Character Matters
How to Help Our Children Develop Good Judgment, Integrity, and Other Essential Virtues
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
Award-winning psychologist and educator Thomas Lickona offers more than one hundred practical strategies that parents and schools have used to help kids build strong personal character as the foundation for a purposeful, productive, and fulfilling life.
Succeeding in life takes character, and Lickona shows how irresponsible and destructive behavior can invariably be traced to the absence of good character and its ten essential qualities: wisdom, justice, fortitude, self-control, love, a positive attitude, hard work, integrity, gratitude, and humility.
The culmination of a lifetime’s work in character education from one the preeminent psychologists of our time, this landmark book gives us the tools we need to raise respectful and responsible children, create safe and effective schools, and build the caring and decent society in which we all want to live.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his timely follow-up to the definitive Educating for Character, Lickona plucks the burden of moral corruption from society at large and plants it squarely in the laps of parents and teachers. He describes a society nearly bereft of character, and proposes that the solution is to awaken children's social consciences. Through a series of grim statistics and anecdotes from his research as a psychologist and educator, Lickona illuminates a culture that is lost (but not hopelessly), due largely to an overemphasis on academic achievement in lieu of formal character education. "The disturbing behaviors that bombard us daily violence, greed, corruption, incivility, drug abuse, sexual immorality, and a poor work ethic have a common core: the absence of good character." He defines 10 essential virtues that comprise good character and prescribes a six-part remedy, including modeling virtuous behavior, building a strong home-school partnership and getting involved with communities. Quotes from Aristotle, Martin Luther King Jr. and others make more eloquent points for why character matters, but the author's passion for creating a more civil and harmonious world is evident and inspiring. Lickona admits that changing the moral fiber of an entire generation is a lofty goal and that his solutions are ambitious: "The social-moral problems that beset our society have deep roots and require systematic solutions." However, this book can be one small step along that path, if it finds its way into the right hands.
