DEPARTMENT OF CHILDHOOD,

EDUCTION AND SOCIETY

Degree Project with Specialisation in Education:

Educational Theory
30 Credits, Master’s Level

The Role of Literature in Character

Education: On the Formation of the
Modern 'Self' in Contemporary
Liberal Schooling

Svetlana Skripnik

Degree: Master of Arts in Education, Examiner: Hanna Sjögren

120 Credits
Educational Theory Supervisor: Christian Norefalk
Date for the Opposition Seminar: 18 May
2022
Abstract

With the liberalisation of the society and education in the Western Countries, new development
horizons have emerged thus altering our expectations from the younger generation and our
vision of human fulfilment and happiness. As Dewey stressed, the current advance of technology
and democratic ways of life results in the unprecedented rate and speed of changes and ‘it is
impossible to foretell definitely just what civilization will be twenty years from now. Hence it is
impossible to prepare the child for any precise set of conditions. To prepare him for the future
life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he will have the full and
ready use of all his capacities’ (Dewey, 1897, p.77). This prompted many educational policies in
Western Countries to resort to character education as a long-term solution to the tensions
between the demands on the child to succeed in tougher market-led society and the necessity to
foster a democratic citizen of the globalised world (The US Partnerships in Character Education
Program, 1994; Strategic Plan, 2002; Character Education Framework, 2019). However, the
recurring instances of school violence and shooting (Schaeffer, 1999, p. 2), and the turmoil of
incessant military conflicts around the world expose the failure of current policies to foster a
modern ‘self’ that would sustain the humanity rather than just democracy, thus making the
current goals and priorities sensitive to criticism.

This paper takes on the topic of character education in liberal school setting and views it in a
broader sense as part of formation of the modern ‘self’ in liberal society as opposed to traditional
Aristotelian reading through virtue ethics and moral character. By studying the current character
education policies in the USA, UK, European Union and Sweden, the first chapter of the thesis
demonstrates the instrumentality of character education and prioritising educating for
citizenship and democratic values. This paper sets to contest this approach to character
education and proposes to adopt the idea of The Love of the World advanced as the guiding
principle of education by Naomi Hodgson, Joris Vlieghe and Piotr Zamojski in their Manifesto for
a Post-Critical Pedagogy (2017) as opposed to ‘educating for….’ formular predominant in the
policies. The Manifesto offers the banner but does not elaborate on the content and how to
attain the goals. The aim of this thesis is to commence to fill this gap. Carefully laying out the
concepts of conservative, liberal and critical theories of education related to character formation,
this paper analyses their strengths and week points and consolidates in ‘My Creed’ section what
it considers the worthwhile postulates that would help to design character education governed
by The Love of the World. Resorting to the educating power of literature I address the question
of ‘How to foster character in liberal schooling of today’ when the child and what is good in the
world replace the current slogans of educating for citizenry and democracy.

Keywords

Character Education, literature, values, formation, Martha Nussbaum, capability approach,

Allan Bloom, conservative theories, liberal theories, critical pedagogy, Post-Critical Pedagogy,
civic virtue, citizenship, Love of the World.

2
Content

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…4

Chapter 1: Defining Character education…………………………………………………………………………………………………9

Chapter 2: Theoretical Overview…..……………………………………………………………………………………………………….14

2.1. Conservative Theories…….………………………………………………………………………………………………….14

2.1.1. Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics as the Basis for Debates on Character Education.………………..16
2.1.2. Allan Bloom and the Conservative reading of The Closing of the American Mind………20

2.2. Liberal Theories ……..………………………………………………………………………………………………………….24

2.2.1. Reading Martha Nussbaum’s Capability Approach through the Prism of Character
Education…………………………………………………..……………………………………………………………………....26

2.3. Critical Theories………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….29

2.3.1. Critical Pedagogy………………………………………………………………………………………………………31
2.3.2. Post-Critical Pedagogy Response………………………………………………………………………………34

2.4. Consolidation of Chapter 1 and 2……………………………………………………………………………………….36

Chapter 3: My Creed on Character Education………………………………………………………………………………………..37

3.1. On the Goals of Character Education………………………………………………………………………………..38

3.2. On the Content of Character Education……………………………………………………………………………40
3.3. On the Question of How (Approaches and Techniques) ………………………………………………….42

Chapter 4: A Defence Case of Literature Studies as the Basis for Character Building in Liberal Educational
Setting…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..45

Chapter 5: On Selection of Literature…………………………………………………………………………………………………….51

Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………54

References…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….57

3
 Introduction

The first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a character as a human being.

- Mary Wollstonecraft

Every educational system has a moral goal that it tries to attain and that informs its curriculum. It
wants to produce a certain kind of human being. This intention is more or less explicit, more or less
a result of reflection; but even the neutral subjects, like reading and writing and arithmetic, take
their place in a vision of the educated person. In some nations the goal was the pious person, in others
the warlike, in others the industrious. Always important is the political regime, which needs citizens
who are in accord with its fundamental principle. Aristocracies want gentlemen, oligarchies men who
respect and pursue money, and democracies lovers of equality. Democratic education, whether it
admits it or not, wants and needs to produce men and women who have the tastes, knowledge, and
character supportive of a democratic regime.
- Allan Bloom

According to the Framework for the Key Citizenship Competencies (2016), EU policy for education
prioritises educating for active global citizenship, cultivating tolerance, equality, diversity, and
respect (Framework for Key Citizenship Competences, 2016, p. 23). This outlined target looks
very attractive, however, the path to reaching it is far from self-evident and bumpless. A lot of
weight in this respect is put on schools, and many educational policies are turning now to the
upbringing component of education. Compared to the 70-s, when the curriculum documents
were comprised of detailed lists of units of knowledge to be learned in each subject, the current
educational policies are marked by inclusion of comprehensive lists of values the schools are
obliged to nurture in children. The educational policy makers around the world have directed
their attention to the personalities young people have when they leave the school and enter the
adult world. This is especially so in the United States, where the recurring cases of school violence
and peer shooting called for drastic measures and a new look at school policy. Hence, the
educationalists turned their interests towards character education as a long-term solution to the
problem of student violence (Schaeffer, 1999, p. 2). With authorizing the Partnerships in
Character Education Program in 1994, the US Department of Education, for instance, announces
the school’s goals to "promote strong character and citizenship among our nation's
youth" (Strategic Plan, 2002-2007). In UK, as a different example, over the last decade, a lot of
effort and finances have been invested in designing and implementing new policies regarding
character education in schools. These new guidelines are aimed at helping young people become
‘well-rounded, confident, happy and resilient –prepared for success in adult life’ (Curren, 2017,
p.2).

Why such interest in the question of who the ‘new’ child is and should be? With the rapidly
changing world around us, when it has become increasingly difficult to predict the modes and
ways of life in twenty years’ time, the stress on young generation to meet the demands of the
times results in reviewing of what the modern ‘self’ means. As Thomas Popkewitz writes:

4
 The "modern" self, in this brief schematic, is a particular historic invention of one who plans and orders
actions in a rational way to bring about progress in a world of uncertainty. Once I link the modern self to
concepts of agency, science, and progress, two things come to mind about the historical quality of these
concepts. First, the agency of the "modern" self is not something that the individual is born with but
something that is "made." When one reads the early writings of the American or French Revolutions and
subsequent writers forming educational systems, for example, schooling serves to fabricate the child who
participates and acts as a reasonable citizen. This administration of the individual was seen as a prerequisite
for the future of the Republic and later its notions of democracy. (Popkewitz, 2005, p.5)

Thus, the modern self is fabricated, constructed by the technology, society, school, and the time
we live in. The main narrative of the Western educational policies emphasises critical thinking,
openness, sense of justice, generosity and civic virtue as prioritised qualities desirable in the
young generation (Strategic Plan, 2002; Character Education Framework, 2019). These qualities
seem to paint a portrait of an admirable personality. However, the multiple tensions around the
world crowned by the turmoil of recent events in Slavic countries peeled off those superficial
layers and opened bare fears and insecurities, rekindled racial suspicions bordering on hatred,
which seem to underpin the profound crisis in humanistic values. It would seem that Western
education today cushions young people with many securities and prepares them for ‘good and
easy’ life and, once those securities are threatened, the personalities are laid bare. Not equipped
with the strong humanistic values and acute sense of the beautiful and the good, young people
struggle to navigate the life in all its complexity and to remain humane in any circumstances. As
Allan Bloom observed in The Closing of the American Mind (1987), young people today ‘have
powerful images of what a perfect body is and pursue it incessantly… they no longer have any
image of a perfect soul, and hence do not long to have one’ (Bloom, 1987, p. 67). Being just a
good person is no longer fashionable. One has to be a citizen, a democratic man, a liberal, or
some other type of animal, while all that humans really need to learn is how to be humane.

It would seem that what it points at is a profound societal crisis when the younger generation
finds itself being provided with a lot of freedoms in the liberalised society and insufficient tools
to be able to utilise these freedoms constructively. By the tools I mean the firm foundation of
believes and character traits that make the person wholesome and harmonious regardless the
shifts in political moods and societal policies outside. The strong focus on the ‘self’ and ‘self-
sufficiency’ and ‘self-freedom’ in liberal education rears, in my opinion, the culture of egoism as
the predominant trait in the character. There are still a lot of concerns amongst educationalists
about the sufficiency of the current educational policies regarding character education.
Different solutions and approaches have been offered recently by various educationalists and
researchers, from the focus on Aristotelian virtues and fostering correct judgements in order to
replace the dominating military-oriented performance values (Randall Curren’s pamphlet Why

5
Character Education? (2017); to the idea of equal capabilities underpinned by critical thinking
and imagination (Nussbaum, 1997) and the idea of teaching for Love of the World as opposed to
educating for citizenship (Manifesto for Post-Critical Pedagogy, 2017).

With the liberalisation of the society and education in many countries of the world, new
development horizons have emerged thus altering our expectations from the younger generation
and our vision of human fulfilment and happiness. According to Marshall Gregory (1991), liberal
education presupposes avoidance of any rigidness in teaching approaches and goals, being
student-oriented and designed to achieve transporting and world-changing effects rather than
‘utilitarian instrumentality’ (Gregory, 1991, p.6). He states that ‘The aims of liberal education,
however else they may be defined, are always ethical: That is, liberal education helps shape the
form and fill the content of ethos, or character, because its educational content influences the
form and content of our students' criticisms, imaginings, desires, hopes, and values’ (Gregory,
1991, p.7). He goes on to state that knowledge is not an incidental feature but a constitutive of
character, thus linking liberal education, character, and storytelling (Gregory, 1991, p.7). It is
believed that the educational efforts shift from designing a man for the society into designing a
man for its own sake, though designing is the word that can arouse scorn. In this light, character
education nowadays attains both significance, complexity, and intricateness it did not possess
before. The weight it bears in the dominating vision and philosophy of the global citizen can
hardly be underestimated. Liberalisation of the child and character education seem to be
incommensurable processes which the school nowadays is expected to juggle under the current
educational policies in many countries. Liberal values per say rule out coercive moulding of the
child since it restricts personal freedoms. Character education, by its nature, is more or less a
coercive and moulding influence on the child. This creates tensions between character education
as a present persistent policy of contemporary liberal schooling in the Western World and its
implementation without coercion and indoctrination within the liberal framework. These
tensions prompted the interest of this paper in the topic.

I take on the topic of character education in my master thesis not in a presumptuous attempt to
make a recipe and find an all-encompassing solution for schools’ effort in fostering children’s
character. What this paper will do is to go away from the traditional narrow Aristotelian reading
of character education as virtue ethics and teaching moral values and will consider character
education in the broad sense as part of formation process of the modern ‘self’. This reading is
prompted by the language used in the current educational policies, studied in the first chapter of
this paper. These narratives, designed by policy makers, combine teaching values, civic virtue and
citizenship under the same roof of ‘character education policies’ (See: Strategic Plan, 2002;
Character Education Framework, 2019; The 11 Principles of Effective Character Education, 2017).
Thus, it is deemed necessary to address this wider interpretation and analyse the consequences

6
of such broad reading of character education in contemporary schooling. This paper is set to
contest the instrumental take on character education predominant in current policies and
proposes to adopt the idea of the Love of the World presented in the Manifesto for a Post-Critical
Pedagogy (Hodgson et al., 2017) as the guiding principle of education replacing ‘educating for
citizenship and democracy’ formular.

