Oct. 29, 2000

TEACHING GOOD CHARACTER IN SCHOOLS

The Colorado State Board of Education sponsored a conference last week on character education, discussing what it is, why it's needed and how to go about it without tripping over the line between church and state.

The character traits addressed are civic in nature, not necessarily religious. A 1999 board resolution said schools should teach qualities that "transcend cultural, religious and socioeconomic differences," including "common courtesy, respect for person and property, civic and personal responsibility, and honesty and fair dealings."

Who would object to that? I don't believe there is any major segment of American society that actively seeks to promote discourtesy, disrespect, irresponsibility or dishonesty.

But, as one panelist observed, this is controversial stuff.

Many people practice civic virtues for religious reasons. And some aggressively nonreligious people would rather dispense with the virtues than risk discussing the religion.

At one panel I attended, keynote speaker Marcia Beauchamp discussed a statement of principles on "Religious Liberty, Public Education and the Future of American Democracy."

It was developed by the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center with broad public participation and has been endorsed by two dozen civic groups, both religious -- Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and Islamic -- and secular, including the National Education Association and People for the American Way.

It's a bland enough document, saying, "Public schools may not inculcate nor inhibit religion. They must be places where religion and religious convictions are treated with fairness and respect."

Negotiating the territory between inculcation and inhibition may be difficult in practice. What should a teacher do, for instance, when her students ask, "What's your faith?"

"I try to use it as a teaching moment," Beauchamp said. With 11th-graders, she said, "I can say, 'Well, this is what I am, but that's not my role here.'"

But any response has to be age-appropriate -- second-graders can't separate a teacher's private and public selves.

The principle of fairness seems to me an entirely appropriate place to begin, given the role of religious belief in contemporary America and in American history.

"Ignoring religion is not neutral," Beauchamp said. "It borders on hostility."

One audience member evidently disagreed. He demanded to know why the Freedom Forum document hadn't been endorsed by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, or Freedom From Religion? What about humanists and atheists?

"They don't tend to endorse consensus documents," Beauchamp said. "We don't want to exclude them. We would love to have them join us."

She added that when fund-raising time comes around, "common ground is not a very lucrative place to be."

Though I am myself "free from religion" and content so to be, I am not distressed by evidence of other people's faith. I appreciate the fact that I am not constrained to conceal my beliefs, or lack thereof, and I owe a reciprocal courtesy to others. That's the way I read the statement of principles.

Any nonbeliever who argues that it is impossible to teach good character in the public schools without involving them unconstitutionally in religion has argued himself into a logically impossible position. If he believes himself to be of good character, and a person who practices civic virtue, then where did he acquire those traits, and on what grounds does he profess them?

In her closing address, Beauchamp said, "It's amazing that we can sit down together and talk about religion, when elsewhere people are killing each other."

In a pluralistic country that grows more diverse every day, she said, "it's a legacy we take for granted far too often."

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