Character and Moral Education

Joseph L. DeVitis is Visiting Professor of Educational Foundations at Old Dominion University. Recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he is a widely published scholar and public intellectual in educational policy studies. He is a past president of the American Educational Studies Association, the Council of Learned Societies in Education, and the Society of Professors of Education. His most recent books are Critical Civic Literacy: A Reader (Peter Lang, 2011) and Adolescent Education: A Reader (Peter Lang, 2010), edited with Linda Irwin-DeVitis.Tianlong Yu is Associate Professor of Education at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, and a visiting Taishan Scholar Professor of Education at Shandong Normal University, China. Born and raised in China and educated in both China and the United States, he writes on the social foundations of education with a keen interest in issues of moral education and multicultural education.

• Contents: Joseph L. DeVitis/Tianlong Yu: Introduction – William J. Bennett/Edwin J. Delattre: Moral Education in the Schools – Edward A. Wynne: The Great Tradition in Education: Transmitting Moral Values – Thomas Lickona: Character Education: Seven Crucial Issues – Thomas Lickona/Eric Schaps/Catherine Lewis: Eleven Principles of Effective Character Education – Jacques S. Benninga/Marvin W. Berkowitz/Phyllis Kuehn/Karen Smith: Character and Academics: What Good Schools Do – David E. Purpel: The Politics of Character Education – Joseph L. DeVitis/Tianlong Yu: The «Moral Poverty» of Character Education – Aaron Cooley: Legislating Character: Moral Education in North Carolina’s Public Schools – Suzanne S. Hudd: Character Education in Contemporary America: McMorals? – Deron Boyles: Would You Like Values with That? Chick-fil-A and Character Education – Sue Winton: Does Character Education Really Support Citizenship Education? Examining the Claims of an Ontario Policy – Michael H. Romanowski: Through the Eyes of Students: High School Students’ Perspectives on Character Education – Alfie Kohn: How Not to Teach Values: A Critical Look at Character Education – Dwight Boyd: Character Education from the Left Field – John F. Covaleskie: Morality, Virtue, and Democratic Life – Daniel R. DeNicola: Liberal Education and Moral Education – Scott Fletcher/Peter J. Nelsen: Democracy in a Cosmopolitan Age: Moral Education for the Global Citizen – Douglas J. Simpson: Neo-Deweyan Moral Education – Ronald David Glass: Critical Pedagogy and Moral Education – Barbara J. Thayer-Bacon:Feminist Theory and Moral Education – Richard Ognibene: A Warrior for Justice: Jonathan Kozol’s Moral Vision of America’s Schools and Society – Linda Irwin-DeVitis: Framing Adolescents, Their School, and Cultures: Contested Worldviews – Lynda Stone: Fear of Uncertainty, Control, and the Criminalizing of Youth – Janie Victoria Ward: Navigating Inequities: A Morally Rooted Pedagogy of Intentional Mentoring With Black Children and Other Youth of Color – Jennifer Logue: Cultural and Subjective Operations of Ignorance and Resistance in Sexuality-Related Curricula – Barbara Stengel: Feelings of Worth and the Moral Made Visible – Nel Noddings: Teaching Themes of Care – Marcia Peck: Surveying the Soil: Building a Culture of Connectedness in School – Susan Verducci/Michael Katz: Doubt and the Framing of Virtue Through Film – Cris Toffolo/Ian Harris: On the Relationship of Peace Education to Moral Education – Michael P. Mueller/Dana L. Zeidler/Lynda L. Jenkins: Earth’s Role in Ethical Discourse and Functional Scientific Literacy – Nel Noddings: Understanding Unbelief as Part of Religious Education – Daniel Vokey: Moral Education for the 21st Century: A Buddhist View.

«It is often said, rightly, that education is a necessarily normative activity, i.e., that moral questions ‘come with the territory’ of educational theory and practice. This collection respects that claim while adding the critical element of expanding the territory by providing fresh interpretations of character and moral education to questions of ideology, peace, globalism, ecology, feminism, and the larger questions of what it means to be a citizen in social groups struggling to become democratic communities. DeVitis, Yu, and their contributors offer a necessary and important addition to our understanding of those issues. I highly recommend their work.» (James Giarelli, Professor and Chair, Department of Educational Theory, Policy, and Administration, Rutgers University)«Joseph L. DeVitis and Tianlong Yu have gathered a wide-ranging, significant set of perspectives on character and moral education. In so doing, they have provided the educational community a timely and useful resource.» (David Hansen, Professor and Director, Program in Philosophy and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University)