Taking on the banner of the Love of the World, I propose to consider educating children not only
for good life strengthened by securities and stability (which I believe is the case in the Western
countries now) but prepare the young for just life as it is, in all its complexity and unforeseen
turns, since it can be full of potential and insecurities at the same time. The argument I would
like to bring forward is the necessity of cementing the foundation of our children’s relationship
with the World and the Other by teaching them to stay humane regardless the circumstances. It
is not by chance that art, literature and music are called the Humanities. These forms of human
activity have a potential to keep us humane. Thus, the focus of this paper is on literature as one
of the possible ways to intertwine teaching humaneness into the school’s curriculum. Springing
from Martha Nussbaum’s ideas (2009) who sees in literature studies an immense potential in
developing imagination and critical thinking which she considers the cornerstones of character
of a democratic man in liberal society and drawing on Allan Bloom’s idea of 100 Great Books
(Bloom, 1987, p.62) this paper hopes to clarify how literature studies can be applicable under the
banner of Post-Critical Pedagogy of the Love of the World. To do so, the ideas of Andrius Bielskis
(2022) will be brought to aid. To sum up, this thesis is focused around three areas – the goals of
character education in contemporary liberal schooling; the content of this education; and the
question of its implementation (how the content is delivered through teaching).

Thus, this paper is set to investigate the following Research Questions:

a) To which extend the focus of liberal educational policies has shifted from educating for
citizenry?
b) What are the alternative approaches to replace educating for civic virtue?
c) What is the role of literature to achieve character education goals without jeopardising
the idea of liberalisation of the child as opposed to moulding?

The methodological path taken by this research in order to answer the above questions starts
with mapping out existing educational policies concerning character education in the USA,
European Union, Sweden and United Kingdom. It was deemed necessary to limit the geography
of the research and the above countries were chosen since they are bright examples of
democratic and liberal educational systems, which are the focus of this research. On the other
hand, although they share common philosophy and have marked similarities, there are some

7
differences which are interesting to explore. As the second step, I will resort to theories which
underpin current educational policies. The second chapter will give an overview of some key
educational theories which tackle the issues of character education. The approach of this paper
is seen in juxtaposing relevant postulates of conservative (Plato, Aristotle, Allan Bloom), liberal
(Dewey, Martha Nussbaum’s capability approach) and critical traditions (Freire, Popkewitz and
critical pedagogy) and consolidating their views on character education, its aims and correlation
with citizenship project. This paper sees these theories as full of merits and worthwhile
postulates. However, taken in isolation, they do not seem to meet the needs of educating a
modern ‘self’, who lives in a world characterized by rapid changes which put additional stress on
our notions of morality and values. To address the limitations of the discussed theories I will bring
in the idea of the Love of the World as the driving force of education. Launched in The Manifesto
for Post-Critical Pedagogy (2017), this idea is an alternative for ‘education for ….’ formular which
dominates the policies of today. So, the third chapter will present my arguments based on the
analysis of the theories and will do so in the form of a creed as a gesture to acknowledge the
limitations of this study and its speculative stance. The structure of the creed will reflect the three
key focus areas of this paper: the goals of character education; the content and the question of
how to implement it. I will then move on to the discussion of the question of approaches and
techniques which can have a character-building potential in school setting. In this chapter I will
go back to the policy documents in order to identify which techniques and concrete tools, if any,
are suggested by policy makers in aid to the teacher who is obliged to put the policies in practice.
This chapter will serve as a bridge to the core focus of this paper – the potential of literature in
fostering desired character traits in school setting. I will resort to the conservative Bloom and
liberal Nussbaum in the defence of my case. My goal is to investigate how their ideas on the role
of literature can be applied in a different setting, when the aim of education is shifted from the
love of the truth and knowledge of the good (Bloom) or sustaining democracy (Nussbaum) to the
Love of The World proposed by post-critical pedagogists as an alternative to the weaknesses of
conservative, liberal or critical theories. I will then touch upon the sensitive issue of the selection
of literature, which will round up this study.

This study is, by no means, all-encompassing and final. Frist of all, its focus exclusively on Western
educational practices of the US, European Union and UK can be considered a limitation giving
only a narrow overview of existing policies. Moreover, limiting the number of theories to just a
few, though dictated by the scope of the paper and its goals, inevitably leaves out a big bulk of
the research which could have given the results a different look. Thus, it leaves the project open
to further exploration.

8
 Chapter 1
Defining Character Education

Within the character of the citizen lies the welfare of the nation.
- Cicero
Our children must be educated in reading and writing - but also in right and wrong.
- G.W. Bush
Intelligence plus character that is the true goal of education.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Traditional understanding of character education is rooted in that of antiquity (Ancient Greece),

when character is read through Aristotelian virtue ethics and moral character, aimed at
answering the fundamental philosophical questions of what it means for a human being to
flourish or live well (Homiak, 2019). The scrutiny is given to the nature of virtue and what it means
to possess an admirable moral character (Homiak, 2019). The contemporary rhetoric adopted by
the school policies, though, broadens the interpretations and the stress has shifted to the key word
values. To exemplify, US non-for-profit hub for character, Character.org, defines character as:

…the intentional effort to develop in young people core ethical and performance values that are widely
affirmed across all cultures. To be effective, character education must include all stakeholders in a school
community and must permeate school climate, culture, teaching, and learning. (The 11 Principles of
Effective Character Education, 2017, p.1)

Clearly, there is no mention of moral virtues, and the concept is centred around performance
values. This divergence in interpretations and definitions of character education on offer can be
overwhelming and more of hindrance than facilitation for someone who is about to embark on
the arduous journey of character education research. This chapter will try to make sense of the
various interpretations and readings provided in educational policies and documents since the
language used by current educational policy makers defines approaches and applications in the
classroom. This undertaking will serve as a starting point for this research and is seen as a way to
demonstrate the variety of concepts, ranging from values to civic virtue and citizenship education
that are currently conglomerated under the same roof of character education. This in turn will
signify the instrumentality of current approaches. The chapter will have a narrowed down
geographical focus covering the educational policies and documents from the United States, EU,
UK and Sweden. This selection is dictated by a number of reasons. Firstly, these countries are
bright representatives of democratic and liberal educational systems, the study of which is the
focus of this paper. Secondly, the educational policies regarding character education in these
countries have not just similarities but obvious differences which gives this study the necessary
level of complexity and diversity. Thirdly, the author’s familiarity with these countries and their
educational systems played a major role in defining the choice.

9
Let us commence this journey with the American continent. The United States can boast of a long
history of character education and recently fostering a character in children has become the state
business. According to the U.S. Department of Education website, the idea of character education
has taken root in the 1840-s, when Horace Mann, an educational reformer, started advocating
for character development of the pupils alongside the academic instruction in the American
schools. The 1990-s saw a revival of the concept of character education with The United States
Congress authorizing the Partnerships in Character Education Program in 1994. The No Child Left
Behind Act of 2001 revisits and re-emphasizes this tradition—and considerably extends support
for it. Indeed, one of the six goals of the Department of Education (DE) is to "promote strong
character and citizenship among our nation's youth" (Strategic Plan, 2002-2007). The brochure
‘Character Education…Our Shared Responsibility’, published by the DE in 2021, defines character
education in the following terms:

Character education is a learning process that enables students and adults in a school community to
understand, care about and act on core ethical values such as respect, justice, civic virtue and citizenship,
and responsibility for self and others. Upon such core values, we form the attitudes and actions that are the
hallmark of safe, healthy and informed communities that serve as the foundation of our society. (Character
Education…Shared Responsibility, 2021)

Clearly, throughout the documentation of DE, character education goes hand in hand with the
idea of strong citizenship. While formulating the goals for character education in the Strategic
Plan 2002-2007, the Department of Education promises to ‘launch a national campaign to
promote character development and citizenship within the school curriculum, and to remind
schools of their patriotic mission’ (Strategic Plan, 2002, p.58). The same line of identifying
character education with the rearing responsible citizens is taken in other policies and documents
in this country. US National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) issued a position paper on
Fostering Civic Virtue: Character education in the Social Studies (1997) in which it specifically
defines character education as “civility, open-mindedness, compromise, and toleration of
diversity” (cited as in Lintner, 2011, p. 200). This paper goes on to declare the responsibility of
teachers to prioritise character education and civic virtue in their classroom teaching, stressing
that they have a vital role to play ‘in keeping this wellspring of civic virtue flowing’ (National
Council for the Social Studies 1997). Following from the above it can be inferred that this
document if not equals, then approximates character education with civic virtue thus implying
that the educational effort should be focussed on creating a desirable for society citizen endowed
with qualities that enable him/her to fit in with other members of the same society. In such
interpretation we see that the focus is not on the individual as such and its happiness or
flourishing, but on the person as a social unit.

10
We will now move on to the European soil. European Union policies and documents do not
specifically define character education programmes. They tend to give very general guidelines
and leave it up to the member countries to elaborate the own policies. However, in 2015
European Commission supported the launching of an educational project We are Europe.
According to the official website of the project, its goal is seen in strengthening the ties between
children and European Union and ‘with the values of a diverse and inclusive Europe’ (We are
Europe, 2015). One of the primary purposes of the project declared on the website was creation
of an interactive on-line game for European Citizen Education for children aged 6 to 10 in order
to:

> strengthen the European identity and the sense of belonging to a Union of countries
> underline the meaning of European citizenship and teach how to exercise it
> increase the understanding about all the European peoples and embrace cultural diversity for an inclusive
Europe participated by all (We are Europe, 2015).

The document ‘Framework for the Key Citizenship Competencies’ (2016) was the first outcome
of the project which was completed in 2018 with the launching of the game. The starting point
for the document is the report of the Council of Europe on the role of education, adopted in
November 2004, which stressed that ‘education contributes to the preservation and renewal of
the common cultural background in the society, but also to learning essential social and civic
values such as citizenship, equality, diversity, tolerance and respect’ (cited as in Framework for
key Citizenship Competences, 2016, p.14). Springing from here, the Framework thus identifies
the key competences which constitute ‘a good citizen’ and can be treated through the
educational system: ‘Key competences are those which all individuals need for personal
fulfilment and development, active citizenship, social inclusion and employment’ (Framework for
Key Citizenship Competences, 2016, p. 23). The document sees an overarching educational goal
in developing such competences in the young generation. The ultimate goal of these endeavour
is seen in enabling the next generation to engage productively in community and public life
(Framework for Key Citizenship Competences, 2016, p. 24).

Sweden, as a member state of EU, introduced teaching fundamental values as an integral part
of the school policy in the last decades (The Education Act (2010:800), cited as in Curriculum for
the Compulsory School, 2018, p. 5) as compared to the 50-80s when the curriculum focused on
detailed lists of knowledge units in each subject without inclusion of the students’ overall
personality development (Skolverket.se). The current Educational Act (2010:800) and Curriculum
for the Compulsory School document (2018) issued by Skolverket state that the goal of school
education is seen not only in promoting acquisition of knowledge but, primarily, of values of the
democratic society. They proclaim the all-round personal development of students into active,
competent and creative individuals (Curriculum for the Compulsory School, 2018, pp. 5-6). There

11
are some points of similarity here with the NCSS position paper and Framework for Key
Citizenship Competences. All the three documents see instilling democratic values as
instrumental in creating responsible citizens. Although Skolverket avoids using terms such as
‘civic virtue’ and ‘civility’, it stresses that ‘the school has a mandate to convey and embed
fundamental values and to promote the pupils’ learning in order to prepare them to live and
work in society’ (Curriculum for Compulsory School, 2018, p.7), to create responsible individuals
and citizens. It should be clarified, though, that the Swedish documents give a wider
interpretation of the values and goals of character education than U.S. Strategic Plan and the
NCSS paper, including personality-development, well-being and individual growth (Curriculum
for Compulsory school, 2018, p.6).

