Cultivating Character? Yes. Teaching Character? No, no, no!

Robert Peal, 18 February 2014

Character has been the education talking point of the past week. An All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) published a report on it, Tristram Hunt delivered a speech about it, and various education-comment heavyweights have written about it.

Character education has an intriguing genealogy. In the Victorian public school, the development of ‘character’ was a central preoccupation. The 1864 Clarendon Commission into nine leading public schools recognised Dr Arnold of Rugby as the father of this tradition, and his dedication to raising Christian boys of ‘manly’ character was immortalised by former pupil Thomas Hughes in Tom Browns’ School Days.

This idea of schools as cauldrons of character spread from the public schools to become a common currency throughout British education. In 1937, the Board of Education, the precursor to the DfE, published a handbook for state elementary schools which suggested ‘The purpose of the Public Elementary School is to form and strengthen character’. The Board suggested that schools cultivate virtues such as industry, self-control, duty, respect for others, good manners, fair play and loyalty.

This is a cross-post from Robert Peal’s blog, where the article first appeared. You can read it in full here.