE may strike some as threateningly imperialist.[<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref49">37</reflink>] Relativist critics of character education, in particular, may worry that approaches avowedly committed to putatively objective virtues run the risk of merely imposing sectarian values on individuals or communities to whom they are foreign. Historically, character education in the United States has been culturally bounded. B. Edward McClellan has shown how sectarian values — and Protestant religious values in particular — informed the culture and curriculum of early American public education.[<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref50">38</reflink>] More recently, Alfie Kohn has documented their continued influence on character education programming in the 1990s, much of which emphasized values related to hard work, obedience, deference to adult authority, and patriotism.[<reflink idref="bib39" id="ref51">39</reflink>]</p> <p>Certain character education programs sharing some (though not all) features of IACE — or else grounded in similar theoretical thinking — seem to be culturally bounded along the same lines. These include the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) schools and some schools the Jubilee Centre for Character and Values highlights as models of effective character education. “Leadership” and “resilience,” for instance, are key values of the King's Leadership Academy and King Edward's School.[<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref52">40</reflink>] Similarly, KIPP schools highlight seven “character strengths,” including zest, grit, two forms of self‐control (or temperance, really), optimism, gratitude, social intelligence, and curiosity. A central rationale for highlighting these character strengths is that, according to research by Angela Duckworth, they — grit and self‐control (temperance) particularly — are better predictors of various sorts of life success, such as graduating in challenging urban high school environments, retention in the U.S. Special Forces, and better academic performance, than other factors, like IQ or standardized test scores.[<reflink idref="bib41" id="ref53">41</reflink>] Granting the very great importance of graduating, performing well academically, and having the stuff to survive in a difficult career path, the longstanding motto of KIPP schools — “Work Hard. Be Nice.” — does little to dispel the notion that KIPP's understanding of the good of its core virtues is as parochial as critics of character education fear. Excepting perhaps zest (which seems more like a personality trait anyway), and also gratitude and social intelligence, seemingly missing from KIPP's list are virtues more obviously associated with other arguably important goods (besides being a nice, successful worker bee), such as leisure time spent in respectful and caring relationship with others, creativity, commitment to social justice, or stewardship of nature.</p> <p>If KIPP does indeed make a priority of worker bee virtues, and if there is a fault in doing so (an open question that we return to later in the essay), a fault in IACE, we submit, is that it is at least somewhat ambiguous on this point. On the one hand, the eudaimonist criterion for virtue can be interpreted as positing an indirect relationship between virtue and flourishing. On this account, virtue is one component of a flourishing life realized alongside and through the pursuit for its own sake of the other intrinsically worthwhile goods. By way of this interpretation, IACE can be construed as suggesting that the virtues of good worker bees should be fostered but not allowed to eclipse virtues that might compete with making a priority of work, such as friendship, justice, and creativity. On the other hand, the eudaimonist criterion can be given a very perfectionist interpretation, one in which the human good consists of the life of excellence, morally, civically, and personally. By way of this interpretation, IACE itself can be construed as suggesting that the virtues of hard work and manners are the highest priorities. Being the best one can be certainly requires grit and temperance, whereas it is not hard to imagine how the pursuit of being the best could conflict with the pursuit for its own sake of leisure time spent in respectful and caring friendship, creative activity, and the like. Moreover, by way of this extreme perfectionist interpretation, the politics of IACE can come to seem well aligned with conservative — and especially narrowly economic — conceptions of the purposes of education, that is, those in which preparing students for college or the job market are the highest priorities.</p> <p>We do not know how to resolve this interpretive issue, though we favor the first interpretation and believe that other intellectualist Aristotelians would too. For them, it is an empirical fact, not a conceptual one, that we cannot live well without the virtues. It is also unclear how much of an issue there really is here. Maintaining close personal relationships, reading Shakespeare, learning to play the cello, fighting for social justice, and other such highly worthwhile activities also require grit and temperance. Schools that highlight the role those virtues play in academic achievement and labor market competitiveness may do so as much to pacify fretful parents and governments as from any belief in the overwhelming importance of the economic aims of education (compared to other aims, such as justice, creativity, and so on).</p> <p>Setting this issue aside, though, disagreement about the virtues is limited and whether or not any approach to moral education is culturally imperialist is independent of whether it is grounded in ethical relativism or objectivism. IACE also has many of the perceived advantages of relativism and, if anything, is not objective enough in our view. The rest of this section elaborates these points.</p> <p>First, as just noted, disagreement about the virtues and their application is limited. Even if we cannot spell out exactly what honesty or courage consists of, it is very unlikely these things mean something entirely different in each culture. There is, for one thing, growing empirical evidence to the contrary.[<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref54">42</reflink>] Virtue ethicists, including those endorsing quite different theories of the virtues, agree on a range of core virtues, including justice, fairness, compassion, care, integrity, responsibility, honesty, trustworthiness, respect, and self‐respect.