Term Paper: Character Education in the 1960’s

Sample Term Paper

Words 1,320

This is a term paper discussing character education in the 1960’s. The 1960’s and early 1970’s soon marked an additional temporary downfall of character education.  Our nation was faced with so many societal changes.

The 1960’s and early 1970’s soon marked an additional temporary downfall of character education.  Our nation was faced with so many societal changes, most notably racial division, teachers and administrators were happy to abandon the task of teaching moral education, and return the responsibility for teaching character to the family and church (Beachum & McCray, 2005).

The 1960’s brought about an emergence in “personalism” which gave rise to the worth, autonomy, and subjectivity of the person, putting emphasis on individual rights and freedom over responsibility (Lickona, 1993).  This movement turned people inward toward personal self-fulfillment, weakened social commitments (such as marriage and parenting), and fueled the sexual revolution.

Moreover, in 1963, Madalyn Murray O’Hair led a successful court fight to ban prayer from public schools.  This caused many educators to stop teaching any kind of values, religious or otherwise, for fear of litigation (Josephson, 2002).

Finally, the rapidly increasing pluralism and secularization of American society gave question to whose values should be taught; and also questioned whether moral education violated the separation of church and state (Lickona, 1993).

Many schools began to accept the ideas that they should not impose any one set of values on their students, and agreed that all values were equal, and distinctions could not be made between them (Greenawalt, 1996).  Soon, public schools realized they could no longer assume their once central role as moral and character educators.

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