The Death of Character: Moral Education in an Age Without Good or Evil

by James Davison Hunter

Overview

The Death of Character is a broad historical, sociological, and cultural inquiry into the moral life and moral education of young Americans based upon a huge empirical study of the children themselves. The children's thoughts and concerns-expressed here in their own words-shed a whole new light on what we can expect from moral education. Targeting new theories of education and the prominence of psychology over moral instruction, Hunter analyzes the making of a new cultural narcissism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465031771
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	05/18/2001
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.38(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)
Lexile:	1450L (what's this?)

About the Author

James Davidson Hunter is professor of sociology and religious studies at the University of Virginia and author of Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation (1987).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Postmortem	xiii
Part One: Introduction
1 The Moral Lives of Children and the Moral Life of the
Nation	3
2 Character and Culture	15
Part Two: The Transformation of Moral Education
3 The Early Modern Regime and Its Transformation	31
4 The Progressive Turn in Moral Education	55
Excursus: The Crisis of Character ... That Isn't,	79
5 The Psychological Regime	81
6 The Neoclassical and Communitarian Backlash	107
7 The Ambivalence Within Faith Communities	129
Parting Observations: Moral Education and the Triumph
of the Therapeutic,	146
Part Three: Unintended Consequences
8 The Impotence of Contemporary Moral Education	151
Excursus: Moral Cultures and Their Consequences,	157
9 Lessons in Subjectivism	177
Part Four: Moral Education After the Death of God
10 Leading Children Beyond Good and Evil	205
11 The Death of Character	221
Postscript: Democracy and Moral Education,	228
Notes	233
Selected Bibliography	297
Index	309

What People are Saying About This

Michael Novak

A brave exploration of spinelessness and self-deception in the dominant moral sectors of our time. (Michael Novak, George Frederick Jewett Chair, American Enterprise Institute)

Adam B. Seligman

to be widely read and discussed by everyone concerned with moral education. (Adam B. Seligman, Institute for the Study of Economic Culture, Boston University)

Editorial Reviews

Turning his philosophical gaze again to questions of cultural importance, critic Hunter (Culture Wars) takes on morality and character. He contends (in an analysis that unfortunately remains somewhat abstract and theoretical) that a sense of objective morality, of right and wrong, has been replaced by a psychological approach to values: instead of being taught that there are absolutes by which they must abide, children are taught, "You'll feel better, if you do the right thing." Then Hunter lays out the implications--having replaced moral concepts of good and evil with therapeutic categories of desire and feeling, we have lost the ability to instill a sense of character in young people. Character-building depends on self-restraint, yet our focus today is on emotional self-fulfillment, not restraint. Thus, schools inevitably teach a kind of moral vagueness. By examining the changes during this century in language used by groups such as the Girl Scouts, Hunter traces the historical emergence of psychologized values from--as he puts it--their origins in theological ones. He then examines the backlash attempts among some educators to recover objective values--and concludes that their efforts are doomed to fail. Indeed, we're looking for inspiration on the wrong side of the universal-particular axis: artificially mandated universal values will never save us, he writes. Only particulars, shaped by the specific histories of the communities that practice them, will. In the end, Hunter's premise is too sweeping to ring true. As a result, his volume is better at diagnosing the problems in contemporary education than solving them. (June) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Hunter (sociology and religious studies, University of Virginia) traces the death of character to the disintegration of the moral and social conditions that make character possible in the first place. He argues that the problem is not an absence of morality but rather the emptying of meaning and authority from the morality that is advocated in attempts to instill moral ideals in young people. His broad historical, sociological, and cultural inquiry offers a fundamental challenge to the dominant paradigms of moral understanding and the way that these play out in moral education. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

He knows how to support bold and surprising conclusions with measured and fair-minded observations that few can dismiss.

Weekly Standard

Impressed by Hunter's vigorously argued book...

The World & I

A too-strongly argued case for modifying moral education and rescuing character from the self-esteem Nazis and feel-good shrinks. Sociologist Hunter (Before the Shooting Begins, 1994) echoes Neitzsche at the start by declaring that `Character is dead.` He goes on to describe how the humanistic and Bible-based moral education of the past has been replaced by subjective values and vapid advice (on the order of `Just say no`). Having adopted the optimistic premises of secular psychology, teachers believe that morality is innate and will flourish if left alone. Traditional family values, where children bowed to parents and didn't speak until spoken to, have become `offensive to our cosmopolitan sensibilities.` Hunter's third source of moral guidelines—besides the psychological strategy (if it feels good, it must be right) favored by liberals and the neo-classical strategy (to err is sinful) maintained by conservatives—may be found in the values of social consensus, based on shared experience. Rather than suggesting this synthesis between the extremes, Hunter is mostly concerned with accusing liberals of crucifying character. A history of the reformers who led up to Dewey (such as Horace Mann, the progressive Unitarian who robbed schoolroom Bible-reading of its Calvinist interpretations) is mapped out. Hunter also provides survey questions on character issues, such as cheating on exams and premarital sex. The charted results show that children with the contemporary, psychological-based sense of character are five times more likely than religious children to condone suicide. Hunter strongly makes his point, but he fails to address the question of what negative effects theistconceptsand upbringing can inculcate in children. Hunter provides some important balance for excesses in contemporary amorality, but he won't be able to roll back the tide that has long since washed over us.

Kirkus Reviews