[<reflink idref="bib43" id="ref55">43</reflink>] What's deeply controversial among them is not which traits are virtues, but why they are virtues. This point is further supported by James Leming's review of ten character education programs: he found that a subset of these virtues — including care, respect, and responsibility — appears on almost all lists.[<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref56">44</reflink>]</p> <p>Arguments by counterexample (against virtue ethical objectivism) are weak, too. Consider two putative counterexamples from Tianlong Yu. One, concerning honesty in medical counsel, is that few Chinese doctors by comparison to American doctors “would be completely honest and tell a cancer patient that he/she has cancer” because “in China cancer is still widely viewed as incurable.”[<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref57">45</reflink>] Another concerns the meaning of courage. Young Chinese revolutionaries destroyed traditional works of art during the Cultural Revolution and were then considered courageous. They now are recognized as criminal. These examples miss their mark. If, as Yu seems to suggest, Chinese doctors do not fully disclose the facts to their patients because they believe that cancer is incurable, then this difference is not rooted in a disagreement about the meaning of honesty at all, but in disagreement about whether cancer is or is not curable. Similarly, that we now view the actions of the revolutionaries as recklessly destructive rather than courageous does not show that courage has come to mean something different now. It may show simply that we have learned something about courage and its relation to vices like zealotry or fanaticism: it is these vices, not courage, that are exhibited by destroying traditional works of art in the pursuit of social change.</p> <p>Whether it is culturally imperialist to insert into a community values foreign to (some individuals in) it is also independent of whether those values are grounded in ethical objectivism or relativism. A community in which there is a strong belief in objective moral truth would experience a program grounded in cultural relativism as quite an imposition. This seems to be how some conservative evangelicals have experienced the liberal moral curriculum of the public schools.[<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref58">46</reflink>] Whether they are right to complain, however, is a normative question, and one that a relativist perspective actually seems ill‐suited to answer. Is the imposition unfair, unacceptably disadvantageous to them, mean, or insensitive? In response, the Aristotelian can ask whether the imposition is consistent with virtue or more or less likely to promote their chances of flourishing in kind with others. By contrast it is not clear what the relativist can say besides, “This is (not) how we do things” here, which is arbitrary; no one compelled to live under a foreign scheme of values could accept, “This is how we do things here” as a reason for living with it. In acknowledgment of this arbitrariness, the relativist could propose that communities themselves democratically select the virtues their schools highlight, and in fact this is a solution that some advocates of character education endorse. But that proposal is itself a normative one (and also not sufficient for justice insofar as unjust communities might pick standards oppressive to some of their members). The democratic proposal entails the belief that democracy is the best way to resolve such differences, and in defense of this the relativist seems to be stuck again saying simply, “This is how we do things here.” Not so the Aristotelian, who again can say at least that democratic values are best because, for example, they are most just and do best at enabling us to flourish in kind with others.</p> <p>Skeptics may be suspicious of objective virtue theories for two reasons. One is that the precise demands of the virtues can vary cross‐culturally. In geriarchical cultures, showing respect involves a different set of practices than in non‐geriarchical cultures. Another is that virtues are normative for us, or set an ideal standard that we ought to strive to live up to, and this normativity needs an explanation. For Aristotle, this normativity comes from the fact that virtue expresses the human purpose or function, which is reason. The essentialism of this sort of view is no longer credible, so it may seem that some kind of relativism, such as Alasdair MacIntyre's narrative theory, is the only real option.[<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref59">47</reflink>]</p> <p>These worries do not arise for IACE. IACE is a cosmopolitan view fully compatible with recognizing the considerable scope that exists for local variation in the demands of a virtue given local circumstances or given different strengths in different individuals. It is cosmopolitan in understanding the virtues as traits of flourishing humans, not, say, flourishing Americans or Brits. And it proceeds not from an a priori concept of the human being, but empirically by identifying universal spheres of common human experience, such as sex and friendship, that, as Martha Nussbaum puts it, figure “in more or less any human life, and in which more or less any human being will have to make some choices rather than others, and act in some way rather than some other.”[<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref60">48</reflink>] It then asks what it means to act well and poorly in that sphere. The virtues for each sphere can be given a name, and a “thin account” of each such virtue is that the virtue is whatever it means to act appropriately in that sphere. Universal spheres of concern thus provide “grounding experiences” that can be the basis for dialogue or empirical research in a reasoned search for the best full specification of the virtues for each sphere, for humans generally.</p> <p>It is fully compatible with this approach that the virtues may reasonably vary within a range across traditions in many spheres of life. Cultural variation or individual differences in sexual mores and in the upbringing of children might, for example, support variations in grounding experiences that rationalize different, but equally good approaches to sex and parenting. The virtues and attractions of the nuclear family may differ from those of communal ways of childrearing, though both may be equally serviceable to producing flourishing offspring. Still, there are common realities to human sexuality and reproduction that ground common potentials and common limits in this sphere, many of which should make it unsurprising that, for example, temperance is the traditional virtue relative to sex and love the traditional virtue relative to parenting.