The Role of Character Education in Effective Teaching

In the latest issue of  “The Journal of Research in Character Education”, there are some significant findings for teachers, especially those involved in the teaching of Character Education.

Hal Urban, a successful teacher in a multiethnic public school for 35 years shares some of the lessons he learned along the way, and many successful strategies from his classroom.He begins his presentation by quoting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Intelligence is not enough.  Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.”

Urban states, “The best news of all is that we now have solid research to prove that schools with an effective character education program promote higher academic standards.  Yes, this even means higher scores on standardized tests.  The reason is simple: an environment of mutual respect results in a better place for teachers to teach and a better place for students to learn.”

The second important message Mr. Urban emphasizes relates to the correlation between character education and classroom management.  He states, “What you accept, you teach.”    According to Urban, “In other words, if a student in your class says something rude and mean-spirited, and you don’t deal with it, you’ve taught that student and his or her classmates essentially two things:  (1) What you just did is acceptable behavior in my classroom, and (2) It’s OK for the rest of you to behave the same way. What you accept, you teach.”

As teachers, we must model positive character, emphasize it consistently, and call attention to it as we recognize it in our students.  More on “Modeling” next time.

SOURCE:  Journal of Research in Character Education, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2007,

“The Nuts and Bolts of Effective Teaching”, Hal Urban, Teacher, Author, Speaker