The Character Education Approach to Teaching

Case Study: Professional Interview Analysis
The individual interviewed for this case study is a 7th grade teacher of history and literature in a public school. He is named Terry X for the purposes of anonymity. He has been a teacher for 5 years.
The background of the analysis conducted for this case study is composed of parts: much of it has come from Koonce (2016), Knight (2008), Kristjansson (2014), and others who have focused on teaching approaches, issues in education, and the concept of character education, which is particularly important to Terry, as this case study analysis will reveal. The purpose of this analysis was to identify and understand Terry’s approach to education and to locate its place in the wider discussion of the how educational approaches can be used to meet the goals of all stakeholders. The conclusion that this analysis yields is that not all stakeholders have a clear idea or concept of the goals they seek to achieve. This is true for teachers, students, families, administrators, community members, and so on (Knight, 2008; Koonce, 2016). Some want to focus on developing skills in students that will be useful in the workplace, some want to focus on getting the students to pass assessments so that the schools will continue to receive important funding, and some, like Terry, want to focus on character education, which he views as the bedrock of future civilization.
Foundations of Leadership
Terry grew up in a Midwestern suburb of a mid-major city. He attended the local public schools K-12 and then attended two local universities to obtain his Bachelor’s in Literature and History and his Master’s in Education. After obtaining his Bachelor’s he took time off to begin what he described as his “second education”—a tour of the world that was filled with visiting people he had admired from a distance: individuals whose lectures he had read, whose conferences and podcasts he had listened to online, and whose books he had devoured. He visited England, France, Italy, Germany and went east to India, where he worked in an ashram for two years as a volunteer teacher, educating the orphan children in Mumbai. He then returned home and began working on his Master’s, which he completed after two years. Throughout his early twenties, religion became very important to Terry, and, being a Roman Catholic, he began reading the publications of past popes as well as theologians and even philosophers. One of the main reasons for his travels, he said, was to formulate his sense of place in the world, and to crystallize his beliefs about the meaning of life. He had questions that he wanted to put to the people he had admired most throughout his personal intellectual studies and for that reason he set out to meet them, see the world, and gain some real world experience in terms of seeing life in new settings.
From these experiences, his philosophy of education emerged. He described being most shaped by the classical Greek philosophers: Plato and Aristotle. He said he fell in love with Socrates for the first time after reading Plato’s “Euthyphro” and that ever since then he has tried to adopt Socratic methods in his approach to his students, constantly engaging them in discussion and asking them challenging questions to get them to engage more with the material presented, with the past, and with the present. Like Plato and Aristotle, he says that he seeks to reach upward for the Transcendentals and that he seeks to define these for his students so that they are not forever locked in Plato’s “Cave” (a reference to the “Allegory of the Cave” from Plato’s Republic). His philosophy of education was based on the Aristotelian concept of character formation. He said that character education was the foundation of his approach in the classroom: the study of literature and of history helped to educate the characters of his students, and this in turn helped to guide them towards the unum, bonum, verum—the one, the good, the true. Terry linked Aristotle with Aquinas in a manner that contributed to providing students with a moral framework by which they could see themselves and the world around them. Spalding and Gagne (2013) have shown how Aristotle and Aquinas link up in terms of philosophical approaches to morality, and Terry appears to have adopted the same position as the researchers—namely, that philosophical universalism serves as a basis for constructing a specific set of beliefs.
Aristotle shaped Terry’s beliefs convincing him that the there was a moral or natural law written into the fabric of the world and that mankind had this law written on its soul as well. Happiness could best be achieved through a life of virtue—or good habits—and that the point of life was indeed to be happy. Knowing how to pursue a life of virtue was then the most important question. This meshed with his Catholic beliefs, as Aquinas, one of the most famous Catholic theologians of the Middle Ages, based much of his work on the writings of the Greeks.
For Terry, the emphasis on character formation and character education is the most important aspect that an effective educator should develop. One has to be willing to not only set a good example for students but also to bring about that desire to be a good student and a good person for the class as a whole. A teacher should be able to engage with the students and have discussions with them, just as Socrates had discussions with his followers in Athens. Engaging in character formation is essential for teachers to do. However, as Lickona (1993) points out, character education is considerably difficult today because there is no consensus opinion on what constitutes a good character. For Terry, there is no question: the ancients have the best approach to character education. Yet, for teachers who admire modern philosophy more than classical philosophy, the sense of “good character” can differ substantially as “goodness” and “character” are viewed far more subjectively and loosely or even skeptically by modern philosophers than by Plato or Aristotle or Aquinas, for instance.
Terry described his “call” to be an educator as emanating from his desire to achieve the unum, bonum, verum. His own quest for a life of virtue and a life of happiness has been the seed or plant from which his “call” to educate others has grown. He views himself in a way to be similar to Socrates, who said that he asked questions and spoke of philosophy not because he himself considered himself to be a teacher who knew things but rather because he felt that he didn’t know anything and wanted to know (Plato, 2010). Terry’s religious views clearly have impacted his approach to education. Feeling that Christianity presents the truth about God and indeed the history of the world, Terry is compelled to teach literature and history through a Christian lens. He focuses his teaching, moreover, by underpinning it with the philosophical teachings the classical Greeks.
Critical Issues
The three most critical issues currently facing educators, according to Terry, are: 1) the need for character education, 2) the need for more individualism on the part of teachers (i.e., a separation from the standardized curriculum that binds teachers to focusing on subjects that they personally may not feel are important, and 3) less attention given to assessments, which receive almost an overwhelming focus in public schools as these schools depend on good scores to obtain federal and state funds.