</p> <p>This bounded relativity (of Aristotelian intellectualism) is responsible, however, for the troublesome ambiguity of IACE politics. While it is cosmopolitan and responsive to local circumstances, the circumstances of students in the United States, Britain, and other developed nations are circumstances of monetary scarcity driven by global labor market competition. Barring very unlikely changes in how developed nations currently distribute wealth and opportunity, finding gainful employment seems to be crucial to their having any chance of living well, and so then does acquiring some worker bee virtues. Thus, it should not be surprising that schools whose mission includes student flourishing make a priority of such virtues. Moreover if acquiring those virtues presents more of a burden for individuals in certain subcultural groups in these nations, it is hardly clear that it is unjust to impose an education in those virtues upon them; if their good depends on having those virtues, it is hard to see the injustice in helping them to develop those virtues.</p> <p>What perhaps is needed, however, is greater recognition of the trade‐offs involved when worker bee virtues are prioritized, or when the prudential, instrumental value of the virtues is highlighted. After all, even meaningful work — work that is fulfilling and involves the exercise of virtue — has a limited place in a flourishing life. A flaw, we submit, in many current iterations of (quasi) Aristotelian character education is that they equate flourishing and virtue in a way that obscures the fact that a flourishing life does not consist so much in being a high‐achieving, gainfully employed Goody Two‐shoes, but in wholeheartedly valuing and enjoying the best and most important things in life, such as friendship and family, creativity, and justice. In obscuring this fact, the full critical potential of a thoroughgoing IACE is effaced; as we argued earlier, IACE as a model for public schools, if faithfully implemented, should have quite radical implications for school policy.</p> <p>On the flip side, those who criticize character education on cultural imperialist grounds should recognize the instrumental value of the virtues. Training in hard work and manners hardly seems sufficient to promote, for example, the liberation of KIPP's largely urban students, students who, in order to succeed, will have to learn how to negotiate structural imbalances of power and oppression. But not learning the virtues of hard work and manners will not foster success either, so acknowledging this point seems less an argument against character education than one for a merger of character and social justice education. (Perhaps the KIPP motto should be “Work Hard. Be Nice. Fight the Power.”) Insofar as justice is a fundamental component of practically intelligent virtue, IACE should be one version of such a merger.</p> <p>In sum, if there is a shortcoming of IACE, it is not that it is culturally imperialist because it is universalist or objective. Rather, the bounded relativity of eudaimonism may too easily lend itself to parochial interpretations of virtue and flourishing, so that virtue's merely instrumental rewards can seem like its greatest payoffs. The corrective to this, if anything, would not be greater relativism about the virtues, but arguably deeper appreciation of the best intrinsic goods of the ordinary human life.</p> <hd id="AN0099710115-10">The Situationist Criticism</hd> <p>If character traits do not exist or in some sense predict virtue, making a goal of fostering desirable ones in students would seem to make little sense. Critics suggesting that they do not often focus on four observations.[<reflink idref="bib49" id="ref61">49</reflink>] First, differences in the objective features of a situation, even very subtle ones, can strongly affect behavior. People who find a dime have been found to help another five times as often as those who do not. In general, factors influencing mood have been found to have a powerful effect on people. Second, people behave inconsistently across situations that are objectively dissimilar (for example, taking a test and talking to one's parents), but that are similar in some morally relevant respect (both are occasions for honesty or dishonesty). Children will tell the truth in talking with their friends and lie to their parents. Third, people are consistently inconsistent. A child who is aggressive in a threatening situation with an adult and passive in a threatening situation with a peer can be expected to be so in the future.[<reflink idref="bib50" id="ref62">50</reflink>] Finally, we apparently overestimate the unity of other people's character. Having once seen Sam rescue a dog in a physically dangerous situation, I conclude that Sam is brave. But Sam may not be brave, just rescuing‐dogs‐in‐dangerous‐situations brave and cowardly otherwise.</p> <p>Different critics have drawn different conclusions from these observations. Gilbert Harman has concluded that “there is no reason at all to believe in character traits as ordinarily conceived.”[<reflink idref="bib51" id="ref63">51</reflink>] John Doris, on the other hand, has concluded that people's character, with the exception of a minority of moral saints or monsters, is compartmentalized into a collection of disconnected local traits, such “dime‐finding, dropped‐papers helpfulness” or “test‐taking honesty.”[<reflink idref="bib52" id="ref64">52</reflink>] Either conclusion is incompatible with an Aristotelian outlook, and many who take them seriously presume that, if true, there is little point to character education.</p> <p>There can be no doubt that situational factors influence our behavior. Social psychological evidence aside, it would be odd to suppose that they do not, for a due responsiveness to features of our situation is often important to acting well. We are all also familiar with the effect of elevated (or depressed) mood on our behavior. Of course we are more solicitous of others when some high has removed our own worries and cares from view. We are also familiar with behaving one way when interacting with our parents versus our friends versus authority figures. Human agents are causal systems the gears of which are beliefs, feelings, desires, and goals that shift in different interactions with different people in different circumstances under different levels of stress and self‐preoccupation.</p> <p>Situational forces do not alone determine behavior, though. Different people in objectively similar circumstances behave differently. Some test takers are cheaters while others are not, and some people who have found a dime still do not care to help others. Something about persons themselves is partly responsible for how they behave.