The Content of Their Character: Inquiries into the Varieties of Moral Formation

For most of America's history, schools were established to furnish more than just academic training: They were founded to form young people of strong character and civic conscience. We rarely think of our schools that way now. Ironically, we bicker over test scores, graduation rates, and academic standards, even as we are besieged by news stories of gratuitous misconduct and cynical, callous, unethical behavior.

Might our schools provide a glimmer of hope? This is precisely the question that a team of talented scholars asked in a landmark study. To explore how American high schools directly and indirectly inculcate moral values in students, these researchers visited a national sample of schools in each of ten sectors: urban public, rural public, charter, evangelical Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Islamic, prestigious independent, alternative-pedagogy, and home schools. The Content of Their Character provides a summary of the scholars' findings--the stories from the schools they visited and the teachers, administrators, and students they spoke to. The results point to a new model for understanding the moral and civic formation of children and to new ways to prepare young people for responsibility and citizenship in a complex world.

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With contributions from
Jeffrey S. Dill
Richard Fournier
Charles L. Glenn
Jeffrey Guhin
James Davison Hunter
Carol Ann MacGregor
Patricia Maloney
Ryan S. Olson
David Sikkink
Jack Wertheimer
Kathryn L. Wiens

James Davison Hunter is the LaBrosse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture, and Social Theory at the University of Virginia. He is also the founder and executive director of the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, a leading interdisciplinary research center and intellectual community. The recipient of numerous literary awards, he has authored or coauthored nine books, including Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America and The Death of Character: Moral Education in an Age without Good or Evil.

Ryan S. Olson is the director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia and a fellow in late antiquity at the Center for Hellenic Studies at Harvard University. Author of Tragedy, Authority, and Trickery: The Poetics of Embedded Letters in Josephus, he has written articles and essays on Roman history, late antiquity, and modern character education. He has also served as the program director for educational reform at The Kern Family Foundation.