According to the Curriculum document (2018),

Education should impart and establish respect for human rights and the fundamental democratic values on
which Swedish society is based. Each and everyone working in the school should also encourage respect for
the intrinsic value of each person and the environment we all share. The inviolability of human life, individual
freedom and integrity, the equal value of all people, equality between women and men, and solidarity
between people are the values that the school should represent and impart. In accordance with the ethics
borne by a Christian tradition and Western humanism, this is achieved by fostering in the individual a sense
of justice, generosity, tolerance and responsibility. Teaching in school must be non-denominational.
(Curriculum for Compulsory school, 2018, p.5)

It is evident from the above quote that Skolverket holds a more comprehensive and all-
encompassing look on what should constitute character education in schools combining
fundamental human values with the Christian virtues, including not just justice and tolerance, as
is the case in the US policy, but generosity to others and personal responsibility.

I would like now to juxtapose the above with the policies in the UK. In the educational setting of
the United Kingdom character education has been firmly placed on the political agenda since the
second decade of the millennium. Starting with the year 2016, schools around the UK have been
obliged to promote fundamental British values (Harrison, 2016). The Department for Education
(DfE) thus formulated the aim of the funds allocation to the character education project: ‘to
develop new approaches or expand and evaluate existing approaches that will support children
and young people to be well-rounded, confident, happy and resilient – prepared for success in
adult life’ (DfE, 2016a, quoted as in Curren, 2017, p. 2). Teaching resilience with a military ethos
approach becomes the cornerstone of character education in accordance with the Department
for Education recommendations. Nicky Morgan, then Secretary of State for Education, uses the
following terms to describe the goals of character education:

12
 We want to ensure that young people leave school with the perseverance to strive to win, to persevere
against the odds, to overcome the challenges that life throws at them and bounce back with vigour and
confidence… We want pupils to revel in the achievement of victory, but honour the principles of fair play,
to win with grace and to learn the lessons of defeat with acceptance and humility. (Morgan, 2014)

The 2014-2017 project on character education in the UK aroused considerable critique for being
focussed too much on the so-called performance virtues which are designed to lead to social
mobility (Curren, 2017, p.5). This resulted in reviewed Character Education Framework,
published by DfE in 2019, which proclaims it a duty of schools, ‘as part of a broad and balanced
curriculum, to promote the spiritual, moral, social, and cultural (SMSC) development of pupils
and prepare them for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life’ (Character
Education Framework, 2019, p. 4). The document repeatedly stresses that ‘schools with clear
expectations on behaviour and with well-planned provision for character and personal
development can help promote good mental wellbeing’ (Character Education Framework, 2019,
p. 4). In the revised policy nurturing resilience and confidence is still awarded a significant role in
this combat for good mental wellbeing. However, in this version of the policy the list of six
benchmarks is complemented with the values of volunteering and service to others (Character
Education Framework, 2019, p. 5). Interestingly, in defining character education, the document
identified four important aspects of its success, such as:

• the ability to remain motivated by long-term goals, to see a link between effort in the present and pay-
off in the longer-term, overcoming and persevering through, and learning from, setbacks when
encountered;
• the learning and habituation of positive moral attributes, sometimes known as ‘virtues’, and including,
for example, courage, honesty, generosity, integrity, humility and a sense of justice, alongside others;
• the acquisition of social confidence and the ability to make points or arguments clearly and constructively,
listen attentively to the views of others, behave with courtesy and good manners and speak persuasively
to an audience; and
• an appreciation of the importance of long-term commitments which frame the successful and fulfilled
life, for example to spouse, partner, role or vocation, the local community, to faith or world view. This
helps individuals to put down deep roots and gives stability and longevity to lifetime endeavours.
(Character Education Framework, 2019, p. 7).

This enumeration of aspects of character education includes a list of virtues, however, those are
sandwiched between performance values and traits aimed at social inclusion. The virtues are
presented as just one of the constituents of character education, and by no means the key one.

To recap, the following conclusions can be drawn from the outlined policies:
1. Since the 90-s character education has become an integral part of school policies in the
above countries.

13
 2. Character education is read by the policy makers in a broad sense, prioritising teaching
values (British, democratic, etc.), civic education and preparing for success in adult life.
3. The language of virtues is marginalised in the policies.
4. There is a considerable stress on educating for citizenship and democracy in the policies,
thus endowering them with the instrumental character.

Now that the ground has been laid with the above overview of educational policies in U.S., EU,
Sweden and UK, I propose to move on in the next chapter to the discussion of philosophical and
theoretical positions that underpin our readings of character education nowadays.

Chapter 2
Theoretical Overview

We are now commencing on a discussion of philosophical systems which gave theoretical

background for the above interpretations of character education. By tracing the origins of
philosophical thought underpinning the current understanding of human nature, happiness, and
the role of character formation in fulfilling the human purpose, I will attempt to formulate my
own position in relation to the topic. In this chapter the philosophers are grouped into sections
according to whether the respective views reflect conservative, liberal or critical outlooks. This
approach will enable a critical look at the current liberal policies outlined in the first chapter and
will give ground for formulation of this paper’s arguments through identifying weaknesses and
strong points of the discussed theories.

2.1. Conservative theories

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have
to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be
learned; and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns
thoroughly.
Thomas Henry Huxley

For the purpose of this paper, conservatism is considered in the broad sense as adherence to
tradition and preservation of existing forms of organisation of society. As Rodney Cline (1960)
writes, ‘conservatism is defined as that which seeks to retain and to emphasize ideas and
practices that have stood the test of time. Newness and change are not excluded, but these
characteristically are viewed with caution and perhaps with distrust’ (Cline, 1960, p. 207).

14
According to Hamilton’s entry on conservatism in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
(2020), the attitude to freedom is defining in understanding of conservatism. He writes:

It is often argued that modern political philosophy is animated by the idea of freedom, while ancient political
philosophy rests on a natural order discernible by reason to which humans must conform. But conservatism
is a modern standpoint whose commitment to freedom is contested; it can be argued that the liberal
standpoint of freedom is opposed by the conservative standpoint of paternalism or authority (Hamilton,
2020).

Thus, the underlining principle for human behaviour is the tendency to habitual action and
conformity. How does the above translate onto the philosophical theories of education and
mirrors onto the approaches to character education? As Denis P. Doyle (1997) puts it in his article
‘Education and Character: A Conservative View’,

A conservative view of education and character formation, then, has two elements that are simply framed.
First, there is no such thing as a "value-free" school… The issue is not whether or not a school will have
values, but what those values will be. Like it or not, schools shape character. Second, there are "good" values
and "bad" values, or "right" values and "wrong" values. Or, as Aristotle knew, good knowledge and bad
knowledge. These are inextricably embedded in our institutions. Like it or not, schools shape character for
good or ill (Doyle, 1997, p.441).

So, we can conclude from here that conservative theorists ground their approaches in the
selection of particular ‘good’ values which are paramount for the younger generation to acquire.
These theories uplift the idea of traditional values and morality sustained by the strong sense of
duty, mutual obligations and established social institutions based on hierarchy of roles and
destinies. In the antiquity these ideas were put forward by Confucius, who promoted ‘the five
norms’ including righteousness and proper deportment as well as family values and social
stability (Csikszentmihalyi, 2020); Plato and Aristotle who are considered by many as some of the
most prominent figures in the conservative camp. Amongst the later additions are, arguably, John
Locke, the founder of a natural law political philosophy which is based on man’s innate nature
and values (Hamilton, 2020), and Edmund Burke whose idea of social organisation is founded on
natural authority stemming from principles of virtue, religion and morality imprinted in myths
and folklore (Hamilton, 2020). Contemporary philosophers who are regarded as advocating
conservative views are Alan Boom, the author of The Closing of the American Mind (1987) and
the champion of the idea of The Great Books; Harry V. Jaffa and Russel Kirk. What can be
considered a key feature of the above philosophies is rigidness, be it of the lists of values or the
methods of instilling them. In this paper we will concentrate on the views of Plato, Aristotle and
Bloom as they served as a foundation for many other theories, including liberal, and are most
relevant for the focus of this research.

15
The innovative perspective of Plato is primarily in making education the concern of the state,
thus cementing the link between education and politics (Plato, 2007, p.67). As Amelie Rorty
writes in her article ‘Plato’s Counsel on Education’,

Because opinion is embedded and expressed in social practices and political institutions, the task of the wise
educator has political ramifications. Since a sound politeia is the central condition for a sound education,
Plato turns to the education of rulers who structure the life of the polis ... and of the philosophers on whose
wisdom they depend. Platonic rulers are to be guided by a concern for what is true as well as by what seems
good and desirable: their education raises vexed practical and philosophic questions about the relation
between civic and philosophic education (Rorty, 1998, p. 157).

Plato sees the object of education in teaching us to love what is beautiful (Plato, 2007, p.100). In
his design of an ideal city in The Republic, Plato awards education an indispensable role in
fostering the right people for the city-state (particularly the Guardians and philosopher kings),
endowered with the right values and equipped with the right strengths and skills for their roles
in the state. Education, according to Plato, had three major components, namely reading and
writing, physical education, and so called, secondary or literary education (Plato, 2007, p.67).
Rorty writes in her article: ‘As it is projected in The Republic, the program of education is strict
and strictly enforced against novelty. The point of earliest education is 'to instil a spirit of order
and reverence for law’ (Rorty, 1998, p.167). The moral and value constituents were mainly
derived from secondary or literary subdivision of education, and thus, Plato states, it was of the
utmost importance to ensure that the young people were exposed to the right content (in poems)
which propagated the right values. He then suggests that it is the state’s business to control the
storytellers and censor the content (Plato, 2007, pp. 76-77) and in this way to uproot moral
weakness and false notions of the God and the goodness in the youth. In fact, as Rorty stresses,
‘Critics and supporters alike have presented him (Plato) as advocating totalitarian ideological
control’ (Rorty, 1998, p. 178).

We will now investigate how these ideas evolve in Aristotle’s writings.

2.1.1. Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics as the Basis for Debates on Character Education

Aristotle’s writings have served as a springboard for most of the contemporary interpreters of
character education, be it Curren, Bohlin or Nussbaum. The notion of soul is a helpful starting
point in understanding Aristotle’s virtue ethics. According to Aristotle, the soul has rational and
irrational dimensions to it and although there can be a struggle between the two, even the
irrational soul is receptive to reason due to the presence of the principle which urges it in the
right direction and encourages it to take the best course (Aristotle, 2004, p. 28). So, our reactions
to various encouragements, punishment, reproof and admonition are a sign for Aristotle of the

16
ability of the irrational part of the soul to be persuaded by reason (Aristotle, 2004, p.30). There
is a bridge between this take on the soul and virtue and Aristotle comes to the following
conclusion

Virtue, too, is divided into classes in accordance with this differentiation of the soul. Some virtues are called
intellectual and others moral; wisdom and understanding and prudence are intellectual, liberality and
temperance are moral virtues. When we are speaking of a man’s character, we do not describe him as wise
or understanding, but as patient and temperate. We do, however, praise a wise man on the ground of his
state of mind; and those states that are praiseworthy we call virtues (Aristotle, 2004, p. 30).

Aristotle places a lot of significance on what is inborn and natural in a man and differentiates that
from what is habituated throughout the course of one’s life. Although the acquisition of virtue
comes through habituation and practice or training, it is still a fruitless task if there is no inborn
pre-supposition in the individual. He writes that ‘Nothing that is what it is by nature can be made
to behave differently by habituation’ (Aristotle, 2004, p. 31). This can be interpreted as if there is
no inborn inclination for the good and virtuous behaviour, it will not be made possible by habit
only. He continues by stating that ‘The moral virtues, then, are engendered in us neither by nor
contrary to nature; we are constructed by nature to receive them, but their full development in
us is due to habit’ (Aristotle, 2004, p. 31) thus putting more emphasis on what comes from
without. In this respect, education is endowered with the key role in instilling virtue. ‘What
faculties we have, we have by nature, but it is not nature that makes us good or bad’ (Aristotle,
2004, p.39) since faculties are just presuppositions and susceptibilities to virtues which are
themselves dispositions.