The issues identified by Terry are not new. Other researchers have identified them as well. Kristjansson (2014) has called for more attention to be given to Aristotelianism in the classroom as a way to facilitate character education and moral education, both of which Kristjansson (2014) found to be desperately needed in schools today. Coupled with Lickona’s (1993) assessment that character definition is hard to achieve because of the way that modern philosophy refuses to pin down anything definitive regarding morality or goodness, it is clear that giving some focus to what constitutes a good character is more than likely something needed in today’s schools.
Smith (2013) has described character education in the U.S. as having several important developments and Koonce (2016) finds that because of so many clashing opinions on how to approach education at all leads to too many voices and a bureaucratic type of mess at administrative levels. This helps to explain why Terry calls for more individualism on the part of teachers: he wants to see more authority given teachers to teach as they see fit and less intrusion from administrators who are worried about superficial assessments only. While, of course, is important that public schools be able to show progress in order to obtain funding, Terry’s argument is certainly understandable and raises the question: Are schools there just to be open?—or are they there to give students a real education, one that might not be on the pages of the school board’s or Department of Education’s recommended curriculum? Furthermore, as Knight (2008) notes, the issue of assessments and too much focus on readying kids to pass tests can sidetrack both students and teachers from the far more important task of preparing young students’ minds and hearts to enter into the real world where they will need to make real decisions about how to think and how to act.
Terry believes that one institutional plan that can have a major impact on how teachers approach education is the institutionalizing of “home visits”—a process by which the teacher takes teaching outside of the classroom and visits students’ homes to actually meet their parents, their families, and understand more of where the students are coming from. Home visits, as Stetson, Stetson, Sinclair and Nix (2012) have shown, are extremely helpful in breaking down barriers, creating empathy, and establishing a deep and lasting bond between teachers and students and their families. This bond is very important, these researchers suggest, because it acts as oil to the machine of education, allowing all the pistons and parts to operate at maximum efficiency. It creates trust, affection, and a desire to be there and involved in the process of deep-down education. For Terry, character education is the most deep-down education that exists and home visits help to facilitate the process by liberating the process from the classroom and showing to all stakeholders that education is a real-world exercise with real-world repercussions. For Terry, this issue of character education is the most important issue in the coming years, and home visits are a great answer to helping teachers and students better understand what it means to develop one’s character. The basis of this development, notes Terry, is that it is rooted in a giving of self and is based in a type of servant leadership, which is reflective of the values and virtues extolled by the ancient philosophers.
Effective Practices
Three effective practices that Terry uses to enhance the capabilities of accomplishing his school’s vision are: 1) making home visits, 2) the Socratic Method, and 3) character education. He notes that the mission of his school is to form the hearts and minds of its students and prepare them for real world challenges. He believes there is no better way to do this than to bring the real world and the classroom world together by taking himself out of the classroom and into the lives of his students. Terry has shared the effects of his practices with his colleagues, which is precisely what Stetson et al. (2012) recommend doing with regard to the practice of home visits. As many teachers are skeptical of the idea of putting in more work outside the classroom when the classroom work is already demanding enough, Stetson et al. (2012) show that far from placing more demands on teachers, home visits can actually help to ease the burden. This easing of the burden happens because students and families respond favorably to home visits and that response leads to more support for the teacher in the classroom and greater returns for all stakeholders. Home visits as a practice is like making an investment in the student, and that investment pays off over time.
The actions that Terry is taking to help future educators become effective include the sharing of his experiences with his colleagues. He has also attempted to define his approach more thoroughly and have it published in an academic journal. This attempt to share his experiences is needed, for as Lickona (1993) has noted, there is much confusion especially with respect to the concept of character education and how teachers can approaches ideas such as virtue, the one, the good, and the true, and so on. For Terry to take the initiative and bring the discussion back to its origins in terms of the philosophical foundations of Western Civilization is a welcome step, as Kristjansson (2014) would surely agree.
Terry has also attempted to lobby the administrator and the school board to allow teachers greater leeway in terms of how they develop their own classes and construct their own curricula. As Knight (2008) shows, there are pros and cons to teacher autonomy—for example, standardization ensures that students will receive continuity in education should they have to move from one place to another; on the other hand, standardization can limit students’ abilities and place restrictions on qualified and talented teachers who are willing and able to give their students more than what is recommended by the standard education. Terry is pushing for the latter, and his push is not without justification, for he sees a need for more character education—and he wants to provide this education his way. Terry feels that the common mistakes educators make are all based on this sense that they must follow the norms, adhere to the status quo, and never challenge the system or ask questions. Yet, as he rightly points out, one of the greatest teachers in all history eschewed norms, challenged the status, quo and asked questions non-stop: he was Socrates. And while the state eventually put him to death (Plato, 2010), his memory and methods have lived on.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Terry’s approach to education is one that meets the demands of several researchers, who have called for more emphasis on character education (Kristjansson, 2014), fewer or at least less emphasis on formal assessments (Knight, 2008), and more home visits (Stetson et al., 2012). Terry’s approach offers some positive hope for the future of education—but as he points out the institution of education itself needs to accept that some things need to change by going back to “the old ways.” By doing so, schools will have greater ability to address the needs of all stakeholders and ensure that a more unified and defined vision is achievable, and that the possibilities for students are strengthened.

References
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