READING

This is an abbreviated statement of "The Declaration of a Global Ethic" framed as a poem. The Declaration was generated at the 1993 World Parliament of Religions and has been endorsed by more than one hundred religions around the world.

Survival

A community of all beings, interdependent, respectful
Preserving Earth, the air, the water, and the soil
Manifesting responsibility and individuality,
Understanding that failure to do so has consequences
Treating others as we wish to be treated
Committed to respect, dignity, and individuality
Developing an aptitude for forgiveness
Learning from the past and renouncing hate
Narrowing the differences for world community
Humankind is our family
Practicing kindness, generosity, serving others
Honoring the children, the aged, the poor, the suffering
Equal among equals, sexual and moral
Putting behind us all forms of domination or abuse
Commitment to non-violence, justice, and peace
Achieving true social justice and economic order
Speaking truthfully with compassion
Moving beyond greed for power, money, and consumption
The consciousness of individuals must change
Before Earth can be changed
Discipline the mind by meditation, prayer, or positive thought
All are invited to share the experience of survival.
(c) Vision Changer Project 1995

SERMON

Before I begin, I'm sure I speak for all the parents here as I add my heartfelt thanks to those of you who have given of your attention, energy and time to help guide the development of our children. One of the most important things we do here is help prepare our children to live happy and productive lives infused with wisdom, compassion, and meaning. We hope to send our young out into the world grateful for the gift of life and motivated to creatively return our love to their family, community, and world throughout their lives.

We live in a time when there is much concern about how children are being raised and prepared for life. The rash of school shootings over the last few years has magnified that concern. The shooters in Columbine came from families with eerie similarities to those our children might have contact with. One of the reasons that Columbine hit many of us so hard was fearing our kids could be playing with such troubled children and we'd not know it. James Garbarino spoke to us on the theme of disturbed youth for our Channing Lecture in the beginning of last month saying one of the inner resources these "lost boys" often do not possess is a sense that they "exist in a meaningful universe." Without meaning, they have no solid foundation for developing their morality.

One of the proposals to deal with this perceived moral breakdown in our schools I'd like to discuss briefly this morning is a program called Character Education. This movement has been associated with people like Bill Bennett and his book. The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories published in 1993. Character Education programs are sprouting up all over the country with the goal of intentionally instilling virtue in children in the public school classroom. Our own John Walko is working on one such program with Hudson Valley Community College.

These new character education programs have generated suspicion in educational and liberally religious circles because conservative and fundamentalist religious groups have championed them. Character First! is one such program created by Bill Gothard, founder of the Institute for Basic Life Principles, based in Chicago. Critics say the program, which stresses obedience to all authority figures, could lead to the teaching of religion in public schools, raising constitutional questions about the separation of church and state. Gothard directs children to obey all authority figures -- parents, bosses and political leaders -- because he believes those figures are ordained by Christ. Critics believe that the Character First! curriculum is based on Gothard's values, which Gothard says are rooted in a literal interpretation of the Bible[2].

When names like Bennett and Gothard come up in association with educational reform, it can be tempting to dismiss their initiative without further inquiry as an effort to indoctrinate people in their particular version of Christianity. Separation of church and state protects our children from being indoctrinated, intimidated or shamed in the area of religion. While the Christian right may not have our vision of the right answers, often they ask the right questions worth our attention. Their concern about how public schools develop their students character is ours as well. And we may be in a unique position to offer some answers.

One of the reasons for this unique position is because our Unitarian Universalist religious education program is a microcosm of the public schools. While we have much more freedom to offer religious ideas and answers to our children, we want them to develop their own understanding as they discover the faith and beliefs already in their hearts which may or may not be like our own. Rather than giving them absolute standards to follow, we teach moral development through guiding our children to shape their morality through direct experience. The praxis of experience, reflection and insight builds a strong moral character that can negotiate a pluralistic world of competing and sometimes contradictory values.

