Building Better Characters : Alarmed by rampant cheating and widespread violence on campus, a growing number of educators are beginning to teach the basics of ethics. The emphasis is on honesty, responsibility and civic duty.

When a student came to class wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with pigs in a sexual embrace, Albuquerque, N.M., teacher Donald Whatley decided to take a stand.

Whatley told the sixth-grader the T-shirt was offensive and unsuitable for school, maybe the entire universe. The boy disagreed. Besides, he said, his mother had bought it for him.

Appalled, Whatley sent the youngster to the principal’s office where his ruling was upheld. The student wore the T-shirt inside out for the rest of the day.

“For some reason, I find that little incident to be a great moral victory,” says Whatley, president of the Albuquerque Teachers Federation. “I wouldn’t want my daughter to have to sit in a classroom and look at a T-shirt with pigs fornicating on it.”

Whatley cites the episode to illustrate why he is part of a growing, broadly based “character education” movement whose goal is to teach elementary and secondary school students--and their parents if need be--the difference between right and wrong.

The movement’s key assertion is that specific, universal standards of conduct exist and that these standards ought to apply to everyone--regardless of ethnic or racial background or religion. The movement seeks to instill “secular” standards such as honesty, courage and civic duty in students primarily through schools and youth organizations.

“I think what we need is a real radical and rapid shift to moral principles that can be taught--as opposed to this notion that values are largely in the eye of the beholder--because society can’t tolerate ambiguity,” says Whatley.

Politicians, preachers, civic leaders, parents and a host of others have long lamented the decline of ethical standards among America’s youth, citing everything from rampant cheating on exams to violence in schools to escalating homicide rates. But these calls for higher moral standards often have been blunted by partisan disagreements, as well as fears that noble-sounding sentiments were smoke screens for hidden political and religious agendas.

Now, however, the atmosphere seems to be changing. Galvanized by what they see as a worsening moral crisis among young people, more educators and leaders of youth organizations are jumping on the character-education bandwagon.

Just this year three indicators point to character education as a snowballing national movement, growth that has occurred largely out of the limelight and independent of this election year’s storms over “family values.”

* In March, a group representing nine major educational associations met informally in Wisconsin to thrash out how to get “big education groups to recommit to character-education programs,” according to Diane Berreth, deputy executive director of the 150,000-member Assn. of Supervision and Curriculum Development. Two weeks ago, the group formally organized itself as the Character Education Partnership and began developing tentative plans that include a national media campaign next year, a national awards program, an annual forum and a publication. The group’s members include the National School Boards Assn. and may soon include the two biggest teachers’ unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Assn. “We’re doing this all as volunteers,” she says. “We have no budget and no staff.”

* At a July meeting in Aspen, Colo., representatives of 30 youth and education organizations--including the Boy and Girl Scouts, 4-H Clubs and the American Youth Soccer Organization--signed what was billed as a trail-blazing agreement on character education. Organized by the Josephson Institute of Ethics in Marina del Rey, the conference reportedly sizzled with spirited debate. But, in the end, the groups agreed to promote “six pillars of character”: Respect, trustworthiness, caring, justice and fairness, civic virtue and citizenship.

The agreement on core values was an important step in defining common goals and methods to restore “the moral ozone of the nation,” organizers said. The signatory groups also asserted that these core values “transcend cultural, religious and socioeconomic differences” and rejected the so-called “values clarification” method of teaching ethics.

* This month Boston College education professor William K. Kilpatrick will issue a manifesto calling for widespread teaching of character education, mainly by using great works of literature from various cultures as vehicles for moral instruction. In “Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right from Wrong: Moral Illiteracy and the Case for Character Education,” the Boston College education professor sketches the background of what he sees as a moral crisis among America’s young people. The book’s title recalls another education bestseller, “Why Johnny Can’t Read,” that sparked a furor in the 1950s.

Citing a variety of sources, Kilpatrick notes that each year, nearly 3 million crimes are committed on or near school property, about 135,000 students carry guns to school and that 21% of all secondary school students avoid using school restrooms because they fear harm or intimidation. Publisher Simon & Schuster is giving the book a publicity boost and Kilpatrick already has begun appearing on East Coast radio and TV talk shows.

B. David Brooks, president of the Pasadena-based Jefferson Center for Character Education, a nonprofit group that develops and implements character-education programs, says these events indicate that a national network promoting character education is “beginning to emerge.” For his center, founded in 1963, it has been a long time coming.

Like others in the movement, Brooks says that after years of negligible progress, the time suddenly seems ripe for a major character-education push. “People are calling us who wouldn’t even talk to us three years ago,” he says, referring to both education associations and schools.

