The New Character Education Of America

The end of the 20th century witnessed a notable phenomenon or movement during the development of moral education in American schools—the return and renaissance of the traditional character education, which is called the new character education or the new character education movement. Character education is the traditional approach of values education which can be traced back to the colonial period. In the 20th century, the confident consensus supporting old-fashioned character education began to crumble under the blows of several powerful forces. From the 1960s, social change had accelerated dramatically. The 1960s saw a worldwide surge of radical individualism which exerted negative influence over American society in the following decades. However, the new approaches of values education in 1960s and 1970s produced little effect on solving the social problems. Most Americans think that the United States has been in a moral and spiritual decline. They advocate the traditional character education back to American schools to restore the traditional values and to reconstruct moral consensus. In the 1980s and 1990s, character education began to come back in American schools.The return of character education is of great significance. This thesis makes a deep analysis from a cultural perspective, because culture and education are always combined together. A unique cultural pattern was formed during the course of American history, which consists of biblical religion, republicanism and individualism. Biblical religion and republicanism emphasize on individual's responsibility and obligation, and attach great importance to the relationship between individual and society; while individualism focuses upon individual's freedom, rights and self-improvement. These two types of culture had existed side by side in the past and remained a delicate balance. But as individualism became more dominant in the United States since the 20th century, the balance was broken. The loss of cultural balance led to the emergence of radical individualism in 1960s which gave rise to a series of social problems and moral crisis. By deep analysis, the author of the thesis holds that only through restoring the cultural balance can American people and society develop in a healthy and harmonious relationship. The new character education is just one of the most important ways to realize it. It helps to restore American cultural balance by revitalizing the traditional values of biblical religion and republicanism and by controlling the development of extreme individualism, thus to retrieve social integration.