Aristotle differentiates two types of virtue, intellectual and moral, and depending on the type,
the mechanism of their acquisition will be different. The diagram below will help us visualise the
difference.

Virtues

Intellectua
l Moral

through
instruction, result of habit,
time and not engendered
experience in us by nature

Figure 1: Types of virtues and their acquisition. (Designed by this author)

17
As we see from the above, the two types of virtues – intellectual and moral – have different
channels of acquisition but none of them are ready-made and inborn. A man’s character is
constituted by moral virtues. As Aristotle puts it, ‘of all those faculties with which nature endows
us we first acquire the potentialities, and only later effect their actualisation’ (Aristotle, 2004, p.
31). He then compares acquisition of virtues to that of skills in art or craft. ‘Anything that we have
to learn to do we learn by actually doing it’ (Aristotle, 2004, p. 32). So, the only way to become
brave is by performing brave acts and just by habitually acting so. In other words, one reaps as
one has sown or ‘like activities produce like dispositions’ (Aristotle, 2004, p.32). It is necessary,
writes Aristotle, to form habits from the earliest age. ‘So, it is a matter of no little importance
what sort of habits we form from the earliest age – it makes a vast difference, or rather all the
difference in the world’ (Aristotle, 2004, p. 32). Thus, habituation is the key in obtaining moral
virtues.

Aristotle’s places considerable emphasis on how we perform actions and according to which
principle (it should obviously be the right one) because these result in forming our dispositions
and character. The key here is to avoid excess or deficiency and stick to ‘the golden middle’ or in
Aristotelian terminology – the mean. Let us elaborate on this notion further. Potentially,
everything can involve excess, deficiency and the golden middle, or the mean. But the mean in
relation to people is not straightforward and can be relative depending on the situation and the
person. According to Aristotle, ‘every knowledgeable person avoids access and deficiency, but
looks for the mean and chooses it – not the mean of the thing, but the mean relative to us. ... It
follows that virtue aims to hit the mean’ (Aristotle, 2004, p. 41). By virtue, here he means moral
virtue. The mean in actions and feelings is considered a success and marks the virtue. Thus, virtue
discovers the mean and chooses it. So, virtue is a mean. Below is a summative definition of virtue
by Aristotle:

So, virtue is a purposive disposition, lying in a mean that is relative to us and determined by a rational
principle, and by that which a prudent man would use to determine it. It is a mean between two kinds of vice,
one of excess and the other of deficiency (Aristotle, 2004, p.42).

Another crucial aspect in understanding Aristotle’s theory is awareness of the actions. The act to
be called virtuous should be performed with the right attitude and in the right state. This means
that the acts which are virtuous accidentally and unintentionally cannot be considered as such
since they do not come from a virtuous disposition (Aristotle, 2004, p.37). Aristotle distinguishes
the following characteristics of a genuinely virtuous act (Aristotle, 2004, p.37):
1. The agent knows what he is doing
2. He chooses to do it out of his free will and for its own sake
3. He does it from a fixed and permanent disposition

18
Another factor which comes into play in truly virtuous conduct is judgement of the right measure.
Although Aristotle does not make use of this exact word, the implication can be drawn from the
following quote:

To have these feelings at the right time on the right grounds towards the right people for the right motive
and in the right way is to feel them to an intermediate, that is to the best, degree; and this is the mark of
virtue (Aristotle, 2004, p. 41).

Aristotle stresses that it is difficult to lay out ready-to-use rules of defining the mean, a lot
depends on one’s own perception in particular cases (Aristotle, 2004, p.49). It will be interesting
to make an analogy with Randell Curren’s idea of ‘good judgement’, presented in the Impact
pamphlet ‘Why character education?’ He writes:

The performance virtues promoted as essential to social mobility are neither the whole of character nor
true virtues at all without the guidance of good judgement. They may be crucial to success in life but they
are not enough to enable people to make and act on good choices (Curren, 2017, p.12).

According to Curren, there is a strong practical potential of this postulate in educational policies
regarding character formation in contemporary school setting. We will now consider wider
educational implications of Aristotelean ideas. The notion of ‘the good man’ is crucial in
Aristotle’s teaching and the ultimate outcome of formation is learning how to become a good
man, not what goodness is (Aristotle, 2004, p. 33). Aristotle specifies that: ‘The function of man
is a kind of life, namely, an activity or series of actions of the soul, implying a rational principle;
and the function of a good man is to perform these well and rightly;... the conclusion is that the
good for man is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, or if there are more kinds of
virtue than one, in accordance with the best and most perfect kind’ (Aristotle, 2004, p. 16). He
goes on to say that one is made a good man via possession of the disposition of human excellence
which helps to perform one’s function well (Aristotle, 2004, p.40). In Aristotle’s view,
virtuousness lies at the heart of true happiness and it would seem that the acquisition of virtues
should become the goal of an individual’s formation process.

Although, according to Aristotle’s writings, the supreme end is happiness and the good of man,
yet he states:

For even if the good of the community coincides with that of the individual, it is clearly a greater and more
perfect thing to achieve and preserve that of the community; for while it is desirable to secure what is good
in the case of an individual, to do so in the case of a people or a state is something finer and more sublime
(Aristotle, 2004, p. 4).
We can conclude that for Aristotle the outcome of educational process is a perfect citizen who
attains his happiness through virtuous activity of the soul. It could be inferred from the above

19
that, for Aristotle, instrumental value of fostering virtues exceeds attaining the personal
happiness. A virtuous man is not attractive in itself, but in its contribution to the good of the
community as a whole, which is similar to the views Plato holds on the same subject. From here
we can trace the correlation with the instrumentalism of the character education in the
educational policies discussed in the previous section. Prioritizing citizenry and civic virtue would
seem to be the key tone of the narrative.

In the following section I propose to trace Platonic and Aristotelean thoughts in the ideas of one
of the controversial philosophers of the 20th century Allan Bloom, whose book The Closing of the
American Mind (further referred to as The Closing) (1987) has launched a substantial talk on
education and values taught at American Universities. Brining up Bloom’s ideas in this paper is
deemed relevant as they influenced the thought for decades and are referred to (critically or with
acclaim) in works of other thinkers of different schools, including the liberal Martha Nussbaum.

2.1.2. Allan Bloom and the Conservative Reading of The Closing of the American
Mind

Placing the discussion on Allan Bloom under the heading Conservative Theories might provoke
controversy and objections from some of the readers. Alan Bloom himself denied the label of the
conservative all his life, stating that ‘in the first place, I am not a conservative – neo- or paleo-… I
just do not happen to be that animal. Any superficial reading of The Closing will show that I differ
from both theoretical and practical conservative positions’ (cited as in Mucke, 2015, p. 9). In the
eyes of the critics and philosophers alike, however, he has been firmly placed in amongst the
ranks of the conservatives. The Closing even induced some politicians of the time to call for
conservative reform of the liberal education in America (Mucke, 2015, p.28). Let us inquire into
the reasons why.

The Closing opens with the following lines: ‘This essay—a meditation on the state of our souls,
particularly those of the young, and their education—is written from the perspective of a teacher’
(Bloom, 1987, p.19). In his contemplations on the role of the teacher Bloom thus summarises it:

The teacher, particularly the teacher dedicated to liberal education, must constantly try to look toward the
goal of human completeness and back at the natures of his students here and now, ever seeking to
understand the former and to assess the capacities of the latter to approach it (Bloom, 1987, p. 19).

20
It would appear that human completeness is the sum total of the teacher’s efforts toward the
student’s character building. How to achieve that, though? From Bloom’s writings it can be
inferred that ‘completeness’ is understood as ‘good life’. For Bloom, the real motive of education
is the search for a good life (which can be compared to Aristotelian idea of human flourishing, or
eudaimonia); however, according to Bloom, the prevailing relativism of liberal society has
extinguished it (Bloom, 1987, p.34). He voiced strongly against relativism of values, cultures and
truths (Bloom, 1987, 9.39). According to Bloom, the only real conviction and belief that the
students possess today is that the truth is relative. Bloom puts under scrutiny the moral
implications of relativistic attitude to truth and puts forward The Quest for The Good (Bloom,
1987, p.37). He writes: ‘Loyalty versus quest for the good introduced an unresolvable tension
into life. But the awareness of the good as such and the desire to possess it are priceless
humanizing acquisitions’ (Bloom, 1987, pp.37-38).

In his contemplations on the state of American soul, Bloom draws considerably on Plato and
Aristotle. Similarly to the two philosophers of the antiquity, he also stresses the existence of
human nature and inborn potentialities with it, and the necessity (by teachers’ efforts) to assist
it to come to fulfilment and fruition (Bloom, 1987, p.20). He writes: ‘No real teacher can doubt
that his task is to assist his pupil to fulfil human nature against all the deforming forces of
convention and prejudice’ (Bloom, 1987, p.20).

This potential in itself is a source of the hope. A man is not just a product of an accident, confined
to the particular cultural cave that happened to give him birth. Resorting to platonic midwifery
metaphor and opposing it to the term ‘socialization’, Bloom brings home the idea of character
educating as assisting in natural birth of a child and bringing it to independency of the midwife
(Bloom, 1987, p.20). This, in Bloom’s view, is the real satisfaction of a teacher. To extend the
metaphor, Bloom emphasizes that in this process it is not the midwife but nature which is the
cause. Interestingly, Mucke sees here conservative tendencies. He writes:

It is because of this Platonism that The Closing would seem to make a great book for the American
conservative reader. After all, the tendency to criticize the popular culture as well as the universities….is
very much in line with mainstream conservative thought. Many conservative intellectuals reviewed the book
favourably and held it in their hearts ever since it was published (Mucke, 2015, p.9).

The key to grasping Bloom’s theory of values lies in understanding his criticism of the idea of
‘openness’ prevailing in liberalised education. He writes:

21
 Openness used to be the virtue that permitted us to seek the good by using reason. It now means accepting
everything and denying reason's power. The unrestrained and thoughtless pursuit of openness, without
recognizing the inherent political, social, or cultural problem of openness as the goal of nature, has rendered
openness meaningless. Cultural relativism destroys both one's own and the good. (Bloom, 1987, p.38)

According to Bloom, openness results in American conformism. He explains:

Out there in the rest of the world is a drab diversity that teaches only that values are relative, whereas here
we can create all the lifestyles we want. Our openness means we do not need others. Thus, what is advertised
as a great opening is a great closing. No longer is there a hope that there are great wise men in other places
and times who can reveal the truth about life —except for the few remaining young people who look for a
quick fix from a guru. (Bloom, 1987, p.34)

He opposes non-Western ethnocentrism to the superficial, as he called it, openness to other

cultures which, according to Bloom, is not learning from the others, but patronising superiority
and ‘a disguised form of new imperialism’ (Bloom, 1987, p.34). The salvation lies in teaching
students the love of the truth and only this will enable the young to seek unprejudiced beliefs,
otherwise we are running the risk to breed a passive, disconsolate, indifferent stock subjected to
authorities (Bloom, 1987, p.42).

The question of equality is the central in the quest for understanding Bloom’s views. He states in
the article Education of a Democratic Man (1978): ‘Equality is now almost a providential fact; no
one believes any longer in the justice of the principles on which the old distinctions between
ranks or classes were made and which were the basis of the old regime. The only question
remaining is whether universal tyranny will result, or freedom can accompany equality’ (Bloom,
1978, p. 136). The correlation between freedom and openness is vital. ‘Bloom’s point was that
the citizens of a free society must adhere to opinions suited to a free society. Openness robs
citizens of those beliefs and thus puts free society in danger’ (Zuckert, 2008, p.81). This is a
controversial statement which presupposes, in my reading at least, that openness to the newness
and diversity is not unlimited and is strictly dictated by the traditional values the society
cherishes, which is, again, on the conservative wavelength.