Thomas Lickona, an education professor at the State University of New York-Cortland and author of last year’s “Educating for Character,” notes that within the last three to four years “virtually every state education department” has issued recommendations that schools teach character education.

“There’s a growing consensus that there are core values,” Lickona says, explaining that the consensus is fueled by the fact that “larger and larger numbers of people think we’re going down the tubes as a society.”

The Jefferson Center, for instance, promotes as core values those espoused in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights. Most character-education lists include honesty and personal responsibility as priority virtues.

Dick Wilson, executive director of the Hawthorne-based American Youth Soccer Organization says simply that “sportsmanship and ethics go pretty close together.” A list of core values like those adopted at the Aspen conference “shouldn’t offend anybody,” he says.

While society’s ills play a part in the burgeoning of their movement, character-education veterans also attribute growth in the movement to changes in their own vocabulary.

Advocates say they chose the term character education because the wording is less likely to be controversial than phrases using the words values and morals.

The Jefferson Center’s Patrick McCarthy notes that when the “V word” is uttered “some people hear Nazi values, some people hear Dan Quayle values.” By substituting character education, “you don’t have to spend the first 45 minutes of every conversation explaining what you’re not.”

Moreover, the switch in terminology reflects the belief that the “values clarification” system now used in many schools has failed to promote any sense of moral purpose in students. Instead, character-education advocates say, this system, with its freewheeling and open-ended discussions, leaves students with the impression that there are no rigid moral ground-rules in life.

For example, in one typical values clarification exercise, Kilpatrick says, students are asked to discuss who among the passengers of a leaky lifeboat should be thrown overboard to save the rest. There are no right or wrong answers in the discussion, he writes. Besides being morally obtuse, Kilpatrick argues that such examples are so remote from nearly all real-life situations as to be worthless.

Advocates say a number of studies show that character education can be dramatically effective. The Jefferson Center’s Brooks reports that an education project it implemented in 25 Los Angeles city elementary and middle schools resulted in a 25% drop in major disciplinary problems such as fighting, drugs or weapons. The number of tardy students sent to principals’ offices dropped 40%.

Ronni Ephraim, principal of one of the schools involved, says the Jefferson program, now in its third year, has resulted in a 75% reduction in the number of students sent to her for discipline.

In the past, students awaiting discipline frequently formed long lines outside her office at the Limerick Elementary School in Canoga Park. Now she sees two or three per day at most for offenses such as truancy or fighting, Ephraim says. Following the Jefferson Center’s guidelines, the principal says she counsels offenders to stop and think about their offense and consider proper behavior, a process that involves students in their own discipline.

Like other character-education programs, the Jefferson program emphasizes a few key virtues, which are taught in the classroom and through parent involvement. The center’s “Steps to Success” emphasizes responsibility, confidence, attendance, punctuality, politeness and health, among other things.

Character-education programs work best when a “schoolwide climate” is created for promoting values so that they are not confined to classroom lessons, says the Jefferson Center’s McCarthy.

Typically, teachers introduce a character-education course with a few short classroom lessons, McCarthy adds. But the key to a successful program is constant reinforcement of values by tacking up ethics message posters throughout the school and in school buses, talking about good conduct in school assemblies and getting parents to promote character development at home. Some schools name students as “citizens of the month” and teachers issue “caught being good certificates” to students surprised in the act of ethical behavior. The certificates may be taped on a wall near where the incident occurred, highly visible proof of correct conduct.

Ideally, “the kids realize there’s a conspiracy to teach (them) that respect and responsibility are important,” McCarthy explains. The program has been used successfully in poor and affluent schools and with a wide ethnic range of students, he says.

But McCarthy says that the center’s programs don’t always work. Turnover among principals and teachers can derail the program. Sometimes, too, the program may become a “political football,” with teachers wanting more money for the extra work, including training, the program requires.

In Los Angeles, McCarthy blames budget cuts and high-level administration turnover for, perhaps, preventing wider adoption of the center’s program. Lickona and other experts stress, however, that “the schools can’t do it alone.” Character education, they say, ought to be integrated into a wide variety of youth activities as well as being taught in the homes.

Clearly, the potential for debate within the character-education movement is great.

Author Kilpatrick, for one, places a high value on great literature--specifically stories about life with a moral point of view--as indispensable for teaching morality to young people. His reading list, which he says is “far from comprehensive,” includes books about African-Americans, Indians and other groups as well as such long-time staples as Charles Dickens “Hard Times” and “Great Expectations.”

But Lickona is skeptical that reading great books alone can build great character.

“I just consulted with a school this week where the kids are reading all the great literature and they’re robbing each other blind,” he says.

Stay tuned.