The modern character education movement emerged in the 1980s as a consequence of growing parental and public concern for moral drift, or what sociologist James Davison Hunter referred to as "the death of character." This public anomie was captured in these words from Sanford McDonnell, chairman emeritus of McDonnell Douglas and chair of…

It is an odd mark of this time that the first question people ask about character education is whether public schools should be doing it at all. The question is odd because it invites everyone to imagine that schooling, which occupies about a third of a child's waking time, somehow could be arranged to play no role in the formation of a child's…