{"id":6223,"date":"2015-02-03T06:54:51","date_gmt":"2015-02-03T06:54:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6223"},"modified":"2015-02-03T06:54:51","modified_gmt":"2015-02-03T06:54:51","slug":"time-to-pack-your-bags-when-the-government-starts-to-promote-character-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2015\/02\/03\/time-to-pack-your-bags-when-the-government-starts-to-promote-character-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Time to pack your bags when the government starts to promote character education"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When a\u00a0government says its \"<em>committed to helping schools ensure that more children develop a set of character traits, attributes and behaviours that underpin success in education and work<\/em>\", you know there's a certain desperation in the air, or an election in the offing.<\/p>\n<p>I'm not completely against this, and obviously in favour, generally speaking, of successful children, adults, schools, and societies, but it's that weasel word \"ensure\" that's the problem. \u00a0Schools cannot \"ensure\" this; all they can do is to make a start \u2013 with parents and others \u2013 on a long process of development: actually, a life-long process, because you never stop such\u00a0development until you give up on life itself. \u00a0Further, it's a development that is only really done through continuing practice and reflection in real contexts, which is where schools have a problem. [Note 1]<\/p>\n<p>This is the Department's exemplar list of such\u00a0traits, attributes and behaviours:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>perseverance, resilience and grit<\/li>\n<li>confidence and optimism<\/li>\n<li>motivation, drive and ambition<\/li>\n<li>neighbourliness and community spirit<\/li>\n<li>tolerance and respect<\/li>\n<li>honesty, integrity and dignity<\/li>\n<li>conscientiousness, curiosity and focus<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Such lists always have a grab-bag quality to them, and this is no exception.. \u00a0I was surprised not to see \"hard working\" in the mix, or even \"continence\". \u00a0In the good old days, we'd have had obedience of authority \u00a0\/ \u00a0knowing your place \u00a0\/ \u00a0deference to your elders and betters. \u00a0I was brought up with all that and learned to dislike and distrust it. \u00a0 Many might\u00a0have included\u00a0politeness, and being nice to other people and animals in the DfE list \u2013 or common sense (which is far from common), and nous \u2013 which would fit well alongside Yorkshire grit.<\/p>\n<p>But, as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/uknews\/11378295\/Real-British-values-are-drunkenness-and-self-loathing-David-Starkey-says.html\">David Starkey<\/a> reminds us, we did not acquire the fundamental values of our liberal democracy by being nice to people or tolerating injustice; these were accrued by struggle, mostly a \"struggle with religion.\u201d\u202c \u00a0In that vein, if I were ever rash enough to construct such a list, it would start with\u00a0intolerance \u2013 intolerance of discrimination and bigotry in all its forms \u2013 and go on to the promotion of liberty, the development of skills of scepticism, and finish with\u00a0stubborn bloody-mindedness.<\/p>\n<p>.........................................<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Note 1.<\/strong><\/em> My previous post contains an expanded form of this idea. \u00a0Here it is again:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Young people aren\u2019t fully able to develop social and citizenly skills (read: character traits etc) until they can practice these for real. \u00a0Clearly, these are important, and schools are right to put stress on them.\u00a0 However, there are limitations about what can be achieved if the context is not realistic.\u00a0 My colleague Andy Stables writes about schools\u2019 roles as nurseries of responsible citizenship.\u00a0 He argues that students in school are only ever likely to pick up a general, rather diffuse, sense of concern about, and for, the world\u2019s problems that is either led, or reinforced by any involvement they may have in the overall public debate in the media.\u00a0 For Stables, this implies that the curriculum focus should be on the development of skills of critical thinking, dialogue and debate, with environment and sustainability only one of many possible foci to enable this.\u00a0 It is, essentially, an education for life-long, open-ended, open-minded, participatory citizenship.\u00a0 Stables also argues that, whilst openness to the real public debate is crucial, it is vital to remember that capacities are not outcomes, and that they do not simply precede outcomes.\u00a0 He says that, to a large extent, it is the making of real-life decisions that most fully enables, in an iterative, developmental manner, the capacity for exercising responsible citizenship.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When a\u00a0government says its \"committed to helping schools ensure that more children develop a set of character traits, attributes and behaviours that underpin success in education and work\", you know there's a certain desperation in the air, or an election...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}