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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 June 2018
Over the past five years, the American public has witnessed a flurry of interest in “character” and “character or moral education.” In 1992, William Kilpatrick wrote a book that attracted widespread attention, Why Johnny Can't Tell Right from Wrong: Moral Illiteracy and the Case for Character Education. A year later, William Bennett's best-selling anthology of remedial readings appeared, The Book of Virtues. More recently, Gertrude Himmelfarb published a book on the Victorian golden age of morals. At the same time, within the educational field, a subprofession of consultants devoted to character work has aimed to affect schooling at the elementary and secondary levels. As early as the mid-1970's, theologians and ethicists began discussing the idea of character, taking their cue from Stanley Hauerwas. Common to all of these writers is the belief that character has a necessary tie to religion and democracy.
1. Kilpatrick, William K., Why Johnny Can't Tell Right from Wrong: Moral Illiteracy and the Case for Character Education (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992)Google Scholar; Bennett, William J., The Book of Virtues: A Treasury ofGreat Moral Stories (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993)Google Scholar; Himmelfarb, Gertrude, The De-Moralization of Society: Front Victorian Virtues to Modern Values (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995)Google Scholar; Kann, Mark E., “Character Education for Democratic Citizenship,” Moral Education Forum 18 (Summer 1993): 128-37Google Scholar; Lickona, Thomas, “The Return of Character Education,” Educational Leadership 51 (November 1993): 6–11 Google Scholar; Rosenblatt, Roger, “Teaching Johnny to Be Good,” New York Times Magazine, April 30, 1995, 36–41, 50, 60, 64, 74.Google Scholar
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3. Most histories that deal with character or the development of American morality stop around 1918. See Boyer, Paul, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820-1920 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978)Google Scholar; and Danbohm, David B., “The World of Hope”: Progressives and the Struggle for an Ethical Public Life (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987).Google Scholar There are a few exceptions. Two religious education dissertations took up the topic in a limited way, and one historian of secular education wrote a brief survey (just over 100 pages) covering the years 1607 to the present: William Edwin Chapman, “Character Education in the Twenties” (Th.D. diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1969); Nam Soon Song, “Character Education in Protestantism: A Theological and Educational Reconsideration” (Ed.D. diss., Presbyterian School of Christian Education [Richmond, Virginia], 1987); McClellan, B. Edward, Schools and the Shaping of Character: Moral Education in America, 1607-Present (Bloomington: ERIC Clearinghouse for Social Studies/Social Science Education and the Social Studies Development Center, Indiana University, 1992).Google Scholar
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33. James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902 (New York: The New American Library, 1958), 338-39.Google Scholar
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48. Nearly forty years later, Abraham Maslow articulated the naturalistic interpretation unequivocally in Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1964). He wrote: “It has recently begun to appear that these ‘revelations’ or mystical illuminations can be subsumed under the head of the ‘peak-experiences’… or ‘transcendent’ experiences which are now being eagerly investigated by many psychologists. That is to say, it is very likely… that these older reports, phrased in terms of super- natural revelation, were … perfectly natural, human peak-experiences of the kind that can easily be examined today, which, however, were phrased in terms of whatever conceptual, cultural, and linguistic framework the particular seer had available in his time” (19-20).
49. Bower, , Character through Creative Experience, 231.Google Scholar
50. Ibid., 156; Hartshorne, , Character in Human Relations, 254, 275 (emphasis in original).Google Scholar
51. See Athearn, , Character Building in a Democracy, 22, 41, 76, 89Google Scholar; Department of the Interior, Character, 86; Coe, George A., “Some Results of the Organization and Work of the Religion Education Association,” Religious Education 26, no. 1 (January 1931): 2 Google Scholar; Smith, Gerald Birney, “Significance of the Convention Program of the Religious Education Association,” part one, Religious Education 22, no. 4 (April 1927): 295 Google Scholar; and Seymour, , From Sunday School to Church School, 36–38, 40-43, 73, 82, 86, 106, 116.Google Scholar
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55. See Landman, Isaac, “The Present Opportunity and Responsibility of Religious Education: The Jewish View,” Religious Education 28, no. 4 (June 1933): 283-87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blumenfield, Samuel M., “Can Youth Movements Save Us?” Religious Education 31, no. 4 (October 1936): 255-60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yard, James M., “What Happens to Religion and Democracy in a Totalitarian State,” Religious Education 32, no. 1 (January 1937): 13–16 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “Annual Meeting of the Religious Education Association—Topic: Education and Authority in Church and State,” Religious Education 32, no. 2 (April 1937): 82-84.
56. See Holifield, E. Brooks, A History of Pastoral Care in America: From Salvation to Self-Realization (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1983), 210–306.Google Scholar
57. For a description of these competing types of morality and the efforts to reconcile them in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Danbohm, “The World ofHope”, 15, 78.
58. See, for example, Hudson, Winthrop S. and Corrigan, John, Religion in America: An Historical Account of the Development of American Religious Life, 5th ed. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1992), 258-68Google Scholar; Ahlstrom, Sydney E., A Religious History of the American People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 763-84Google Scholar; Cauthen, Kenneth, The Impact of American Religious Liberalism (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 3–37 Google Scholar; and William Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism.
59. They did this in tandem with such contemporary theologians as Shailer Mathews and Henry Nelson Wieman, who were also heavily influenced by pragmatism as well as the naturalistic and social scientific study of religion. Hartshorne explicitly commented on the continuity between his work and Wieman's; see Hartshorne, , Character in Human Relations, 217-18.Google Scholar
60. In addition to William Bennett's best-seller and the work of Thomas Lickona, the subject of character has become of nationwide interest to public school principals. The President of the United States has also contributed to its popularization. See MacAlpine, Ian R., “The Foundations of Character: Teaching Students—and Ourselves—How to Make the Right Decisions,” The High School Magazine: For Principals, Assistant Principals, and All High School Leaders 2, no. 2 (December 1994): 27–33 Google Scholar; and Harris, J. F., “Clinton Mounts Bully Pulpit to Preach on the Nation's Moral Health,” The Washington Post, May 21, 1995, A20.Google Scholar