MORAL AND CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT 1 Moral and Character Development

Moral character development has been a topic of concern for thousands of years. It was central to the development of American schooling, but lost favor in the middle of the 20 th century. Over the last several decades there has been increased attention paid to the importance of moral character as central to the purpose of schooling. This paper reviews the most important theories related to moral character development and suggests methods for including it in the school setting. The development of moral character has been the subject of philosophical and psychological investigation since Aristotle theorized three levels of moral character development: an ethics of fear, an ethics of shame, an ethics of wisdom (Kraut, 2001). Philosophers, psychologists, and educators as diverse as John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim, and John Dewey, and as ancient as Confucius, Plato, and Aristotle have viewed the development of moral character as the primary purpose of schooling (Purpel & Ryan, 1976). From the beginning of American public education in the 1600s until the first thir