</p> <p>The situationist debate is a far more complex problem on which much more has been written than we can fully cover here. Differences in how different people conduct themselves could owe entirely to Doris's compartmentalized, local character traits. Available evidence does not entirely rule out Aristotelian character traits, however, and the whole situationist debate may be moot relative to the aims of moral educators anyway. If so, practically intelligent virtue can still function as an appropriate ideal for moral education even if there is no such thing or if it is very difficult to achieve.</p> <p>A number of considerations suggest that available evidence does not entirely rule out character. First, practically intelligent character involves perception, emotion, judgment, and inner states of persons. These states are certainly subject to situational influence just like behaviors. But different people in the same situation will find different things morally salient, will have different feelings about the same moral facts, will draw different conclusions about those facts, and so on. These differences themselves, provided they are generalized and stable, express a person's moral character — whether, for example, empathetic or reasonable or not — and surely also enter into moral behaviors like practices of praising and blaming. Such differences are not measured in studies like the dime‐finding, dropped‐papers study.[<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref65">53</reflink>]</p> <p>Second, in acknowledgment of the regular differences between persons, personality psychologists accept that behavior is a function of a person's situation and personality. Personality is different from character in a number of ways. Some personality traits are thought to be heritable, for instance, while others, such as extroversion, seem to be neither here nor there in terms of virtue. Extroverts can be just or unjust. There exist also different approaches to personality, such as the Big Five personality model, according to which there are five global personality traits (including openness, agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism, and conscientiousness), and cognitive‐affective personality systems (CAPS) theory, according to which individuals have distinctive systems of beliefs, desires, feelings, goals, expectations, values, and self‐regulatory plans that different sorts of situations tend to trigger for them. But either approach provides some empirical grounds for thinking that ordinary people are capable of practically intelligent character.</p> <p>The Big Five model of personality supports this position because some factors (or facets of those factors) just might be character traits. While, historically, personality psychologists have denied that personality traits are evaluative, this is patently absurd of traits such as agreeableness or conscientiousness. Agreeableness is at least an admirable quality if not a full‐fledged virtue, while conscientiousness, however precisely described, is presumably a part of good practical judgment.</p> <p>CAPS theory also provides some grounds for faith in the virtues. CAPS are comprised of the mental processes through which people interpret their situation in the world and ascribe meaning to it and act.[<reflink idref="bib54" id="ref66">54</reflink>] Since different people can have different systems of beliefs, desires, and so on, different people have distinctive CAPS traits and can differently interpret and engage the world both inter‐ and intra‐personally — that is, distinctively as persons, but also consistently differently in the same or different situations. For example, Johnny and Sally may tend to react differently in objectively similar (or even the same) situations, such as being scolded by an adult, because they ascribe different meanings to those situations: Johnny may react aggressively because he perceives the scolding as an angry threat while Sally may react compliantly because she perceives it as a gentle warning. Conversely, they may also react in just these same ways in objectively different situations because they bring the same interpretations to them. Walter Mischel and Yuichi Shoda hypothesized that differences such as these account for the observations and indeed have produced evidence that CAPS traits exist and are stable, cross‐situationally consistent causes of behavior.</p> <p>CAPS theory provides a few grounds for thinking that people are capable of practically intelligent virtue. Like virtues, CAPS are relatively stable structures that regulate behavior through cognitive‐affective processes. So they supply affordances for practical reasoning or reasons‐responsiveness and help us see how virtue might be learned and perfected. Because CAPS regulate behaviors through our cognitive‐affective systems, we can critically reflect on them and seek to alter them through cognitive and behavioral learning.[<reflink idref="bib55" id="ref67">55</reflink>] CAPS are also generalizable insofar as they can be activated in objectively different situations according to the agent's construal of them. They are thus akin to global traits, “standing ‘on call’ and ready to be activated in response to the appropriate stimuli.”[<reflink idref="bib56" id="ref68">56</reflink>] Thus, if CAPS theory holds, the virtues might be a subset of CAPS traits and the key task for Aristotelians is to clarify which traits are virtues and why.</p> <p>Skeptics like Mark Alfano doubt that these sorts of responses rescue virtue. Because they seem to operate through forces acting behind our deliberative apparatus, dime‐finding, dropped‐papers types of studies worry him the most. That a person has just found a dime does not seem like the sort of thing that should affect whether she construes the dropped‐papers situation as a situation demanding her beneficence. Alfano also doubts that CAPS traits can ground virtues given that their activation depends on the meanings agents ascribe to their situation, arguing that “compassion isn't (just) a matter of helping when you feel that someone needs or deserves help; it's a matter of helping when someone does need or deserve help.”[<reflink idref="bib57" id="ref69">57</reflink>]</p> <p>These doubts are hardly decisive though. The effect of environmental factors on mood and behavior is not only a problem for character psychology, but for moral agency at all. The same can be said for the mediation of behavior through our perceptions of our situation. Such worries are akin to using a sledgehammer to drive a finish nail: they prove too much and are far too powerful as critiques of trait psychology, specifically. Alfano in any case goes on to argue that, although there may in his view be no good evidence for global virtues, we still have reason to ascribe global virtues to ourselves and others, even if we are not fully virtuous. This is because attributing a virtue to a person, especially when the attribution is plausible and publicly announced, generates expectations within the person and others that induce robust, stable conduct conforming to virtue (which Alfano calls factitious virtue).