Overall, for Bloom true openness is related to knowledge and is strengthened by the awareness
of ignorance. It can be defined as the constant companion of the desire to know, the quest to
distinguish between good and bad (Bloom, 1987, p. 40). The true quest lies not only in the
knowledge of the world, but predominately of one’s own soul, not its projections on the walls of
the cave (Bloom, 1987, p. 42). It can be concluded from here that knowledge is a springboard for
genuine character building, however, education should not suppress instinct and intellect, the
natural soul should not be replaced by the artificial one (Bloom, 1987, p. 30). By and large, the
man should be ‘permitted to seek for the natural human good and admire it when found’ (Bloom,

22
1987, p.30). To make a comparison with Aristotle, it seems that unlike Aristotle, who underlined
the necessity to train character and exercises virtues and the mean based on the inborn
presuppositions and inclinations, Bloom stresses the knowledge of the truth, understanding the
good from the bad, and love of the truth and the authority of reason as the basis for character.

Summarising the key points of the conservative theories, the following main postulates come to
light:

1) Education is made the concern of the state (Plato, Aristotle).

2) The theories stress the necessity to foster the right people with the right values for the
state, thus prioritising citizenry (Plato, Aristotle).
3) The theories link moral and character education with the storytelling and narratives and
underline the importance of the right content (Plato, Aristotle, Bloom).
4) The path to happiness is the perfecting of character and soul based on acquisition of
virtues and their habituation guided by good judgement and rational principle (Plato,
Aristotle) or though knowledge of the world and oneself and the truth (Bloom).
5) Striving for human flourishing (completeness) or good life (the Quest for the Good, in
Bloom’s terminology) is the goal of human life.
6) Teaching the love of absolute (not relative) truth are key to true openness (Bloom).

According to Bloom,

the individual inquiry into the human nature boils down to investigating the question, "What is man?" in
relation to his highest aspirations as opposed to his low and common needs. A liberal education means
precisely helping students to pose this question to themselves, to become aware that the answer is neither
obvious nor simply unavailable, and that there is no serious life in which this question is not a continuous
concern. (Bloom, 1987, p. 21)

If a conservative setting offers a definitive guiding to the answer to this question, a liberal
approach leaves the path open for the seeker. There is a clear link between the privilege of
enjoying material and spiritual freedoms and access to liberal education. Without the freedoms
no pursuing a liberal education is possible (Bloom, 1987, p.22). The following chapter will
investigate this further and shed some limelight on the liberal reading of character education.

23
2.2. Liberal Theories
One has to have the experience of really believing before one can have the thrill
of liberation.
Allan Bloom

The tradition of liberal thinking in education is nearly a century old and, as Rodney Cline states in
his article ‘The Conservatism of Philosophical and Educational Liberals’, ‘liberalism presents a
challenge to much of the conservatism. New things are sought. The idea of change is viewed with
approbation. Older ideas and older practices are regarded as being outmoded. Changing times
require changing ways of dealing with the problems of mankind’ (Cline, 1960, p.207). Rousseau
is viewed by some of the philosophers as the dividing line between the ancient and the modern,
conservative and liberal. For him, the purpose of the state is not merely security of life and
property, as Hobbes, Locke and the conservatives maintain; rather, it is freedom itself (Hamilton,
2020) which is both a natural right and a result of liberation and correct education.

Probably one of the most prominent educational reformers strongly associated with the
progressive and liberal education is John Dewey, who is called by Popkewitz ‘one of the
pragmatism’s major international spokespersons’ (Popkewitz, 2005, p.3). Being an ardent
campaigner for democratisation of the schools and child liberation, Dewey advocated ‘for
reforming society through reforming the child’ and ‘in debates about the "making" and remaking
of society through the educational processes to form the child as the future citizen’ (Popkewitz,
2005, p.4). In My Pedagogic Creed (1897) Dewey famously declares the instrumentality of
education: ‘… through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own
means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in
which it wishes to move’ (Dewey, 1897, p.79).

Dewey writes that education is a shaping, forming and moulding activity (Dewey, 2011, p.14). He
says that ‘the natural or native impulses of the young do not agree with the life-customs of group
into which they are born. Consequently, they have to be directed and guided’ (Dewey, 2011,
p.40). Thus, it can be inferred that education’s goal is instrumental in introducing the young into
existing societal forms rather than preparing them for ‘a better future’ in its own right. The goal
of school pedagogy is seen in making students into active agents of their own education and the
society life. Dewey applies a democratic criterion to education and stresses that education is a
freeing of individual capacity in a progressive growth directed to social aims (Dewey, 2011, p.92).
There is an important correlation between liberty and freedom, as they are ‘not something found
in the "nature" of the individual. It is something that is socially produced. Agency is not about
total freedom but about the inscription of rules and standards of reason through which
individuals live in social settings’ (Popkewitz, 2005, p.4).

24
In defining the aims of education, Dewey takes up Rousseau’s statement of development in
accordance with nature, but only as a starting point. While Rousseau opposed natural
development to social, Dewey sees them in combination. Nature supplies the aim, but the
ultimate goal is social efficiency (Dewey, 2011, p.105), which is ‘cultivation, of power to join freely
and fully in shared or common activities’ (Dewey, 2011, p.2015). Dewey is conscious of what he
calls the dualism of life – sacrificing oneself to doing useful things for others or sacrificing the
others in pursuit of one’s own exclusive ends. To overcome this dualism, he sees ‘the particular
task of education at the present time to struggle on behalf of the aim in which social efficiency
and personal culture are synonyms instead of antagonists’ (Dewey, 2011, p. 114). To round up
this brief overview of Dewey’s ideas, it is worthwhile to underline once again its main thesis –
that of instrumentality of education in forming a citizen and a member of the community.

With the changing times, however, the change in the ways is required as well, and that means
certain shifts within the liberal education in order to meet the existing challenges of the global
world. A more prominent stress is given to personal freedoms and independent thinking outside
the existing traditions, open-mindedness and active citizenship. As Cline puts it, ‘it is fair to say
that for a generation, in most parts of the United States, teachers of the elementary and
secondary school faculties have been strongly indoctrinated with the philosophical ideas of
liberalism’ (Cline, 1960, 208). He goes on to say that teachers are well familiar with the liberal
slogans and catchwords, which are a legion: “child-centred-school,” “adjust the school to the
child,” “creative learning,” “group processes,” “dynamic curriculum,” “social promotions,” and
“purposeful learning” (Cline, 1960, 208). However, these buzzwords are more in the air than in
the action. There is a gap between what is being preached and what is being attained by the
schooling. These tensions between the philosophy and the reality call for fresh ideas and
approaches. Among some of the key advocates for liberal education nowadays are Martha
Nussbaum and Amartya Sen whose theory of capability approach will be given scrutiny in the
next section of the paper. The reading given to capability approach will aim at linking it to
character education and investigating how that transforms our understanding of educating a
liberal man.

25
2.2.1. Reading Martha Nussbaum’s Capability Approach through the Prism of
Character Education

With a retrospective view, Nussbaum could state that her review of The Closing of the American Mind in
1987 was the starting point for her work with educational theoretical questions that a decade later resulted in
Cultivating Humanity. The title of the book from 1997 alludes to a quote by Seneca, which also serves as the
motto of the book, “while we live, while we are among human beings, let us cultivate our humanity”. This
classical notion of human cultivation is at the heart of Nussbaum’s defence of liberal education. Since every
human being is basically political and active, a zoon politikon, to borrow the Aristotelian notion, the cultivation
of humanity has an intimate connection to citizenship.
Burman, 2019, p.75

At the heart of the capability approach lies a profoundly liberal idea that a human being is a
dignified and capable free being, a maker of choices (Nussbaum, 1997, p. 292). Having sprung
from Aristotelian idea of human capabilities, this approach to measuring human wellbeing was
simultaneously developed by Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen in the end of the previous
century. Both thinkers read the conception of human flourishing through the account of human
functioning based on equal capabilities. Nussbaum thus defines capabilities:

… we argue that the most appropriate space for comparisons is the space of capabilities. Instead of asking
"How satisfied is person A," or "How much in the way of resources does A command," we ask the question:
"What is A actually able to do and to be?" In other words, about a variety of functions that would seem to be
of central importance to a human life, we ask: Is the person capable of this, or not? (Nussbaum, 1997, p.285)

Sen and Nussbaum’s vision of the good is rooted in citizens’ freedoms which allow them to pursue
a variety of life paths, whereas Aristotelian tradition reads the human good through the idea of
public discipline as a constraint on the choices of citizens (Nussbaum, 1997, p. 297). Thus, the
capability approach rests on three pillars - wellbeing, flourishing and being able to choose ‘the
conception of the good’. It is interesting to compare that with Bloom’s quest for the natural good,
which is not chosen but is out there, existing naturally, as a prerequisite to human life.

Unlike the other philosophers (for example, Amartia Sen), Nussbaum gives an explicit list of key
capabilities which should become the goal of the public policy and help define the conception of
the good, no matter how vague it can be (Nussbaum, 1997, p.177). This paper will not reproduce
the list in its entirety (divided into ten groups, the capabilities cover life, bodily health, integrity,
senses, environment, emotions, friendship, etc.), since it does not have direct relevance for the
focus of the talk. For a brief overview, it suffices to say that Nussbaum distinguishes three types
of capabilities (Nussbaum, 1997, pp.289-290). The basic capabilities (e.g., for reasoning and
imagination) are inborn and lay out the basis for developing more advanced capabilities and
functions through maturing and education. Secondly, the internal capabilities (e.g., to use

26
speech, or thought) are the states which enable a person to function, provided there are no
circumstantial obstacles. Lastly, Nussbaum introduces the idea of combined capabilities, which
include among others being able to live one’s life to the full without dying prematurely, being able
to use one’s senses and form a conception of the good and to engage in critical reflection about
the planning of one's life (Nussbaum, 1997, p. 287). Combined capabilities are defined as the
individual’s ability of exercising internal capabilities ensured by the social order and political
organisation of the society. Basically, these are internal capabilities strengthened by external
conditions and political rights which make the functioning possible. Nussbaum sees the aim of
public policy in production of combined capabilities. She thus elaborates on the idea: ‘This idea
means promoting the states of the person by providing the necessary education and care, as well
as preparing the environment so that it is favourable for the exercise of practical reason and the
other major functions’ (Nussbaum, 1997, p. 290). She stresses the necessity for the governments
to always keep functioning in view when designing policies. However, and here I see an important
implication for character education, for Nussbaum it is absolutely imperative not to push people
towards making choices in favour of particular function, as doing otherwise will jeopardise their
liberal freedoms thus putting the whole idea of liberal education at stake. Nussbaum sees
political and educational goal in ‘setting the stage’ fully, leaving the choices up to the individuals
themselves (Nussbaum, 1997, p. 290). In her own words:

The choice of whether and how to use the tools, however, is left up to the citizens, in the conviction that this
choice is an essential aspect of respect for their freedom. They are seen not as passive recipients of social
patterning, but as dignified free beings who shape their own lives. (Nussbaum, 1997, p.292)

This conception is drastically different from Dewey’s interpretation of education as moulding and
shaping of the young generation and initiating them into the ways of the older generation. While
it is easy to see what prompted Nussbaum the above formulation, there is still a concern from
the educational point of view as to how to ensure the choices made are not antisocial and do not
interfere with the wellbeing of people around. That is where education steps in, and character
education in particular. Nussbaum does make some concessions in regards children’s
development of capabilities. She writes:

Children are different, since we are trying to promote the development of adult capabilities. We may in some
cases be justified in requiring functioning of an immature child, as with compulsory primary and secondary
education, but we must always justify coercive treatment of children with reference to the adult-capability
goal. (Nussbaum, 1997, p.291)

It follows from here that although the idea of ‘shaping our own lives’ is an admirable goal in
liberal education, the young generation might need a gentle push or incentive in the direction of
general wellbeing, flourishing for all and life governed by reason, rational understanding and

27
mutual respect. In this light, it is of relevance and interest to bring up Nussbaum’s idea of two
particular basic capabilities which correlate with human rights, namely the power of reasoning
(particularly, moral reasoning) and the power of moral choice. They seem to be those two
cornerstones of choice-making that are responsible for ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ choices. These, in
Nussbaum’s understanding, are strengthened by imagination and the critical faculties
(Nussbaum, 2009, p.62). That is where inclusion of Humanities into the curriculum steps in.
Nussbaum awards a lot of significance to exposure to arts, literature and music in the school’s
effort of developing young people’s imagination and critical thinking. However, the question of
Humanities and literature in particular will be readdressed in more detail in the other section of
this research. It is important to highlight here, though, that Nussbaum repeatedly stresses the
primary goal of humanities which lies in creating ‘complete citizens who can think for themselves,
criticise tradition, and understand the significance of another person’s suffering and
achievements’ (Nussbaum, 2016, p.2).

