In "Moral-Character Development for Teacher Education," Daniel Lapsley and Ryan Woodbury argue that teacher education licensure and accreditation standards largely ignore matters of values, character, and morality. "The moral-character formation of children," they note, "is the instructional objective that dare not speak…

This article contains the responses of the author of Aristotelian Character Education (Routledge, 2015), Kristján Kristjánsson, to responses by three commentators, Randall Curren, Daniel Laspley and Christian Miller, published in this same issue of "JME."

This paper presents a remarkable conversation with Carlos Alberto Torres about Global Citizenship Education (GCE) in relation to research, teaching, and learning in the USA. Torres is a Distinguished Professor of Education, UNESCO UCLA Chair on Global Learning and Global Citizenship Education, UCLA and Founding Director of the Paulo Freire…

Nel Noddings, Lee Jacks Professor of Education, Emerita, at Stanford University, agrees with Professors Lapsley and Woodbury that moral aims are central to education. She has argued that the main aim of education is to produce better people--better in "all aspects of a complete life: moral, physical, social, vocational, aesthetic,…

The 2016 presidential campaign and its aftermath have underscored the extreme polarization of the electorate, the dismissal of people with opposing views, and the widespread acceptance and circulation of one-sided and factually erroneous information. In addition, only a small proportion of those who are eligible actually vote, and a declining…

Sigal Ben-Porath objects to the educational strategies of a number of high commitment charter schools, arguing that they do not pay sufficient attention to the need to develop and exercise the civic virtues of students. This response article highlights a number of philosophical disagreements concerning the traits of character that are central to…

The reality of students' cyber lives has thrust upon educators a new approach: creating character education programs tuned to digital youth that are both proactive and aggressive. Taking this approach will help integrate students' digital activities within the context of the communities in which they live, both local and digital. The digital age…

In this article, the author examines Dewey's moral deliberation. Liu argues that Dewey's work will enrich both character education and Kohlberg's moral education. Liu focuses on character education and on Kohlberg's moral education because these are the two dominant approaches. Character education seeks to cultivate good…

In "The Righteous Mind," Jonathan Haidt claims that liberals have a narrower moral outlook than conservatives--they are concerned with fairness and relief of suffering, which Haidt sees as individualistic values, while conservatives care about authority and loyalty too, values concerned with holding society together. I question…

The aim of this paper is to provide a positive case for increasing the role and importance of religious morality within the subject of religious education in British schools. The argument is structured in the following way. First, attention is given to the diminished role accorded to moral education within religious education that followed the…

Should environmental education (EE) and education for sustainable development (ESD) try to change students' behaviours or should it focus on capacity building and critical thinking? The latter is more likely to lead to a citizenry that can examine new challenges and act wisely. New forms of learning are entering the arena of EE and ESD such as…

In this article, the author explores the Stone-Campbell tradition, which produced the North American Disciples of Christ and Churches of Christ. In this tradition he finds the distinctive combination of three emphases to promote civic virtues in an honors context: (1) the individual pursuit of truth; (2) reliance on Scripture; and (3) the drive…

Contemporary notions of good citizenship and proper living have become intimately related to the pursuit of good health. Consequently, modern states have devised programmes of education and training that endeavour to provide apprentice citizens with the knowledge, skills and attitudes required to enhance their own and others health and wellbeing.…

Recent trends in school curricula place a heavy focus on the improvement of basic skills test scores. As a result, the role of character education has been diminished. This article provides a rationale for the incorporation of a character education program within the school curricula, a working definition of character education, and the role of…

In this article, John F. Covaleskie considers a threefold question: (1) what is the nature of the sort of liberty that enables one to live as a free person, but also bound by the requirements of democratic citizenship; (2) what is the nature of the virtues that make this sort of person possible; and (3) what is the nature of the educational…