Character Education Must Be Squeezed Back Into The School Day

In a modern era where our young children are learning their core values from TV, rap music, Britney Spears, video games, and SpongeBob Squarepants … it is becoming more important than ever that elementary schools spend a small portion of their week focused on the development of character education skills. Frankly, I refuse to believe that pop culture can do a better job of educating and training our kids than our parents and teachers. For better or worse, those kiddos sitting in classrooms across this country are the leaders and tax payers of tomorrow … and I would much rather that they didn’t reference “Bakugan the Battle Brawlers” for their core ethics training!

But many elementary schools don’t have time to spare for character education programs because of the increased pressures and demands of standardized testing. Testing standards and accountability are important aspects of creating healthy public school systems, but schools are struggling to keep up with the new rigorous academic testing standards. As a direct result, character education often gets squeezed from the weekly schedule.

Character Education Programs That Require Little Time Investment

Instead of squeezing character education out of the school week, schools must find creative and innovative ways to squeeze it right back in! Honestly, I’d much rather have our kids build core values from our teachers and public schools than from Nickelodeon’s iCarly! In fact, there are many character education programs readily available that require little time investment by the school staff – and these programs do a very nice job of reaching an entire campus.

Among the simple, time-friendly, and highly effective ways of reaching a campus with high quality character education programming includes Project Wisdom. This program has been around since 1992 and it focuses on brief vignettes that are read daily during morning announcements over the school PA system. The nice thing about this character program is that it only takes a few minutes per day to implement and requires no additional instruction from the classroom teachers.

Another great way of inserting character education programming into your school week is by playing short cartoon radio shows over the school PA system. Utilized one day a week during morning announcements, teachers aren’t asked to bear the burden of preparing additional lessons or having to sacrifice time from their academic schedules. Furthermore, character education programs like Achiever Radio allow for a school wide reach with the investment of only a few total minutes per week. The Achiever Radio program also helps build weak student listening skills…which is a skill that has been horribly lost in this video rich day and age!

If We Don’t Answer The Character Call … Pop Culture Will

Increased standardized testing and academic accountability are necessary steps for improving our nation’s schools and shaping this country into a global leader in education. But, we simply cannot allow these increased measures to come at the expense of developing students with great moral and ethical character. And if we fail to answer the call and make time in the school day to build character … pop culture will gladly continue to shape those students for us.