Character Education

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The Pillars at BFCCPS:

Character Education

 Defining Principles

1. Character Education is taught primarily through the core virtues of Justice, Temperance, Prudence, Fortitude and their subvirtues.

2. Members of the BFCCPS Community (students, parents, teachers, staff, administrators, etc.) strive to live a life that demonstrates good character and models that character for others.

3. Character Education instruction is integrated across the curriculum and across the four pillars in both formal and informal ways, using a common language throughout grades K-8.

4. Character Education is taught and practiced using a variety of methods, which may include the following:

                  -examining role models and themes from history and literature

                  -teaching social skills that demonstrate respect for others

                  -doing role-plays to practice virtuous behavior

                  -using books, songs and video to help students discuss and visualize                               
                    situations requiring careful reflection, good decision-making and right                               
                    actions

                  -holding class meetings with specific emphasis on listening to others and                         
                    solving class problems that arise

                  -giving brief character talks on the virtue/sub-virtue in focus

                  -using character education journals, where students write definitions,                                
                    illustrations, stories, goals, and personal reflections

5. BFCCPS regularly enhances its repertoire of resources to achieve the objectives of the Character Education program.

6. Students are recognized publicly at grade-level assemblies for showing virtuous behavior.

7. The entire BFCCPS community focuses on the same virtue each month.

Background

Character Education is about helping students

 know the good, love the good,

and do the good.

Aristotle (and many others after him) said that without good habits, people can never be truly happy.  For social, moral, civic, and personal reasons, parents and teachers have a responsibility to help students develop good habits.  That’s really what a virtue is: a good habit.  A virtue is not a point of view or a matter of what we like or dislike; a virtue is a positive character trait.

The founders of BFCCPS chose to focus on four core virtues, historically known as the “cardinal virtues”: Justice, Temperance, Fortitude, and Prudence.  Within each of these virtues, there are related subvirtues.  For example, Justice encompasses respect, kindness, and fairness.  Prudence includes wisdom, honesty, and integrity.  Fortitude involves courage and determination.  Courtesy and self-control are aspects of Temperance.

Classical definitions of the core virtues:

Justice is the constant and firm will to give to others their due. The just person is distinguished by habitual right thinking and the uprightness of his conduct toward his neighbor.  The Golden Rule applies here:  “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Prudence guides reason to discern the true good in every circumstance and to choose the right means of achieving it.  It has been said that Prudence is "right reason in action." Prudence is not to be confused with timidity or fear, nor with duplicity or dissimulation.  Prudence guides the other virtues by setting rule and measure.

Fortitude ensures firmness in difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of the good. It strengthens the resolve to resist temptations and to overcome obstacles in life.  Fortitude enables one to conquer fear and to face trials and persecutions.

Temperance ensures the mastering of our impulses for our own good and for the sake of the happiness of those around us.  It directs us toward what is good and healthy.  Key in understanding this virtue is that a person is not free if she cannot master her desires and impulses; she either masters them or she is enslaved by them.

Overview

Our approach to learning about virtues was inspired by Benjamin Franklin. In his autobiography, Franklin recorded his daily attempts to improve on one isolated virtue a week. He had chosen thirteen virtues on which to concentrate, and he focused on a different one every week, recording situations and his responses to them as well as his own initiatives pertaining to the particular virtue. He tried this approach because he knew that virtue is acquired through good habits, practiced daily.He felt that focusing on each one in turn would allow him to see his strengths and weaknesses in relationship to his articulated virtues. At the end of his life, Franklin was asked if he succeeded in achieving his standards, and he said no, but that he had followed his daily and weekly regimen all his life, believing through it all that "without virtue, man has no happiness in this world."

Our character education program intentionally takes as its model Franklin’s, and adapts it for the purposes of children who, along with the adults in the community, need to become life-long practitioners of virtue. Unlike Franklin’s, our schedule of virtues are on the classic, cardinal virtues.  Derived from the virtues of Justice, Wisdom, Courage, and Moderation articulated in Plato's Republic, they are termed "cardinal"  (from the Latin word for hinge)  because all other virtues "hinge" upon them. By concentrating on each virtue in turn, following a well-publicized schedule that parents should use at home and teachers use during class instruction time, children and the adults in the community focus their daily attempts to inculcate a pattern of virtuous behavior.

BFCCPS fosters virtuous behavior in a variety of ways, including:

• Curricular connections – stories and concepts are taken from history, science, and literature that shed light on a particular virtue and lead to thoughtful discussion on the choices we make and how they affect our character.
• Classroom activities and service: As Aristotle noted, we learn by doing. We become brave by performing brave acts and just by performing just acts. BFCCPS’ emphasis on service to the school and the greater community helps students practice responsibility and compassion.
• Expectations: At BFCCPS, we actively try to build an ethical community. We strive to treat each other with respect, to learn from our mistakes, and to support as we grow as individuals and as a community.

If we are successful, every member of the community will continue this pattern of focus, formally or informally, long after he or she ceases to be a member of this community. Finding both virtue and happiness through guidance is central to our mission and forms the basis of the hopes we hold for our children.

The Four Virtues

Members of the BFCCPS community strive to live a life of virtue. A virtue is acquired through "good habit." We all have habits – ways we behave over and over again. The key to living a happy life is understanding which habits are worth developing (and which we should get rid of!). Below are the classical, cardinal virtues. All other virtues "hinged" upon these four – thus we have also identified related character traits that can help us in our efforts to improve ourselves. Benjamin Franklin, the school’s namesake, chose his own set of nine similar virtues and focused on one each week, recording his accomplishments in a "little book". He recognized that character development is a life-long process – not one that ends after the 8’th grade or upon reaching "adulthood"!