To sum up the capability approach, I would like to point out that outside the measuring function,
the concept of capabilities is, in Nussbaum’s reading, a way of defining the human good and since
the list of capabilities Nussbaum provides is, in her own words, not final and all-encompassing, it
can be revised and can also be influenced by regional and national tradition (Nussbaum, 1997, p.
277), it can be inferred that the notion of human good is not clear-cut and can undergo
modifications. Although Nussbaum herself saw in the endeavour of enlisting capabilities a way
to oppose to relativistic tendences, the openness of the list to regional and cultural
interpretations brings us back to relativism and Bloom’s critique of both pitfalls – openness and
relativism (see section on Bloom). It would seem that Nussbaum’s understanding of the human
good is different from ‘The Good’ and ‘The Truth’ Bloom wants the young people to find and
adopt as the guiding principle of their lives.

Another red thread which snakes throughout Nussbaum’s theory is the postulate of living a truly
human life. The whole idea of capabilities approach is to ensure that every individual is enabled,
if he chooses so, to live a truly human life. There is, though, unclarity in Nussbaum’s writing of
what the notion’s precise content is. Since the whole theory is based on personal freedom of
choice, the notion of truly human life will mean different things for different people. These
vagueness and plurality of readings constitute the key divergence from the other theories, be it
conservative or liberal (Dewey, for instance) and can be interpreted as a weakness of the theory.
As Denis Doyle writes in his article ‘Education and Character: A Conservative View’:

Children have a spontaneous capacity to listen and speak, they have no such untutored capacity to read,
write, and count. So too, they have the capacity to distinguish between pleasure and pain but no untutored
capacity to make moral judgments. Just as children must learn to read, they must learn to be good. Like

28
 faith, morality must be acquired. The social and psychological restraints imposed by culture are what
dissuade children from “bad” behaviour and incline them toward good. (Doyle, 1997, p.441)

What follows from here is the necessity of a firm moral foundation built earlier in life which will
serve as the base for what Nussbaum sees as the ultimate exercise of the democratic freedom of
choice, which will come when the age of reason arrives (to resort to what this author considers
as a very sensible idea of J.-J. Rousseau amply depicted in Emil). I will come back to this sentiment
in My Creed on Character Education.

All in all, even though the liberal theories are seen as contesting the conservative outlooks on
education, there is a unifying guiding principle the majority of them seem to share – that of
dependence of the kind of man we aim at educating on the current society and state’s
expectations and demands. That link, in particular, is sated and restated in Dewey’s conception
of education, who writes repeatedly of how the society can shape itself through education and
of the role of the school as a primary instrument in sustaining the societal form. A closer reading
of Nussbaum’s theory also makes it sensitive to critique for instrumentality. The precise design
of the theory is ordained in order to ensure the consistency of the democracy and fostering of
the democratic man. Nussbaum writes: ‘Not For Profit fucuses on citizenship. I argue that the
humanities and arts provide skills that are essential to keep democracy healthy’ (Nussbaum,
2016, p.xvii). Personal freedoms are deemed as the ultimate values for policies, and, unlike
Bloom’s convictions, there are no other natural truths to strive for.

To conclude this section on liberal theories, I would like to resort again to Cline, who thus writes
about the tensions and limitations which take place in liberal schools: ‘As already indicated, they
have been indoctrinated with the tenets of liberalism. Yet, indoctrination itself is anti-liberal in
spirit. Liberalism properly is reaction against orthodoxy, but the so-called liberalism of the day
has really become just another orthodoxy’ (Cline, 1960, p.209). There is a ground for such
criticism and in the following section we will consider critical theories in education and what they
add to the discussion of character education. We will attempt to trace whether they are
contaminated with the venom of instrumentality as well.

2.3. Critical Theories

We are children of criticism, and we seek to go beyond criticism by means of criticism,
by a criticism that is no longer reductive but restorative.
Paul Ricoeur, 1967

29
For its purpose this paper will consider critical theories in the broader sense, particularly in the
various forms of Critical Pedagogy, which, according to the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy,
evolved from the narrower interpretation by the Frankfurt School of German philosophers
(Bohman, 2021). The Frankfurt School (launched with Horkheimer’ inaugural lecture, 1923)
attempted to combine different poles of philosophy and social sciences and in this way reduce
the instrumentality of the research and underline its distinctively moral practical sense with the
aim of achieving human emancipation in circumstances of domination and oppression (Bohman,
2021). According to Rexhepi and Torres (2011),

Critical Theory practiced by the Frankfurt School proposes a theoretical schematic that is progressive and
conscientious of the manner by which aspects of power and knowledge are produced, disseminated, and
ultimately linked. These positions and arguments are evident in its proponent's summation of advanced
industrial society (Marcuse 1991). Critical Theory more or less intimates an antithetical stance to totalitarian
tenets of the modern state and the violent and/or anaesthetizing tendencies of modern industrial society.
(Rexhepi & Torres, 2011, p.684)

In a nutshell, ‘critical theory is adequate only if it meets three criteria: it must be explanatory,
practical, and normative, all at the same time. That is, it must explain what is wrong with current
social reality, identify the actors to change it, and provide both clear norms for criticism and
achievable practical goals for social transformation’ (Bohman, 2021). As Rexhepi and Torres write
in the article ‘Reimagining Critical Theory’ (2011), critical theory traditionally has seen it as its
purpose to offer analysis and criticism based on negative evaluations, rather than imagining
concrete utopias (Rexhepi & Torres, 2011, pp.688-689). They stress that the previously dominant
rigid notions of class as the paramount determinant of societal hierarchy have been broadened
and the critical analysis now includes ‘processes of discrimination and exploitation derived from
other key dimensions of human life, most prominently race, ethnicity, and gender relationship’
(Rexhepi & Torres, 2011, pp.688). The societal transformation is still retained as the ultimate goal
with ‘a call for democratic renewal, highlighting the importance of emancipatory social
movements to democracy in contemporary capitalist societies’ (Rexhepi & Torres, 2011, pp.688).
The role of the critic is seen not as an intolerant denouncer, but as a societal ‘mirror to the critical
aspects that need to be considered in dealing with mechanisms of sociability, production, and
political exchange’ (Rexhepi & Torres, 2011, pp.690). Endowed with moral responsibility and
political commitment, the critical thinker is in search of ways to create social spaces which will
allow ‘an autonomous sphere of public debate…, which is neither controlled by the market nor
controlled by the State’ (Rexhepi & Torres, 2011, pp.690). The pedagogical implication of this lies
in the fact that this strive is no longer seen as an endeavour of a single master-thinker or a great
intellectual acting on behalf of the oppressed; instead, it is a collective act where each individual
is intellectually and morally prepared to play a role (Rexhepi & Torres, 2011, pp.691). That’s
precisely where character formation steps in.

30
Amongst the names strongly associated with critical theories in education are Michel Foucault
(whose ideas had a propound influence on critical theory and feminism); Paulo Freire (whose
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1968 can be regarded as the Bible of critical pedagogy); bell hooks
(feminist perspective of critical pedagogy); Ilan Gur-Ze’ev (the author of ‘counter-pedagogy’
project) and Thomas S. Popkewitz (who was heavily influenced by Michel Foucault’s ideas and
whose criticism lies mainly within the curriculum studies field) (Guilherme, 2018, pp. 2-5). That
is to cite just a few. This paper will not give a thorough analysis of all the theories within the
critical move, for obvious reasons of scope and time limitations. Instead, I will concentrate on
outlining just a few considered most relevant for the purpose of the paper, that is, adding a new
perspective to our discussion of character education.

2.3.1. Critical Pedagogy

In education, critical theories transformed into critical pedagogy with Paulo Freire, 1968 in the
vanguard. The aspirations of education are seen by critical pedagogists as those of emancipation,
liberation and equality, however, with a different take by different philosophers within the move.
Freire, for instance, saw the way in educating adult students in greater awareness, analysis and
critical approaches with the ultimate goal of humanization. He saw the key problem with the
current society in its dehumanization (Freire, 2017, pp.17-19). To rehumanize the society a new
type of Man is required – void of fear of freedom and aware of ‘the oppressor’s host’ in himself
(Freire, 2017, p.20). Thus, building the character of a new man is instrumental in achieving the
aspired objectives and bringing that man to action through reflection on the objective reality
(Freire, 2017, p.27). Freire underlines the role of humanist generosity in setting the boat of critical
pedagogy a float and warns against humanitarianism as a manifestation of egoism in the long run
(Freire, 2017, p. 28). Working with the students’ consciousness and their view of the world is
necessary in order to create that new man. The freedom and liberation are not bestowed from
without but come, in Freire’s take, as a result of the people’s own consciousness raising
(conscientizacao) and overcoming own passivity, which can be achieved only through a dialogical,
not a narrative type of education (Freire, 2017, pp. 41-44). That’s where this paper sees the
fundamental difference with the liberal theories for which the prerequisite condition of liberation
lies in freedoms provided and granted by the state (see the section on Martha Nussbaum).
Overall, to sum up Freire’s theory, it is necessary to bring home the idea that for him the main
vocation of all men and women is to become fully human and this humanization is in itself true
liberation from the ‘banking’ society’s grip, where education serves as an investment and
depositing rather than genuine transformation of the child (Freire, 2017, p.45). It is interesting

31
to draw a comparison here with Nussbaum’s idea of being able to live a truly human life however,
in her take, through free choices ensured by equal capabilities granted by the state. Some parallel
can also be traced here with Bloom’s quest for being truly human, for human completeness (see
section on Allan Bloom). The difference, though, lies in Bloom’s turning his eyes towards nature
and knowledge of the good in search for the standard, while Freire sees the way through
conscious reflection and critical thinking. As Guilherme writes in his article, ‘one of the
cornerstones of Freire’s philosophy is attaining the capacity to critique one’s own situation and
society as a whole’ (Guilherme, 2018, p.2). It should be underlined once again, however, that for
Freire education and character education in particular are still the instruments, not to sustain
and uplift the existing democracy as in Nussbaum’s case, but to facilitate the required societal
change and bring about a better world. Thus, the instrumental character of education is clearly
maintained. We will now consider how critical thought is transformed in Thomas Popkewitz’s
(2012) writings and what aspects of education in current globalised society arouse critique.

