Character Education Programs :: essays papers

Character Education Programs One of the most important things to parents is that their child grows up to be a caring, healthy human being. Parents were actually asked what the most important thing they wanted for their children was. â€Å"The most common response, given by 48% of the parents, was making sure their child grows up to be a moral person.† (http://www.joe.org/joe/1998april/a3.html). A good way to ensure this is by implementing character education programs. With the increase in violence in young people today, character education programs are a great way to teach people various good and useful morals. Character education programs are exactly how they sound; they are designed to build one’s character throughout childhood so that the individual is able to make good decisions in life. Character education programs are intended to handle â€Å"aggressive behaviors, build self-esteem, resolve conflicts peacefully, encourage diversity tolerance, practice core values and promote character education† (http://www.joyinlearning.com/). The effect of character education programs on student’s behavior will be addressed. Character education programs are designed to help with many issues such as aggressive behavior, life skills, conflict and violence, safety, diversity tolerance and most of all, they exist in order to help build one’s character. Effective character education programs need to include many main beliefs. It is said that â€Å"Character education promotes core ethical values as the basis of good character.† This means that some values which include caring, honesty, fairness, responsibility, and respect for self and others are all essential to building character education. The hope is that schools that implement character education programs look at these values as obligations for the student to uphold. The second thing that character education needs to have is thinking, emotion, and behavior. The point here is to help people understand the difference between what is right and wrong, good and bad, and to use those â€Å"good† values throughout their life. In schools using character education, intentional, proactive, and comprehensive approaches are used to follow the values of good character. The intentional approach and proactive approach try to develop character, and the comprehensive approach uses every feature of schooling. For example, it would use the environment in and surrounding the school to try and build character. It would also make sure that the bus driver for the school bus is in good character.