Bring Back Aristotelian Character Education

Katz and the Toxic Culture of Education

One of the things that caught me about the lecture given by Katz was when he described some of the worst of the bottom 25% of students he teaches: “The worst of those students have had no education of character, common decency, appropriate language, appropriate behavior. They barely know right from wrong. These are the students who are at risk of dropping out, incarceration, or abusing social welfare.” In support of the problem of a lack of character education are studies by Lickona (1993) and Pala (2011). Both show that this problem needs to be addressed because it is the root of issues with learners failing in school and in life. However, in support of the other side of the argument is this study by Kohn (1997), which argues that character education does not really play a fundamental role in the shaping of education outcomes for all learners.

To me, Katz really was on target, and from my own research, it does get to the heart of the problem of education and why it has become toxic: it is precisely because we have stopped teaching the character. In fact, character education, according to numerous researchers, needs to be brought back in a big way in today’s schools (Kristjansson, 2015; Lickona, 1993; Pala, 2011).

Why does this matter and what does it have to do with the toxic culture of education? The culture Katz describes is one in which teaching is done for testing, and failing tests is not an option because it sets schools back in terms of getting the big rewards from the state. The state is pushed towards this education approach by the lobbyists who represented the businesses that profit from this approach. In short, it is an approach that has been corrupted by the profit-making scheming that goes on behind the scenes, from the board room to Washington.

This approach neglects the actual needs of children by putting the “needs” of schools (i.e., the need for funding) ahead of the learner. Learners, however, need to be allowed to fail, as Katz points out. In fact, failure is often how we learn. When we are allowed to fail, we are shown that it is indeed not the end of the world and that we can get back to it and apply a little resilience to overcome adversity. Grit is formed this way and is essential to the learning process (Pappano, 2013). But as Katz notes, No Child Left Behind robbed kids of this opportunity to develop grit; it robbed them of the chance to be able to fail and learn from failure. All of a sudden, they were not allowed to fail, because schools put their own needs ahead of the kids’ needs.

How to solve this problem? A return to character education is in order, as Pala (2011) and others explain, and as Katz himself shows is sorely needed. Kids are not getting that at the bottom of the ladder, and if they cannot form their character in a positive way they are not going to be able to handle life’s adversity as it arises no matter the setting. This should be the number one priority of schools going forward: character education, using the Aristotelian model that Kristjansson (2015) recommends. Then learners will actually have a sense of what it takes to rise to the challenge, to commit oneself to a task, and to make headway against all odds, and schools themselves will perform better in the long run.