Popkewitz’s main work Cosmopolitanism and the age of school reform: Science, education and
making society by making the child (2007) (Further referred to as Cosmopolitanism) studies the
role of modern-age cosmopolitanism in shaping of school policies and expectations from the
modern ‘self’. Judging by the title, the work can be interpreted as advocating for instrumental
function of education as the last semantic group ‘making society by making the child’ is suggestive
of ‘moulding’ of the character of future citizens. However, this is a superficial reading, mainly
prompted by Popkewitz’s descriptive style in diagnosing the problems of contemporary
schooling. His criticism lies in laying bare, through analysis of the history and current condition
of cosmopolitanism, what he sees as the vexing issues of education and the problems of
cosmopolitanism and school (Popkewitz, 2012, p. xv). He does not, though, provide any definitive
solutions, at least in this book. Tackling the question of formation of the modern ‘self’, Popkewitz
writes in the preface to the book:

The reforms of pedagogy embody principles about the cosmopolitan child who acts and thinks as a "reasonable
person." But what is interesting about this reasonable person who is cosmopolitan is that he or she is not just
any person. He or she is someone who is made and that is where the schooling and its pedagogy becomes
central. (Popkewitz, 2012, p.xiii)

In this quotation, Popkewitz underlines the moulding and shaping function of the modern school
and stresses that the new cosmopolitan child is deliberately fashioned that way. He is conscious
of the fact, though, that this process of ‘making’ through all learning produces differences and
those, who are not ‘reasoned’ or reasonable (Popkewitz, 2012, p. xiv). Modern cosmopolitanism
is seen by Popkewitz as the main lever that triggers the process of formation of our conception
of who we are, who we ought to be and who is not part of this ‘we’. He criticises the modern
school’s fabrication of the human kinds and by resorting to comparativeness, producing

32
inequality while striving for equality (Popkewitz, 2013, p.1). The question that Popkewitz is set to
investigate is how the pedagogy can juggle between the desirability of inclusion and the dangers
of exclusion in the name of the enlightenment project (Popkewitz, 2012, p. xiv). He acknowledges
the fact that:

Cosmopolitanism is embodied in talk about autonomy and self-responsibility, the importance of planning life
through principles of reason and rationality (e.g., problem solving), and respect for diversity and difference.
These principles are joined with those about participation and collaboration in communities as values that
transcend the local and provincial. (Popkewitz, 2012, p. 5)

If my reading of Popkewitz is correct, he sheds doubt on the necessity of going away from local
and national reading of character education and restating the higher aspirations of
Enlightenment to foster ‘the world citizen whose commitments transcended provincial and local
concerns with ideal values about humanity’ (Popkewitz, 2012, p. 1).

Popkewitz underlines the cosmopolitan slogan of rearing a Lifelong Learner to meet the demands
of what he calls ‘knowledge society and knowledge economy’ (Popkewitz, 2013, p.2). He thus
describes the function of a cosmopolitan school:

The ostensible function of the modern school is to teach children cosmopolitan principles of reason.
Education in the early American republic and today is to produce the enlightened individual who acts with
self-responsibility that relates to the inscription of universal moral and social values about the good of the
community. (Popkewitz, 2012, p. 5)

It would seem that the community’s welfare and the perfection of the future are the ultimate
goals of constructing a cosmopolitan man, who is to apply reason and science to affect own life
and that of the community (Popkewitz, 2012, p. 8). The educational efforts in moulding a modern
‘self’ are still oriented towards the better future, as in Freire’s vision. Popkewitz sees here a
tension between these goals and openness to the alternative, to The Other.

Gur-ze’ev, aslo addresses the issues of openness and The Other in his concept of Improvisation
and Counter-Education. In Gur-ze’ev’s description of the idea of counter-education, alongside
the improvisor teacher, the concept of the Other and the relation to it emerges (Gur-ze’ev, 2010,
p.40). It is important to trace the link here to Popkowitz’s worries concerning the emergence of
those excluded, who do not meet the values and are not included by the pedagogy of
cosmopolitanism. Gur-ze’ev writes that counter-education unveils:

[...] openness and uncontrolled...creativity that is responsible and generous towards the Other and reaches
out to the unknown and to self-overcoming as self-constitution; without an egoistic-oriented ‘I’ initiating the
colonization of the Other, the response to the otherness or the self-sacrifice of the victimizing kind. The

33
 otherness of the other, the insecurity, the non-consensual and refusal of the self-evidence and other
manifestations of the invitation to the «home-returning» project. (Gur-ze’ev, 2010, p.43)

He warns against imposing one’s views on to the children. As Guilherme puts it in his article,
‘Compare this to Gur-Ze’ev’s improvisor teacher who is always critical and encourages critique,
and who does not intend to impose his views on anyone; rather, he encourages discussion and
tries to understand the others’ point of view’ (Guilherme, 2018, p.3).

All in all, it could be concluded that critical pedagogy, being a challenge to mainstream liberal
education, in its purest form views education as a form of political action aimed at emancipation
and liberation from oppression, at changing society by changing the man, at inclusion of the
Other and equality (Guilherme, 2018, p.3). To sum up, critical theories offer critical analysis of
the tradition, market and state as well as any forms of discrimination, be it class, gender, race or
ethnicity. The aims of education are seen in societal transformation, which can be achieved by
fostering political and societal activism in the new generation through overcoming passivity. Both
Freire and Popkewitz provide criticism of objectification of a human being by the state and the
market (Popkewitz, 2013, pp.2-3) and advocate for rehumanisation of the society through the
individual projects of becoming fully human. There is a marked voice against education for
citizenship, with Freire’s call to liberate the man in order to create a better future, and with
Popkewitz’s caution against tensions brought up by cosmopolitanism and educating for global
citizenship.

However, the warnings voiced by the critical pedagogists are somewhat controversial and lack
concrete propositions of alternative visions, especially in the case of Popkewitz’s writing. By
describing the current state of cosmopolitan education and identifying the problems of formation
of the modern ‘self’ governed by the demands of the education for global citizenship, Popkewitz
defined the field for critique without providing alternatives for instrumentality of education
predominant in contemporary liberal schooling (see Chapter 1). This openness invited a response
from Post-Critical Pedagogy, which constituted the starting point of the arguments of this paper
and is discussed in the section below.

2.3.2. Post-Critical Pedagogy’s Response

The above discussed instrumentality of character education embedded in the ‘educating for…’
formular, rooted both in conservative, liberal and partially critical theories, was contested by
post-critical pedagogists Naomi Hodgson, Vliegher Joris and Piotr Zamojski in their Manifesto for
a Post-Critical Pedagogy (2017). The authors of the Manifesto believe that critical educational
theory has long been underpinned by political and economic concerns and views the

34
transformative power of education solely as the means to achieve a better or ideal future state
of equality and social justice taking the focus off the child itself (Hodgson et al., 2017, abstract).
Hodgson, Joris and Zamojski take the belief in the transformative potential of education as a
starting point and investigate what is ‘educational’ about education regardless of whether the
ideal state can be achieved or not. They write:

Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy invites a shift from a critical pedagogy premised on revealing what is
wrong with the world and using education to solve it, to an affirmative stance that acknowledges what is
educational in our existing practices. It is focused on what we do and what we can do, if we approach
education with love for the world and acknowledge that education is based on hope in the present, rather
than on optimism for an eternally deferred future…..In Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy we set out five
principles that call not for an education as a means to achieve a future state, but rather that make manifest
those educational practices that do exist today and that we wish to defend. The Manifesto also acts as a
provocation, as the starting point of a conversation about what this means for research, pedagogy, and our
relation to our children, each other, and the world. (Hodgson et al., 2017, p.15)

The Manifesto opens with highlighting the prevailing relativism of educational thought, which,
although, potentially allows more inclusion (Popkewitz) and supports individual choices
(Nussbaum), makes it difficult to define and defend the principles of education (Hodgson et al.,
2017, p.15). The authors seek to find more universal answers to the question of values and goals
of education, contesting the existing sentiment that universalism and normativity are inherently
wrong. The outlined principles move from the critique of current fear to speak which arises from
political correctness and concerns with the otherness (compare with Bloom’s criticism of
American openness as a masked imperialism). As an alternative, the authors propose a culture
of respect to the other and acceptance of the fact that we will never fully understand the other
individual or culture. Instead of PR silence, we should, in the authors’ view, speak and act
together, based on the commonalities we share, in order to bridge the gap (Hodgson, 2017, p.
16). According to the Manifesto, education is a worthwhile activity precisely because we all share
a common world, not because we are citizens of our respective countries. To cite the authors,

This existing space of commonality is often overlooked in much educational research, policy, and practice in
favour of a focus on social (in)justice and exclusion, based on an assumption of inequality. The ethos of critical
pedagogy endures today in the commitment to achieving equality, not through emancipation, but rather
through empowerment of individuals and communities. (Hodgson et al., 2017, p.17)

What the authors propose as an alternative, rests on three foundational pillars – protection of
what we already have, care for the child and the world we share, and hope for renewal.
Debunking the critical pedagogists’ passion of hate and judgemental attitudes which are the
driving force of their quests for societal change, the post- critical thinkers offer the Love for the
World as the beacon to guide educationalists. The role of the pedagogue is seen as initiating the

35
new generation into the common world, not community or society in the narrow sense, and this
initiation requires the love for that same world (Hodgson et al., 2017, p. 18). The authors write:

In current formulations, taking care of the world is framed in terms of education for citizenship, education
for social justice, education for sustainability, etc. in view of a particular notion of global citizenship and an
entrepreneurial form of intercultural dialogue. (Hodgson et al., 2017, p. 18)

There is no room for this instrumental formulation ‘education for…’ in the vision of education
advanced in the Manifesto. It is education for education’s sake that the authors seek and launch
a defence of what is good in the world. They call for abandoning education for citizenship and
replace it by education for the Love of the World, of what is good in it which we want to preserve.
As I see it, there is some echoing here of Bloom’s strive for the natural good which is out there,
and not constructed by the society we live in.

2.4. Consolidation of Chapter 1 and 2

Below I will summarise the key points of the Theoretical Overview and bring them into a
conversation with the current educational policies. This chapter examined the outlooks on
character education and formation of the modern ‘self’ in conservative (Plato, Aristotle, Allan
Bloom), liberal (John Dewey, Martha Nussbaum) and critical (Paulo Freire, Thomas Popkewitz,
Ilan Gur-ze’ev) theories of education. This analysis demonstrated that the above theories have
many strong points but are also sensitive to critique. Regarding the question of the goals of
(character) education most of the above philosophers consider education the business of the
state and advocate fostering the right people for the current society, thus including citizenship
education as part of the upbringing project in schooling and manifesting the instrumental take
on education as a way of achieving political goals. These postulates are clearly reflected in the
character education policies discussed in the first chapter, which consider teaching citizenship
values and civic virtue as an integral part of formation through school (see Chapter 1). Unlike
conservative theories, which alongside the citizenry goal, stressed the importance of acquiring
virtue and knowledge of the self as well as perfecting the soul, the liberal theories seem to
overlook the necessity of the firm foundation of the moral virtues and love of the good. Instead,
they bring liberation of the child and sustaining the democratic freedoms of choices to the
foreground as the ultimate goal of education in the liberal school setting. Equipping the child
with critical skills and imagination as well as instilling love for equality are meant to ensure the
thriving of democracy. However, and here this paper sees the weakness of the liberal theories,
such prioritisation leaves the young generation without firm beliefs and strong moral grounds
and leads to the relativism of truths and of the notion of the good, which Bloom (1987) clearly

36
signposted in his writing. In line with the liberal theories, this neglect of the language of moral
virtues, perfecting of the soul and knowledge of the world and the good is evident in current
educational policies (see Chapter 1). Critical thinkers addressed these limitations of
contemporary liberal education and contested the views on the child as the future citizen and
education as an instrument of the state. While in Freire’s take the goal is no longer citizenry but
reforming society and attaining a better future through educating a New Man, for Popkewitz the
worry lies in achieving equality without exclusion of those who do not conform and in balancing
the global, cosmopolitan goals with the local and the community. Yet, this criticism does not
provide the answers to all questions of how to reform the liberal education. That’s where Post-
Critical Pedagogists with their Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy (2017) step in and offer to
go way from instrumentality and review the goals of the liberal education. In this research The
Manifesto (2017), which only outlined the new goal but did not provide further elaborations,
served as a springboard for the formulation of this paper’s arguments which are aimed at
developing the Manifesto’s postulate by going back into history and drawing on the positive
legacy of the conservative theories in order to offer an alternative to current version of character
education in liberal schooling, placing educating power of Literature at the centre of it. The
following chapter is deemed to consolidate those arguments in the form of a creed.