Character development has always been an important motivation for our public education system. Leaders as far back as the 1600's such as John Locke advocated character education. Noah Webster of Massachusetts wrote in 1790, "Education, in great measure, forms the moral character of men, and morals are the basis of government." John Stuart Mills said, "Development of character is a solution to social problems and a worthy educational ideal." American philosopher John Dewey saw moral education as central to the school's mission[3].

Protestant religious education was part of public schooling until the second half of the nineteenth century. The waves of Jewish and Catholic immigration brought challenges in the schools to Protestant morality being taught which at times conflicted with Catholic and Jewish beliefs and practices. Starting with Chicago at the turn of the century, gradually religion was excluded from the classroom as the separation of church and state was now being understood more broadly as America was becoming more pluralistic[4].

Character education became an attractive, less controversial alternative to moral education in the early 1900's. Every parent wants their child to have good character. The social disruption with large scale immigration had people feeling there was a crisis in morality in the public schools. After World War I, everyone was talking about character education scientifically applied. One response was the formation of the Boy Scouts in 1910 and the Girl Scouts in 1912. Scouting raised people's awareness of the importance of developing character in children. Unfortunately some flawed negative scientific studies evaluating the effectiveness of character education and the depression took the wind out of their sails.

The movement away from focusing on moral and character education came in the second half of the twentieth century, as the development of technical and life skills became more important under the influence of behaviorism. Sputnik changed the nation's perspective on education. The purpose should be turning out scientists and engineers to compete with the Russians. Today, our economic dominance of the world again guides changes in our thinking. To compete in the 21^st century, we must train our children to be creative innovators that are able to work collaboratively.

Surprise, surprise, it turns out working collaboratively is awfully hard without good character. The return of character education is again bringing up the problem of religious values. Not only do we have Catholics, Protestants and Jews but also Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus as well as a host of other tribal religions from Africa and Asia. While there are many differences, thankfully, there are many similarities. The character education advocates of today are building their programs on those similarities that all the worlds religions can affirm

The poem I offered you this morning as a reading shows the width of this agreement. We all want our children to value the diversity of life, preserving the air, water and soil. We want our children to be responsible and offer others respect. We want our children to know how to forgive and find ways to move beyond hate. We all want our children to learn to practice kindness and generosity. We want our children to value and be able to practice deferred gratification. We want our children to be able to accept and follow trustworthy authority. We all want our children to be truthful, honest, dependable and live with integrity. No matter what religious tradition, there will be an important place for these values.

Teaching these values in our public schools, though, is not enough. The intellectual assent to certain values does not directly translate into behavior. Knowing the right often does not translate into right actions. The most effective approach to build character is to integrate knowledge of these universal values with opportunities to act them out and reflect on the results of those actions.

Many of these values are reflected in our purposes and principles yet not all of them. Our principles are stronger on individualism and weaker in the area of community, what we owe and promise to each other and expectations for behavior. Both individual and community values are important in the process of character formation. We must teach our children how to strike the right balance between them. Slavish obedience to authority is not what we want to be teaching our kids. But we'd rather not see them turn into self-obsessed sociopaths either.

I've approached our Religious Education Council with my interest in seeing us do more with character education in expanding and structuring our programming with our children. Please let the Council and me know what you think about this initiative. We can reinforce what children learn in school as well as give them a place to practice what they are learning.

Each one of us has an important role to play because each one of us is being watched. All of our behaviors here are being monitored by little eyes looking up to us. We are the role models our children will be using to reinforce these values.

I've got a lot more to say about character education. I realized during my research I had enough material for several sermons and today I have less time than usual to hold forth. You'll be hearing more about this topic probably in the fall on the subject of how character can or can not be taught.

In the mean time, if you really want to go further in the area of character education and development, I suggest you say, "yes" when Ann D'Attilio taps you on the shoulder and asks you to teach next fall.

[2] "Religious overtones cloud teaching of values Character education: School violence solution?" by Brian Harmon , The Detroit News, March 21, 2000 full text at http://detnews.com/2000/schools/0003/21/a01-20592.htm
[3] Moral and Character Development http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/morchr/morchr.html
[4] Character Education: A General Introduction Craig A. Cunningham PhD
http://cuip.uchicago.edu/~cac/chared/