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PURPOSE
The
purpose of the CHARACTER COUNTS! Coalition is to fortify the lives
of America's young people with consensus ethical values called the
Six Pillars of Character. These values, which transcend divisions
of race, creed, politics, gender, and wealth, are: trustworthiness,
respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship.
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APPROACH
It
just makes sense to teach young people right from wrong, in the
classroom, living room, and locker room. We want to be surrounded
by good people, people we can trust to make decisions according
to principle rather than expediency. After all, what are
education, coaching, and child-rearing supposed to be all about?
Developing good people who can live healthy, happy lives of purpose
- or just clever people who can pass a ball or a test?
The commitment of adults to be models of good character and spend
time with young people can make a difference. Young people
yearn for consistent adult involvement, and when they get it,
according to surveys and plain common sense, they are less inclined
toward irresponsible sexual activitity, drug and alcohol use,
suicide attempts, vandalism, and other problems (Michigan State
University poll of 13,000 adolescents in early 1995). Adults,
in turn, need support from society's institutions.
That kind of support network requires consensus and coordination
among men and women of various ages, races, politics, and creeds
who make up those institutions. They will need to agree
on common values and teach them in word and deed.
The Coalition works to overcome the false but surprisingly powerful
notion that no single value is intrinsically superior to another;
that ethical values vary by race, class, gender, and politics;
that greed and fairness, cheating and honesty carry the same moral
weight, simply depending on one's perspective and immediate needs.
Effective character education does not dismiss the importance
of self-esteem, but maintains that ethical values must be ranked
above expedience and personal preference. Character education
sets up objective criteria of virtue and encourages young people
to adopt them as ground rules for life.
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GENESIS OF THE COALITION
In
1992, the nonprofit and nonpartisan Josephson Institute of Ethics
released a report based on a survey of almost 9,000 people, most
of whom were in high school and college. The findings were disconcerting:
cheating, lying, stealing, and drunken driving were commonplace.
That same year the Institute convened in Aspen, Colorado, a conference
of educators, ethicists, and nonprofit leaders. Their task:
to share ideas about character development and to investigate
ways of working together. Chief among these ways was developing
consensus on the ethical values that could be taught at home,
in the classroom, and at the office without offending political,
racial, religious, gender, or socioeconomic sensibilities.
This is what they came up wtih in the Aspen Declaration
on Character Education: trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship.
In a simplified form these came to be known as the "Six Pillars
of Character."
To advance the goals of the Aspen Summit Conference on Character
Education, the Institute organized the CHARACTER COUNTS! Coalition
in 1993. Members of the coalition, a national, diverse partnership
of schools, communities, education and human-service organizations,
are committed to using the Six Pillars of Character in their individual
and joint programs. The hope is that by using a consistent
language with kids, the lessons of good character will be reinforced
and better understood.
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WHOSE VALUES, WHAT VALUES?
The
Coalition strives to build consensus that there are values that
clearly define us at our best, however diverse our views and backgrounds.
It follows that such values are worthy of promotion where they
are evident and of repair where they have faultered. The
Coalition both builds awareness of these consensus values and
teaches them to the young in support of the paramount role of
parents.
But why six values? Why not five or seven - or thirty-seven?
An individual or group may have any number of values, of course,
but the Six Pillars serve the need for a brief, yet comprehensive
minimum that can be taught to all. There is wide consensus
on this point: Some 40 states and 500 municipalities, school
districts, and business groups have joined political leaders (including
the President and both houses of Congress) to endorse CHARACTER
COUNTS! and the Six Pillars.
Yet why even bother with all this talk of words when action is
so desperately needed? If character education is to be effective,
diverse groups must work together, society-wide. A standard
lexicon is critical because language is the currency of communication.
And as with any instruction, effective character education benefits
from consistency and repetition, from the family room to the school
room to the locker room.
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