After he had retired from military service, he was called back by the senate to rescue the Roman army from annihilation by the Aequi, a feat he accomplished in 16 days.Īt that point, the senators said to him, 'Listen, we've been struggling with this republic for a while, and we can't make it work. He rose through the ranks to become a great general. Like Washington, Cincinnatus had been a farmer who was drawn into warfare. George Washington chose the Roman Lucius Cincinnatus. In colonial times, for example, education consisted largely in reading books like Plutarch's Lives and picking out a person to craft your life after. Imprinting in children a vivid picture of what a good human being is like-that was a major component of education at an earlier period in our history. The great English philosopher Edmund Burke said, 'Example is the school of mankind, and he will learn at no other.' The first is 'example.' Human beings aren't born civilized we have to learn almost everything important by example. What does that look like in the classroom? We can answer that question in terms of what I call 'the six Es of character education.'

It's about knowing what persistence is and then being able to stay the course, or about having a rich understanding of what kindness is and then being able to apply it. There is a role for engaging children in discussion of such complicated ethical dilemmas, but true character education is about acquiring virtuous habits. By this, I do not mean trying to get kids to have the right attitude about gun control or ecology or gender issues or energy use or whatever the hot topic of the day is. On the contrary, schools should embrace their role as a partner with parents in character education. Yet, as this example illustrates, it is profoundly silly to think you can have children for six or seven hours a day, five days a week, 180 days a year, and not give them a sense of what is right or wrong, what is worthwhile, and what is not worthwhile. In the '70s and '80s, people talked about value-free education, and there was an attempt to remove moral instruction from schools. This school, like every other, was teaching children values. But the students were a lot less clear about their own obligations. The kids were enormously aware of their rights-the fact that you couldn't give them a test without two days' notice the fact that teachers were not allowed to inspect lockers the limits on what teachers were allowed to say. To me, that handbook was a metaphor for the school. At the end, there was one single page of student responsibilities. After the front page, came 24 pages of student rights. Nineteen years ago, when my family moved from Ohio to Massachusetts, my daughter's new high school issued her a student handbook that was 26 pages long.

Almost Home by Kevin M. Ryan