Education, from the time of the ancient Greeks to sometime in the late 19th century, has centered around a singular idea which was that education, in addition to teaching basic subject material, had the larger and more fundamental purpose of shaping character, that is of making students better people (Doyle, 1997). The McGuffey Reader of the nineteenth century, for example, was designed to make sure that school children had a daily diet of inspiring tales that taught them the virtues of hard work, sacrifice, altruism, honesty, loyalty, and courage (Lickona, 1996).
John Adams wrote that our form of government was only meant for a virtuous people and Jefferson, Madison, and Washington concurred. A government of the people would work only as long as the people were of good character. Schools did their part by explicit instruction in the virtues (Kilpatrick, 1992).
During the first three decades of this century, character education utilized elaborate codes of conduct and group activities in school clubs as the primary methods of teaching character (McClellan, 1992; McKown, 1935). One widely used code of conduct was the "Children's Morality Code" which emphasized "ten laws of right living---self-control, good health, kindness, sportsmanship, self-reliance, duty, reliability, truth, good workmanship, and teamwork (Hutchins, 1917). From the 1920s to the 1950s, character education more closely resembled instruction in basic ethics. During these years, character education was directive and the objectives were to inculcate children into established virtue and value systems with teachers and administrators modeling those virtues and values (Kirschenbaum, 1992).
However, during the 1960s and 1970s, character education became a good deal more relativistic. The purpose was not so much to teach the virtues as it was to help students clarify their own value systems (values clarification), to assist them in the development of moral reason...