Controversy over a proposed outcome-based-education package in Pennsylvania forced school reformers to eliminate explicit values instruction from the curriculum. Although respect and responsibility were agreed-upon moral values, tolerance was not. Proponents erred by failing to publicize and promote positive aspects of the reform, underestimating…

To bring ethics into the curriculum without indoctrinating students with adults' moral incapacities, distortions, and closed-mindedness, educators need to integrate eithics with critical thinking, literature, science, history, and civics instruction. Implementation requires excellent supplemental resources, good leadership, and inservice redesign.…

Discusses educational issues affected by the conservative right, including church-state separation, school prayer, censorship, creationism, moral education, and humanism. Maintains that a politically powerful religious right threatens the separation of church and state. (Author/JM)

The need for affective education has been expressed throughout the history of public schools. Justification for moral education today can be made on the basis of any of the five most common types of needs: normative, felt, expressed, comparative, or anticipated. (Author/MLF)

Defying "liberal" and "conservative" labels, Communitarianism is a new social movement reflected in George Bush's endorsement of family values and Bill Clinton's calls for community service. Communitarianism does not uphold the individual's rights at all costs, nor impose moral solutions. The Communitarian agenda is to…

Claims of character educators must be reexamined. Enthralled at the prospect of reducing violence, crime, and other irresponsible behavior, untutored readers may assume a direct relationship between values and behavior. If the public enthusiastically endorses programs based on this fallacious assumption, the resulting disappointment may doom all…

Growing up in a highly eroticized environment, children are preoccupied with sex in developmentally distorted ways and increasingly likely to act out their sexual impulses. Abstinence is the only totally effective way to avoid pregnancy, AIDS, and other sexually transmitted diseases. Chastity education promises great success through promotion of…

Commitment is combined to classic learning with innovative citizenship education grounded in public debate by the Northtown Academy campus of Chicago International Charter School (CICS). KIPP Academics rely on academic pressure and tough love to help students meet state standards.

The schools are the agency that American society has set up to teach its youth knowledge and skills. The time has come for schools to take a more active role in the development of values and judgment standards, at least by providing a forum for discussing and examining such standards. (Author/JG)

Asserts that a kinder, gentler version of the Socratic method can help students recognize contradictions between the values they espouse and the choices they make. Suggests that well-aimed questions actively engage learners by forcing critical thinking about ethics and values. Hypothetical dilemmas, like those in the video series "The Power…

Three Chicago schools have adopted the Junior Great Books Program, allowing students and teachers to mine a wide range of literature on themes of fairness, justice, cleverness, greed, love, friendship, and respect. Program success hinged on engagement, shared leadership, professional development, and a multiyear adoption plan. (MLH)

People need to learn what choosing and acting morally involves and how to do it. Educational programs, well conceived, pedagogically sound, and morally carried on, are basic to attaining personal and social well-being. (Author)

The first axiom of actively involving students is to relate activities to their own experiences, thereby engaging them on an emotional level. The Socratic seminar, a form of structured discourse about ideas and moral dilemmas, accomplishes this goal while balancing two traditional educational purposes: cultivation of common values and celebration…