Building character is a worthy subject in schools

Alan Borsuk:

Would you rather have someone graduate high school with good computer skills or good character traits?

I grant it's a false choice. You ought to have both, and they're not in conflict. But I ask this as a way of asking what our priorities are when it comes to educating children.

It's hard to find a school that doesn't have lots of computers these days. The intense push to load schools up with computers seems to have eased, compared with a decade ago. Money is tighter now, and many schools don't need much more because they have a lot already.

But it's not so easy to find schools that have good character education programs.

Schools are held accountable for teaching reading and math and so on. The pressure is always on for academic records for each student and for a school as a whole. But students' character? Other than attendance and discipline for behavior problems, interest in that is pretty inconsistent.

Of course, many would say, it's not the school's job to civilize children. That's the parents' job. Absolutely correct, and I think more should be done to try to get more parents to do that job.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at August 14, 2011 4:34 AM
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