About

Our Vision

Learning for Life: Strengthening Character in UK Civil Society

Learning for Life will build and strengthen character in the contexts of the family, school, university and employment through national, evidenced-based research and developmental work, delivering character education. We seek to make a real difference to the lives and character development of both learners and the professionals who support them in character formation. We seek to make an impact, based on high quality research work, which provides a sound base for development and dissemination for policy and practice.

What is Character Education

We define character education in the following way. First, that there is such a thing as character, an interlocked set of personal values and virtues which normally guide conduct. Character is about who we are and who we will become and includes the virtues of responsibility, honesty, self-reliance, reliability, generosity, self-discipline, and a sense of identity and purpose. Second, that this is not a fixed set, easily measured, or incapable of modification. Third, choices about conduct are choices about ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ actions and thoughts. Our understanding of character formation does not imply lack of student consent or participation. Our argument is that active character development is not simply about the acquisition of academic and social skills, but that it is ultimately about the kind of person a student becomes and wants to become. It is about humans having a purpose that is beyond being an instrument or tool in social processes. This is not achieved within a vacuum; in order to become a person, an individual needs to grow up in a culture, and the richer the culture, the more of a person he or she has a chance of becoming. This must include the spiritual and religious dimensions of life.

Character Education in the UK

In contemporary British education, the social efficiency and scientific management paradigm is still a powerfully influence on the practice of education in schools, and is deeply embedded in teachers’ enduring and hidden beliefs and values. However, attention to the matter of human responsibility, for oneself, for society and for the environment concerns more than is encapsulated by such limited perspectives. Education needs to be seen as a total lifelong process involving families, schools and employers in a political and social framework concerned with personal well-being, moral sensitivity and the flourishing of human society. In a word, we need to discover, or perhaps recover, a language in which we can publicly discuss and personally appreciate human character. Enterprise is now, mistakenly, associated with making money and being successful in business. Economic success is undoubtedly a key element of any pursuit but enterprise is properly speaking the responsible undertaking of any great endeavour.

There is a need in the UK to bring the various fragmented character policy initiatives and discussions together. National and local policy rhetoric on character needs to be examined to identify the gaps in school practice. In Britain, at present, the government is advocating the teaching of virtues in schools in order to form the character of students. However, there is no consensus among schools or educational researchers of what constitutes virtue, or how it should be taught. Indeed, there is often opposition to the very idea of teaching virtues. Nevertheless, the government wishes explicitly to promote certain virtues.

The government has announced its intention to provide some form of residential experience for every school child in England that will be designed to help build their character. The government has already made it compulsory for schools to provide each child with the experience of serving their local community as part of the new Citizenship subject. In the rationale for the new National Curriculum, the government has clearly stated what virtues need to be promoted in schools – for example, personal responsibility, honesty, self-discipline, reliability, service, and identity. In summary, the government wish to encourage service to individuals and the community, and a sense of responsibility to other members of the community.

However, the twin aims set out in the preamble of the National Curriculum of England concern learning achievement and spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. The latter has been significantly ignored and under-funded, when compared to the drive to raise standards of achievement. Furthermore, contemporary policy and research does not explore the relationship between them – it is as if they are two completely different things. This project aims to demonstrate the interdependence of these two strands.

Why Learning for Life

Schools and the wider educational system are subject to an understandable pressure to provide functionally competent persons equipped to meet the increasingly competitive demands of employment. In so doing, they may ignore or, more likely, take for granted the equally important dimensions of personal education that encourage a student to become aware of himself, or herself, as a responsible person. One might say that while schools have become better focused on the task of making students more response-able, they have given scant attention to the business of helping them to become more responsible. Both dimensions of education are essential if a student is to be capable of assuming/taking on his or her full role in society with a sense of purpose. A reinvigorated conscious focus upon character education in schools is a necessity if a proper balance is to be restored to the educational process.

The current social and moral malaise underlines the importance of character education for the future health of society. There is a rampant tendency for an individual to direct his or her energy towards identifying some person or organisation, or worse still some ‘force’ or power, that is to blame for difficulties, when the right thing to do first would be to find ways of taking responsibility for one’s self. Any community whether a family, a city, a corporation, a nation, or a religious tradition, will only flourish when it is constituted of persons who, through learning to take responsibility for themselves, become actively responsible members who are also, therefore, thinking for and on behalf of the community. Good character, and the work associated with its development, is essential to human well-being; so, therefore, is the education of persons of good character.

A person’s good character is the product of practising the virtues including, for example, courage, loyalty, generosity, affectionate concern, and hard work. They need to become what Aquinas called ‘a habit’. For this to be possible, it will be necessary to focus attention on them in homes, schools, universities and places of work. Such attention will not be provided for in schools simply by the identification of a slot in the curriculum named ‘character education’, or the designation of thirty minutes a week in the timetable devoted to the purpose. A much more inclusive approach is required which will embrace the whole of a school’s culture, including leadership, management and organisation, curriculum and pedagogy.

A particular difficulty of our current situation is that the vocabulary students acquire is diminished by the overweening priority given to the functional purposes of education, whereas we know that a limited vocabulary reduces self-awareness and the potential for sympathetic concern. In turn, stunted sympathies will further reduce self-awareness and threaten the range of personal responsibility, and, all this notwithstanding, increased response-ability, as a result of progress in scientific knowledge, and its application through technical development! A generous language is an essential ingredient of a generous mind and a generous personality. Good character and a virtuous life are activities of the whole person; they are not things that can be passively observed or absorbed.

Learning for Life seeks to challenge the social efficiency and scientific management paradigm and to promote the positive building and strengthening of character in the contexts of the family, school, university and employment through national evidenced based research and developmental work delivering character education.

History

In 2004, two British based proposals were successfully submitted to the Templeton Foundation – one from England and the other from Scotland, each in turn led by Professor James Arthur and David Lorimer. The first concerned an innovative research project on character education, which has been ground breaking in the context of English education. The UK context surprisingly lacks any evidential base in research for the importance of character education. We have connected character with higher academic performance and attitudes and behaviour in a school based population sample. The report of this project was launched in the House of Lords on Tuesday 28th November 2006. The second concerned a new and exciting character award in schools based on Sir John Templeton’s ‘Wisdom from World Religions’ book. This award has been extremely successful in schools in Scotland and has attracted notice and considerable praise.

At the heart of Learning for Life was the aim to collaborate with other organisations, businesses, Churches and official governments bodies, to raise the profile of character education. There were no national character education projects in the UK, nor any organisations resembling Character Counts, the Character Education Partnership, or Character Networks as found in the USA. Therefore, there was a great need for such a national project and organisation in the UK. Our Advisory Council was established from the supporters of the two pilot projects and its membership is drawn from leading national figures who have a deep and continuing interest in our work.

Goals

Our goal is to establish an organisation that promotes learning for life – meaning strengthening character in civil society. We will therefore seek to achieve the following broad goals:

1. Develop a language in which we can both personally and publicly discuss, take account of and improve our understanding of human character and how to develop it;
2. Initiate a national discussion on issues of moral education – in families, schools, higher education and employment;
3. Promote the values/virtues of affection, trustworthiness, honesty, responsibility, fairness, and ethical citizenship;
4. Provide a high quality resource for those who are involved in moral education;
5. Conduct research in character education that produces data for evidenced based policy decision-making;
6. Conduct research with the overall aim to develop theoretical and practical knowledge of character education;
7. Empower a network of individuals; in education, business and family environments; with the ability and desire to help build the character of the groups around them.