The Content of Their Character: Inquiries into the Varieties of Moral Formation - Softcover

Hunter, James Davison; Olson, Ryan S.

9781641610018: The Content of Their Character: Inquiries into the Varieties of Moral Formation

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1641610018 ISBN 13: 9781641610018

Publisher: Finstock & Tew, 2018

For most of America's history, schools were established to furnish more than just academic training: They were founded to form young people of strong character and civic conscience. We rarely think of our schools that way now. Ironically, we bicker over test scores, graduation rates, and academic standards, even as we are besieged by news stories of gratuitous misconduct and cynical, callous, unethical behavior.

Might our schools provide a glimmer of hope? This is precisely the question that a team of talented scholars asked in a landmark study. To explore how American high schools directly and indirectly inculcate moral values in students, these researchers visited a national sample of schools in each of ten sectors: urban public, rural public, charter, evangelical Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Islamic, prestigious independent, alternative-pedagogy, and home schools. The Content of Their Character provides a summary of the scholars' findings--the stories from the schools they visited and the teachers, administrators, and students they spoke to. The results point to a new model for understanding the moral and civic formation of children and to new ways to prepare young people for responsibility and citizenship in a complex world.

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With contributions from
Jeffrey S. Dill
Richard Fournier
Charles L. Glenn
Jeffrey Guhin
James Davison Hunter
Carol Ann MacGregor
Patricia Maloney
Ryan S. Olson
David Sikkink
Jack Wertheimer
Kathryn L. Wiens

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About the Author:

James Davison Hunter is the LaBrosse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture, and Social Theory at the University of Virginia. He is also the founder and executive director of the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, a leading interdisciplinary research center and intellectual community. The recipient of numerous literary awards, he has authored or coauthored nine books, including Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America and The Death of Character: Moral Education in an Age without Good or Evil.

Ryan S. Olson is the director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia and a fellow in late antiquity at the Center for Hellenic Studies at Harvard University. Author of Tragedy, Authority, and Trickery: The Poetics of Embedded Letters in Josephus, he has written articles and essays on Roman history, late antiquity, and modern character education. He has also served as the program director for educational reform at The Kern Family Foundation.

Review:

"We live in an age of social, technological, and economic disruptions which entail a lifetime of accelerated change for our children. Schools cannot prepare them for this world with a few platitudes and a static body of knowledge. Children must now develop a sensitive yet sturdy internal compass to navigate the currents of modern life and global culture.
"It is increasingly clear that this compass must be moral as well as intellectual. This is precisely what makes The Content of Their Character so timely and important. When it comes to the moral formation of young people, what will work? What will last? And if this formation lasts, how might it be replicated? This intriguing book elevates these questions from the periphery of education to its core, and it suggests answers that acknowledge the universality of moral character while recognizing the enduring facts of cultural diversity. Perhaps in the US more so than in Asia or Europe, people still debate the role that schools should play in developing character. But where schools don't help in building a solid floor under children, the schools may end up building walls around them instead."
-- Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

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