[<reflink idref="bib58" id="ref70">58</reflink>] Over time, Alfano conjectures, social expectations may work to generate a concept of oneself as having a virtue, which, together with knowledge of virtue and its value, may transform factitious virtue into full‐fledged virtue.</p> <p>Alfano's description of how virtue might be acquired is remarkably similar to the common Aristotelian understanding. In each, we participate in a social environment in which we are expected to exercise the virtues and are provided opportunities to enhance our knowledge and appreciation of them. If this is correct, one wonders what the whole situation‐person debate is about. Situational influences on behavior are “portable,” such that knowledge of received results in social psychology, and also of our “situational vulnerabilities,” can be used (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref71">1</reflink>) to individually perfect our character and behavior, and (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref72">2</reflink>) to enable administrators to design environments and cultures that make it easier for people to develop and exercise virtue and avoid vice.[<reflink idref="bib59" id="ref73">59</reflink>] Knowing that social expectations induce virtue and that people (or we ourselves) can act viciously under certain pressures (an alcoholic overcoming alcoholism, an ordinary person subjected to grating ambient noise), we can make choices that support the development and exercise of virtue (staying away from the bars or certain friends for a while, ensuring a quiet or pleasant auditory environment). The educational implications of these insights are not too difficult to see, and generally there are many promising avenues through which it is plausible for intellectualist Aristotelian character educators to accept and deploy the insights of situationist social psychology to support the development and exercise of virtue pretty much as they understand it. The exercise and development of virtue may require considerable social support and may involve the careful structuring of educational institutions and settings, but apparently the study of virtue and practices of ascribing virtues and praising and blaming should be part of the structure.</p> <hd id="AN0099710115-11">Conclusion</hd> <p>Let's return to Jones. We have not undertaken anything like a complete defense of IACE here. Many deep theoretical questions about intellectualist Aristotelian virtue theory, in particular, remain. Many iterations involve some version of a unity of the virtues thesis, or the idea that having any single virtue involves having them all.[<reflink idref="bib60" id="ref74">60</reflink>] As a form of eudaimonism, it may also be committed to welfarism, or the idea that the only reasons for action are considerations concerning what is good or bad for someone. These are highly contentious positions. We cannot deal with them here.</p> <p>Still, as the foundation for a model of character education, Aristotelian intellectualism yields an approach that is not guilty of some of the worst charges against character education. IACE is not victim blaming, developmentally insensitive, useless for decision making, crudely behaviorist, or culturally imperialist. And the jury is still out on trait psychology, a debate that may be moot for moral education anyway. While there is more work to be done in working out the best form character education might take, we suggest that Jones has quite good reason to build on the draft mission options she finds in an Aristotelian intellectualist way.</p> <p>THE AUTHORS WISH TO THANK Nicholas Burbules, Chris Higgins, and three anonymous referees of Educational Theory for helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this essay. We also thank Joyce Atkinson for her correspondence through the publication process.</p> <ref id="AN0099710115-12"> <title>Footnotes</title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" idref="ref1" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext>Recent expressions of this ideal can be found in David Carr, “Character Education as the Cultivation of Virtue,” in Handbook of Moral and Character Education, ed. Larry Nucci and Darcia Narváez (New York: Routledge, 2008); Randall Curren, “Virtue Ethics and Moral Education,” in Routledge Companion to Virtue Ethics, ed. Michael Slote and Lorraine Besser‐Jones (London: Routledge, forthcoming); Randall Curren, Aristotle on the Necessity of Public Education (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000); Julia Annas, Intelligent Virtue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Kristján Kristjánsson, Aristotle, Emotions, and Education (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); Heather Battaly, “Teaching Intellectual Virtues: Applying Virtue Epistemology in the Classroom,” Teaching Philosophy 29, no. 3 (2006): 191–222; Jason Baehr, “Educating for Intellectual Virtues: From Theory to Practice,” Journal of Philosophy of Education 47, no. 2 (2013): 248–262; and Jubilee Centre for Character and Values, “A Framework for Character Education in the Schools” (Jubilee Centre, University of Birmingham, n.d.), <ulink href="http://www.jubileecentre.ac.uk/432/character-education">http://www.jubileecentre.ac.uk/432/character-education</ulink>. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib2" idref="ref2" type="bt">2</bibl> <bibtext>In drawing this conclusion, our essay corroborates the similar conclusions of Paul Lewis, “In Defence of Aristotle on Character: Toward a Synthesis of Recent Psychology, Neuroscience and the Thought of Michael Polanyi,” Journal of Moral Education 41, no. 2 (2012): 155–170; and Kristján Kristjánsson, “Ten Myths About Character, Virtue, and Virtue Education — Plus Three Well‐Founded Misgivings,” British Journal of Educational Studies 61, no. 3 (2013): 269–287. Our contribution differs in examining in greater depth one particular form of Aristotelian character education (which we are calling “intellectualist”) and in discussing two particularly important worries in detail (which we call the situationist criticism and the cultural imperialism criticism). </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib3" idref="ref3" type="bt">3</bibl> <bibtext>For the idea that character is “caught,” see Jubilee Centre, “A Framework for Character Education in the Schools.” </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib4" idref="ref4" type="bt">4</bibl> <bibtext>Alan L. Lockwood, The Case for Character Education: A Developmental Approach (New York: Teachers College Press, 2009), 100. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib5" idref="ref9" type="bt">5</bibl> <bibtext>Good discussions of the role of direct teaching and practice can be found in Battaly, “Teaching Intellectual Virtues”; and Kristjánsson, Aristotle, Emotions, and Education. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib6" idref="ref10" type="bt">6</bibl> <bibtext>Annas discusses this point at length in her book Intelligent Virtue. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib7" idref="ref13" type="bt">7</bibl> <bibtext>See, for example, Curren, “Virtue Ethics and Moral Education.” The authors wish to thank Curren for sharing his work. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib8" idref="ref14" type="bt">8</bibl> <bibtext>An excellent discussion of this can be found in Kristjánsson, Aristotle, Emotions, and Education, chap. 2. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib9" idref="ref15" type="bt">9</bibl> <bibtext>This point, incidentally, does not mean that virtuous Aristotelian agents always pause to deliberate before acting. They may have to in some particularly complicated circumstances, but the idea here is that virtuous agents have built up a stock of knowledge that enables them to detect the morally salient features of their situation and act as the situation requires. This stock of knowledge is built partly through deliberation and reflection on morally complex situations, but its deployment in practice can be just as automatic as a musician's deployment of her musical knowledge in a performance. For more on this, see Daniel C. Russell, Practical Intelligence and the Virtues (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), chap. 1. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib10" idref="ref16" type="bt">10</bibl> <bibtext>For a Humean alternative, see Christine Swanton, Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); for a consequentialist one, see Julia Driver, Uneasy Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib11" idref="ref17" type="bt">11</bibl> <bibtext>See, for example, Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman, Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib12" idref="ref18" type="bt">12</bibl> <bibtext>Jubilee Centre, “A Framework for Character Education in the Schools.” </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib13" idref="ref19" type="bt">13</bibl> <bibtext>Curren, Aristotle on the Necessity of Public Education. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib14" idref="ref20" type="bt">14</bibl> <bibtext>Darcia Narváez, “Human Flourishing and Moral Development: Cognitive and Neurobiological Perspectives of Virtue Development,” in Handbook of Moral and Character Education, ed. Nucci and Narváez, 310–327. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib15" idref="ref21" type="bt">15</bibl> <bibtext>Kristjánsson discusses this view in Aristotle, Emotions, and Education, chap. 2. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib16" idref="ref22" type="bt">16</bibl> <bibtext>This is the account in Russell, Practical Intelligence and the Virtues, chap. 1. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib17" idref="ref23" type="bt">17</bibl> <bibtext>Alfie Kohn, “How Not to Teach Values: A Critical Look at Character Education,” Phi Delta Kappan 78, no. 6 (1997): 428–439. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib18" idref="ref24" type="bt">18</bibl> <bibtext>Lockwood, The Case for Character Education; Tianlong Yu, In the Name of Morality: Character Education and Political Control (New York: Peter Lang, 2004); and Mark Alfano, Character as Moral Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib19" idref="ref25" type="bt">19</bibl> <bibtext>Lockwood, The Case for Character Education. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib20" idref="ref26" type="bt">20</bibl> <bibtext>Ibid., chap. 2. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib21" idref="ref27" type="bt">21</bibl> <bibtext>Yu, In the Name of Morality; and Joseph L. DeVitis and Tianlong Yu, “The ‘Moral Poverty’ of Character Education,” in Character and Moral Education: A Reader, ed. Joseph L. DeVitis and Tianlong Yu (New York: Peter Lang, 2011), 53–63. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib22" idref="ref28" type="bt">22</bibl> <bibtext>Yu, In the Name of Morality; Jennifer Morton, “Cultural Code‐Switching: Straddling the Achievement Gap,” Journal of Political Philosophy 22, no. 3 (2013): 259–281; Peter Smagorinsky and Joel Taxel, The Discourse of Character Education: Culture Wars in the Classroom (Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005); and Kohn, “How Not to Teach Values.” </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib23" idref="ref29" type="bt">23</bibl> <bibtext>William Kilpatrick, Why Johnny Can't Tell Right from Wrong (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992); Edward A. Wynne and Kevin Ryan, Reclaiming Our Schools: Teaching Character, Academics, and Discipline (Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 1997); and Thomas Lickona, Educating for Character: How Our Schools Can Teach Respect and Responsibility (New York: Bantam Books, 1992). </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib24" idref="ref30" type="bt">24</bibl> <bibtext>Kevin Ryan and Karen E. Bohlin, Building Character in Schools: Practical Ways to Bring Moral Instruction to Life (San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass, 1999), 48; Wynne and Ryan, Reclaiming Our Schools, 60; and Kilpatrick, Why Johnny Can't Tell Right from Wrong. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib25" idref="ref31" type="bt">25</bibl> <bibtext>Wynne and Ryan, Reclaiming Our Schools, 88. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib26" idref="ref32" type="bt">26</bibl> <bibtext>Ibid., 138. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib27" idref="ref33" type="bt">27</bibl> <bibtext>Ibid., 129. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib28" idref="ref34" type="bt">28</bibl> <bibtext>See, for example, the treatments in DeVitis and Yu, “The ‘Moral Poverty’ of Character Education”; Yu, In the Name of Morality; and Lockwood, The Case for Character Education. These writers tend to lump together writers such as Kilpatrick and Lickona who have quite different views. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib29" idref="ref35" type="bt">29</bibl> <bibtext>Lickona, Educating for Character, chap. 7; and Kilpatrick, Why Johnny Can't Tell Right from Wrong, chap. 4. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib30" idref="ref36" type="bt">30</bibl> <bibtext>Lickona, Educating for Character; and Ryan and Bohlin, Building Character in Schools. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib31" idref="ref37" type="bt">31</bibl> <bibtext>Again, this impression would be mistaken in some cases. Lickona, for example, is quite clear that moral virtue involves practical reasoning and carefully trained emotion (see Educating for Character, chap. 4). What we wish to draw attention to here is that this impression exists in the critical literature and apparently has come to be nearly identified with character education. See, for example, Lockwood's critique in The Case for Character Education, chap. 2, or Yu, In the Name of Morality, chap. 4. This matter needs clearing up, which is part of our purpose in reconstructing the argument in this essay. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib32" idref="ref44" type="bt">32</bibl> <bibtext>Jubilee Centre, “A Framework for Character Education in the Schools.” One related nonschool program, however, is the Reading for Life program, which serves juvenile offenders and “combines literature with a personal study of seven classic virtues” — specifically, justice, prudence, temperance, fortitude, fidelity, hope, and charity — in order to “ignite virtuous character development” (Reading for Life, <ulink href="http://ireadforlife.org">http://ireadforlife.org</ulink>). The intellectualist aims of this program are unclear, however, so we leave it to one side here. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib33" idref="ref45" type="bt">33</bibl> <bibtext>See Randall R. Curren, “Education and the Origins of Character in Aristotle,” Philosophy of Education: Proceedings of the Forty‐Seventh Annual Meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society (Normal: Illinois State University, 1992): 202–210; and Curren, Aristotle on the Necessity of Public Education. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib34" idref="ref46" type="bt">34</bibl> <bibtext>Curren, Aristotle on the Necessity of Public Education, chap. 7. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib35" idref="ref47" type="bt">35</bibl> <bibtext>Kilpatrick, Why Johnny Can't Tell Right from Wrong, 93. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib36" idref="ref48" type="bt">36</bibl> <bibtext>Excellent further discussion of this point can be found in Curren, “Virtue Ethics and Moral Education.” </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib37" idref="ref49" type="bt">37</bibl> <bibtext>Yu, In the Name of Morality; DeVitis and Yu, “The ‘Moral Poverty’ of Character Education”; and Robert J. Nash, Answering the “Virtuecrats”: A Moral Conversation on Character Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1997). </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib38" idref="ref50" type="bt">38</bibl> <bibtext>B. Edward McClellan, Moral Education in America: Schools and the Shaping of Character Since Colonial Times (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999). </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib39" idref="ref51" type="bt">39</bibl> <bibtext>Kohn, “How Not to Teach Values.” </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib40" idref="ref52" type="bt">40</bibl> <bibtext>Jubilee Centre for Character and Values, “Schools of Character” (Jubilee Centre for Character and Values, University of Birmingham, n.d.), <ulink href="http://www.jubileecentre.ac.uk/userfiles/jubileecentre/pdf/character-education/SchoolsOfCharacterPDF.pdf">http://www.jubileecentre.ac.uk/userfiles/jubileecentre/pdf/character-education/SchoolsOfCharacterPDF.pdf</ulink>. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib41" idref="ref53" type="bt">41</bibl> <bibtext>“Our Work,” The Duckworth Lab, University of Pennsylvania (August 1, 2013), accessed September 26, 2014, https://sites.sas.upenn.edu/duckworth. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib42" idref="ref54" type="bt">42</bibl> <bibtext>In their book Character Strengths and Virtues, Peterson and Seligman claim to identify twenty‐four common human character strengths. Discussion of the human need for mutually affirming friendship can be found in Edward L. Deci and Richard Ryan, “Motivation, Personality, and Development Within Embedded Social Contexts: An Overview of Self‐Determination Theory,” in The Oxford Handbook of Human Motivation, ed. Richard Ryan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 85–107. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib43" idref="ref55" type="bt">43</bibl> <bibtext>Compare, for instance, the view in Swanton, Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View; and Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib44" idref="ref56" type="bt">44</bibl> <bibtext>James Leming, “Whither Goes Character Education? Objectives, Pedagogy, and Research in Education Programs,” Journal of Education 179, no. 2 (1997): 11–34. Compare also the lists at “Six Pillars of Character,” Josephson Institute, Center for Youth Ethics, accessed September 26, 2014, <ulink href="http://charactercounts.org/sixpillars.html;">http://charactercounts.org/sixpillars.html;</ulink> and at “Frequently Asked Questions,” Character Education Partnership, accessed September 26, 2014, <ulink href="http://www.character.org/about/faqs/">http://www.character.org/about/faqs/</ulink>. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib45" idref="ref57" type="bt">45</bibl> <bibtext>Yu, In the Name of Morality, 120. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib46" idref="ref58" type="bt">46</bibl> <bibtext>Nomi Maya Stolzenberg, “‘He Drew a Circle that Shut Me Out’: Assimilation, Indoctrination, and the Paradox of a Liberal Education,” Harvard Law Review 106, no. 3 (1993): 581–667. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib47" idref="ref59" type="bt">47</bibl> <bibtext>Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study of Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984). </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib48" idref="ref60" type="bt">48</bibl> <bibtext>Martha Nussbaum, “Non‐Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 13, no. 1 (1988): 35. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib49" idref="ref61" type="bt">49</bibl> <bibtext>For a similar list, see Alfano, Character as Moral Fiction, chap. 1. