Character Education: Instilling Moral Values In Public Schools

"Dear God, Why do you allow so much violence in our schools?"
 - Concerned Student 

 "Dear Concerned Student, I'm not allowed in schools."
- God 

This pretend exchange went viral in response to the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.  But is there something to be said in a serious manner for the point this is getting across?  Of course there is.  Today we refuse to instill moral values in youth, and we are not better off for it.   

If anyone brings this up there are howls from ardent secularists that prayer will be reintroduced into the public schools. There is often controversy surrounding prayer in public schools, and it is based on the fear of Christian indoctrination of non-Christian students. While this has validity, the fact of the matter is that the absolutists pushing for complete secularism in the public sphere have, with the help of judges, crushed even any semblance of prayer even when there is no such threat. Going to extremes, there is not even a silent moment for individual prayer or meditation allowed, according to the courts. This to me is boneheaded judicial precedent with no relation to the original understanding of the First Amendment. In 1985, the Supreme Court in Wallace v. Jaffree declared it unconstitutional when Alabama set aside one minute at the start of each day for a moment "meditation or voluntary prayer." But this extends far beyond prayer, though prayer needed to be addressed at the outset because it is the first issue to be brought up when one points out the lack of ethical training in public places of learning.  

The problem is that in our public schools no moral values or ethics are taught. One has to go to a religious school or a house of worship, in addition to a disciplined and disciplining parent at home, to be exposed to such ideas in any meaningful way that attempts to instill right and wrong in youth. Moral values involve the principles of knowing right from wrong. And a healthy society should have values, that which it deems important, in the realm of right and wrong.  Morality and values, the National Education Association has found, top the list of issues of most concern to the American public. There is nothing wrong with character education, which does not exist in today's public schools. As Dennis Prager recently wrote, "until the contemporary period, religion and/or conscience development were ubiquitous" and society was better for it.  Our society shows many signs of deep moral trouble (e.g., breakdown of the family, rampant sexuality at early ages with one in four teenage girls having contracted an STD, highest rate of teen pregnancy in the industrialized world, youth engaging in violent and criminal behavior, violence and promiscuity encouraged by entertainment/music, to name a few). Amidst all this, schools should not be ethical bystanders. 

Theodore Roosevelt said, "To educate someone in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society." And yet the fact is that schools have completely abandoned moral teaching.

Tweet