Schools can teach character, but what sort of person do we want to produce?
The teaching of character and resilience in schools is a hot topic at present within policy circles, with a report from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on social mobility - which promotes character and resilience in schools - and a speech on schooling for the future by Labour Party politician Tristram Hunt which covers character in the classroom.
The Jubilee Centre for Character and Values has contributed to these debates and has also released its own report, Framework for Character Education in Schools, which was developed in consultation with head teachers, parents, academics, employers and young people.
Professor Kristján Kristjánsson from the Jubilee Centre for Character and Values examined the issue of teaching character in a recent article on 'The Conversation' website, stressing the need not to overlook two important distinctions:
First, the justification of good character must lie in the constitutive virtues in the good life and not just the extrinsic parameters of well being such as educational attainment and second, recent discourse on character has focussed almost exclusively on resilience and self-confidence excluding compassion and honestly. Read the whole Conversation
The Conversation is an independent news site which sources items from the academic and research community.