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib50" idref="ref62" type="bt">50</bibl> <bibtext>Yuichi Shoda, Walter Mischel, and Jack C. Wright, “Intraindividual Stability in the Organization and Patterning of Behavior: Incorporating Psychological Situations into the Idiographic Analysis of Personality,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67, no. 4 (1994): 674–687. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib51" idref="ref63" type="bt">51</bibl> <bibtext>Gilbert Harman, “The Nonexistence of Character Traits,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100, no. 1 (2000): 223–226. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib52" idref="ref64" type="bt">52</bibl> <bibtext>John M. Doris, Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Here Doris is referring to the study by Alice M. Isen and Paula F. Levin, “Effect of Feeling Good on Helpfulness: Cookies and Kindness,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 21, no. 3 (1972): 384–388. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib53" idref="ref65" type="bt">53</bibl> <bibtext>For a similar point, see Kristján Kristjánsson, “An Aristotelian Critique of Situationism,” Philosophy: The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy 83, no. 1 (January 2008): 55–76. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib54" idref="ref66" type="bt">54</bibl> <bibtext>Walter Mischel and Yuichi Shoda, “A Cognitive‐Affective System Theory of Personality: Reconceptualizing Situations, Dispositions, Dynamics, and Invariance in Personality Structure,” Psychological Review 102, no. 2 (1995): 246–268. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib55" idref="ref67" type="bt">55</bibl> <bibtext>For a good discussion, see Nancy Snow, Virtue as Social Intelligence: An Empirically Grounded Theory (New York: Routledge, 2010), chap. 2. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib56" idref="ref68" type="bt">56</bibl> <bibtext>Ibid., 31. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib57" idref="ref69" type="bt">57</bibl> <bibtext>Alfano, Character as Moral Fiction, 79. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib58" idref="ref70" type="bt">58</bibl> <bibtext>Ibid., 9 and 88. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib59" idref="ref73" type="bt">59</bibl> <bibtext>Steven M. Samuels and William D. Casebeer, “A Social Psychological View of Morality: Why Knowledge of Situational Influences on Behaviour Can Improve Character Development Practices,” Journal of Moral Education 34, no. 1 (2005): 73–87. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib60" idref="ref74" type="bt">60</bibl> <bibtext>Annas, Intelligent Virtue; and Russell, Practical Intelligence and the Virtues. </bibtext> </blist> </ref> <aug> <p>By Matt Ferkany and Benjamin Creed</p> <p></p> <p>MATT FERKANY is Assistant Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University, 620 Farm Lane, East Lansing, MI 48824; e‐mail . His primary areas of scholarship are ethics, environmental ethics, and moral education.</p> <p>BENJAMIN CREED is a Doctoral Student in the College of Education at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824; e‐mail . His primary areas of scholarship are economics of education, equity implications of educational policy, and issues of access.</p> </aug> |
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| Items | – Name: Title Label: Title Group: Ti Data: Intellectualist Aristotelian Character Education: An Outline and Assessment – Name: Language Label: Language Group: Lang Data: English – Name: Author Label: Authors Group: Au Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Ferkany%2C+Matt%22">Ferkany, Matt</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Creed%2C+Benjamin%22">Creed, Benjamin</searchLink> – Name: TitleSource Label: Source Group: Src Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22Educational+Theory%22"><i>Educational Theory</i></searchLink>. Dec 2014 64(6):567-587. – Name: Avail Label: Availability Group: Avail Data: Wiley-Blackwell. 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148. Tel: 800-835-6770; Tel: 781-388-8598; Fax: 781-388-8232; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA – Name: PeerReviewed Label: Peer Reviewed Group: SrcInfo Data: Y – Name: Pages Label: Page Count Group: Src Data: 21 – Name: DatePubCY Label: Publication Date Group: Date Data: 2014 – Name: TypeDocument Label: Document Type Group: TypDoc Data: Journal Articles<br />Reports - Evaluative – Name: Subject Label: Descriptors Group: Su Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Values+Education%22">Values Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Intelligence%22">Intelligence</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Philosophy%22">Philosophy</searchLink> – Name: DOI Label: DOI Group: ID Data: 10.1111/edth.12084 – Name: ISSN Label: ISSN Group: ISSN Data: 0013-2004 – Name: Abstract Label: Abstract Group: Ab Data: Since its resurgence in the 1990s, character education has been subject to a bevy of common criticisms, including that it is didactic and crudely behaviorist; premised on a faulty trait psychology; victim-blaming; culturally imperialist, racist, religious, or ideologically conservative; and many other horrible things besides. Matt Ferkany and Benjamin Creed examine an intellectualist Aristotelian form of character education that has gained popularity recently and find that it is largely not susceptible to such criticisms. In this form, character education is education for practically intelligent virtue, or the intrinsically motivated and psychically harmonious exercise of robust and stable traits involving practical intelligence conducive to individual and collective human flourishing. – Name: AbstractInfo Label: Abstractor Group: Ab Data: As Provided – Name: DateEntry Label: Entry Date Group: Date Data: 2014 – Name: AN Label: Accession Number Group: ID Data: EJ1046490 |
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| RecordInfo | BibRecord: BibEntity: Identifiers: – Type: doi Value: 10.1111/edth.12084 Languages: – Text: English PhysicalDescription: Pagination: PageCount: 21 StartPage: 567 Subjects: – SubjectFull: Values Education Type: general – SubjectFull: Intelligence Type: general – SubjectFull: Philosophy Type: general Titles: – TitleFull: Intellectualist Aristotelian Character Education: An Outline and Assessment Type: main BibRelationships: HasContributorRelationships: – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Ferkany, Matt – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Creed, Benjamin IsPartOfRelationships: – BibEntity: Dates: – D: 01 M: 12 Type: published Y: 2014 Identifiers: – Type: issn-print Value: 0013-2004 Numbering: – Type: volume Value: 64 – Type: issue Value: 6 Titles: – TitleFull: Educational Theory Type: main |
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