Chapter 3
My Creed on Character Education
Know yourself and the world is yours.
Buddha
At issue here is not socio-biology, or scientific theories about altruism, or
modern behavioural psychology, but our history as a species. Nowhere is this history
drawn more vividly or fearfully than in the 20th century. The “banality of evil,” Hannah
Arendt called it. To abandon education’s historic mission to shape character – to fail to
try to turn boys into men and girls into women – flies in the face of history and reason.
It is the ultimate romantic fallacy. To build a pedagogy on romanticism, as Hirsch shows,
not only invites failure; it courts disaster. It is equally dangerous to build a theory of
character formation on such grounds. Even if, in some narrow, strict, scientific sense the
question is still open – who is right, Rousseau or Hobbes? We cannot frame social policy
on the slender possibility that the answer may be Rousseau.
Doyle, 1997, p.441

This essay is offered as a replacement of the more orthodox chapter ‘Discussion of Results’, and
I see here the need to start the section with justification of the title and the form. Firstly, what
follows below does not, in my firm conviction, fall into the category of findings or discoveries of
the research process, but rather is an attempt to summarise my contemplations and formulate
some beliefs that started brewing during the work on this paper and reading into the topic of
Character Education. These are strengthened by reflections on my personal experiences, not in

37
the least, those of a teacher, and my individual life philosophy. Thus, the form of a creed is
deemed as fitting the general stance and sentiment of what constitutes this chapter. The
inspiration, oddly as it may seem, comes from Tyson E. Lewis’s response to ‘Manifesto for a Post-
Critical Pedagogy’ (2017), where he stresses the esthetical importance of choosing the right form
of writing that matches the content adequately (As in Hodgson et al., 2017, p.25) and resorts to
Dewey’s My Pedagogic Creed (1897) as an exemplification. Tyson sees a lot of potential in the
form of a creed for consolidating pedagogical thoughts. He writes:

What I find fascinating here is how the creed, which is a particularly Christian technology, can come to be
reconfigured as a kind of postmodern pedagogic form that celebrates voices regardless of critical
engagement with the content of the creeds. (As in Hodgson et al., 2017, p. 27)

Thus, this creed is offered as a way of celebrating this author’s voice and if we resort to Dewey’s
creed as a blueprint, then it makes sense to adopt his design as well and start each argumentative
section with ‘I believe’.

I believe, that conservative, liberal and critical theories of education, although emerged as a
challenge to each other, should in fact be viewed as complementing each other. All the
philosophies considered above have valuable truths in them. Instead of trying to denounce the
previous tradition, it is more important to build up on what is valuable in it and adapt it to the
demands of the new age. The following creed is doing precisely that. By identifying the problems
in the current policies on character education, it draws on the valuable insights and strengths of
the theories discussed in the previous chapter (particularly conservative Aristotle and Bloom and
liberal Nussbaum) to tackle the research questions of this thesis which are centred around the
focus and goals of liberal educational policies for character education; the alternative approaches
to replace educating for civic virtue; and the role of literature in achieving character education
goals without jeopardising the idea of liberalisation of the child as opposed to moulding. These
research questions justify dividing the chapter into three sections: On the Goals of Character
Education, On the Content and On the Question How.

3.1. On the Goals of Character Education

I believe, that although education is the business of the state, not in the least in the financial
sense, it should not be the instrument of that same state in typecasting and moulding the young
generation. There are several reasons for that. As is clear from the previous chapters, most of
the discussed theories of education have one thing in common – educating a true citizen for
whatever society was or is deemed desirable at the time: for the liberal theories we educate a
democratic man who would sustain the democratic ways of life; for the ancient city-states –
educating a citizen of that state; for critical theories – the necessity to alter the man in order to

38
ensure a better society and world in the future. It would seem there is no man outside the state.
States, however, come and go, the man stays. Being moulded and fashioned in a certain way for
generations, the man becomes dehumanized (borrowing on Freire’s terminology) and weak,
without a spine of his own, just an appendix to the state. That raises the ‘hen and egg’ question
for me – what is the starting point: the man or the state? Is it the man for the state’s sake or is it
the state for the man’s sake? Are we breeding men for the humanity or breeding them for the
particular social order?

I believe, that by emphasising and prioritising citizenship education and educating for civic virtue
as an integral part of character education (see Chapter; Character Education Framework, 2019;
Character education…Our shared Responsibility, 2021; Framework for the Key Citizenship
Competences, 2016), the current liberal policies award character education in liberal schooling a
distinctive instrumental character, which is in contradiction with the very idea of liberalisation of
the child. It leads to corruptive potential and creates tensions and indoctrinating practices, which
are per say against essence of liberalisation. Moreover, these prioritization results in neglect of
key moral virtues and teaching the love of the good as a foundation for critical thinking and
freedom of choices. As Bloom puts it, ‘Civil society becomes merely the combat zone for the
pursuit of power - control over things and especially over men… quenched by fear, pride gives
way to vanity, the concern for petty advantages over others. This diminishing of man is the
apparent result of enlightenment about his true nature.’ (Bloom, 1978, p.137) The values are
distorted, and illusions are dispelled. Men learn to care about the excesses and pleasures of life
and forget how to produce selfless and extraordinary deeds. Honour and ideals give way to
calculation and using others as means to one’s own ends.

I believe, that Western education today cushions young people with many securities and
prepares them for ‘good and easy’ life and, once those securities are threatened, the
personalities are laid bare. Not equipped with the strong humanistic values and acute sense of
the beautiful and the good, young people struggle to navigate the life in all its complexity and to
remain humane in any circumstances. As Allan Bloom observed in The Closing of the American
Mind (1987), young people today ‘have powerful images of what a perfect body is and pursue it
incessantly… they no longer have any image of a perfect soul, and hence do not long to have one’
(Bloom, 1987, p. 67). Being just a good person is no longer fashionable. One has to be a citizen,
a democratic man, a liberal, or some other type of animal, while all that humans really need to
learn is how to be humane.

I believe, that there are other beacons in education than citizenry. For the authors of The
Manifesto for Post-Critical Pedagogy (2017), it is the Love of the World, of what is good in it and
worthwhile to preserve that should guide education of the young generation. For Bloom, the

39
solution lies in educating the man for the man’s sake, in the capability of becoming an
autonomous person, morally and intellectually independent (Bloom, 1978). This paper sees the
merger of the above postulates as the desirable goal of character education. The transformative
power of education in the strive for perfecting the soul and the validity of defence of education
for education’s sake are brought to light to contest the instrumentalism of education in creating
citizens. We all share a common world, and this is the world now, where country boarders are
less defined than before, and globalisation penetrates all spheres of life. Anyway, it is still the
world which is tormented by conflicts of various nature which erupt in military clashes. If we put
Love of the World as the guiding principle of education, not blind patriotism, it can, perhaps,
minimise those conflicts and stress the commonalities we share. What the humanity needs are
ground human values that cement the individual’s relation with the world, himself and The Other,
leading to harmonious life, rather than that of a functional citizen.

I believe, and in this I follow Bloom again, that the idea of human completeness should be at the
centre of character education. As Rabindranath Tagore wrote, ‘history has come to a stage when
the moral man, the compete man, is more and more giving way, … to make room for the …
commercial man, the man of limited purpose… causing the upset of man’s moral balance,
obscuring his human side under the shadow of soul-less organisation.’ (quoted as in Nussbaum,
2016, cover page) Fostering and perfecting appreciative soul through character education (as
opposed to encouraging critical attitudes to the world) can trigger the re-humanisation of the
man and, in turn, the society as a whole. This is a different take on Paulo Freire’s quest for re-
humanisation painted in the Pedagogy of the Oppressed through raising of consciousness and
criticality of the man.

3.2. On the Content of Character Education

I believe, that teaching blind patriotism is in contradiction with the very idea of critical thinking.
If the main goal of education nowadays is to foster critical skills (Freire, Nussbaum, Gur-Ze’ev),
these critical attitudes should target one’s own country’s past and present as well. Only in this
way can one learn to be impartial and open to The Other as well as exercise fully the power of
rational judgement.

I believe, that the current educational policies will benefit from inclusion of a more pronounced
focus on moral virtues to contest performance values and citizenship goals. As Dewey writes, the
current advance of technology and democratic ways of life results in the unprecedented rate and
speed of changes and ‘it is impossible to foretell definitely just what civilization will be twenty
years from now. Hence it is impossible to prepare the child for any precise set of conditions. To

40
prepare him for the future life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him
that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities’ (Dewey, 1897, p.77). I would add - to
give him a firm foundation of understanding of the Good and the Beautiful in the World and the
timeless values of one’s own and the other’s lives. To refer to Bloom’s ideas (1987), it is necessary
to redirect our gaze at the values and moral principles that are outside the state-time relativism
and characterise a Human Being in its independence and completeness, regardless the
circumstances, social conditions, and community.

I believe, the virtues and values which constitute a True Man are outside the boundaries of time,
location, and social order. The values taught in school should have a universal character, rather
than local, especially so within the globalized world the new generation is to inherit. Starting with
the year 2015, for instance, schools in the UK were obliged to promote British values, which left
the teachers bewildered and uncomfortable with the term, raising the questions ‘What are the
British values?’ and ‘Why are they British?’ (Harrison, 2016). This division into British, Russian,
American democratic, etc. values leads to polarisation and the problem of inclusion/exclusion
when part of the society is marginalised or stigmatised on the ground that they do not share ‘our
values’. This is precisely where Popkewitz saw the dangers of exclusion and creating inequality
while striving for equality (Popkewitz, 2013, p.1) in the liberal schooling of today. If we are to
follow the Manifesto for Post-Critical Pedagogy’s call, to base education on the love of the
common world we share and the desire to preserve what is good in it, there is only one way to
sustain the Idea of the common world, and that is, through the common or, as Harrison calls
them, universal, values we share (Harrison, 2016). To substantiate this idea, Rexhepi and Torres
also stress that ‘Unless we jettison the neoliberal logic and begin to think in human terms and
develop ideas of human interests to replace national ones, it is likely that the situation will not
improve’ (Rexhepi & Torres, 2011, p.688).

I believe, the knowledge of the world and oneself, one’s strengths and weaknesses, capabilities
and interrelation with the world and the Other can constitute the firm foundation for character
formation and building up the attitudes to the reality outside oneself. Or, as Buddha reportedly
said, ‘Know yourself and the world is yours’. Here, again, I find my argument leaning on that of
Allan Bloom who advocated for knowledge of the others, of the history, of philosophy, languages
and cultures as the basis for the quest for natural truth and The Good (Bloom, 1987).

41
 3.3. On the Question of How (Approaches and Techniques)

I believe, that although we might come to some understanding of what character education
implies and what the expectations are, there is always a dilemma of ‘how’. As Harrison (2016)
puts it: ‘The teacher’s job is to provide their students with a language and understanding of
character, an opportunity to critically engage with ethical dilemmas and guide their students
towards making “wise” and virtuous decisions’ (Harrison, 2016). Yet, understanding the job does
not necessarily provide with the toolkit of how to do it. One of the common problems of the
educational policies reviewed in Chapter 1 lies in providing the guidelines and benchmarks for
character education (as is the case of the 2019 Character Education Framework of the British
Government DfE and the US Department of Education charter ‘Character Education…Shared
Responsibility’, 2021) but failing to offer any comprehensive list of actual paths to reach the goals,
leaving the schools strive for their own devices. The following quotation from the British
Character Education Framework (2019) is demonstrative in this respect:

School leaders will want to consider character education in the context of their own school against these
benchmarks so that they can evaluate the nature and quality of their current provision and determine their
aspirations for future development. It is for individual schools or trusts to decide what constitutes good
provision and to be accountable for it. It is important for school leaders to reflect on practice in their
institutions and seek to develop and improve it as effectively as possible. (Character Education Framework,
2019, p.6)

I believe, these recommendations for school administration are, in the least, vague and are less
than helpful when it comes to putting the outlined policy into practice. The document shows a
considerable bewilderment and naivety when it comes to the practical implications of their own
guidelines. Although it does not offer a comprehensive ‘to do’ list of concrete actions to be
undertaken in order to implement character education in schools, it does give the survey results
of what devices the schools have come up with on their own:

Schools in a survey by NatCen Social Research and the National Children’s Bureau3 used a wide variety of
curricular and extra-curricular activities to provide character education, including: assemblies, subject
lessons, dedicated character education lessons, sports, performance arts clubs, outward bound activities,
hobby clubs, and subject learning clubs. These opportunities help young people to explore and express their
character and build the skills they need for resilience, empathy and employability. (Character Education
Framework, 2019, p. 6)

I believe, what the list above demonstrates is the separation of character education into ‘side’
efforts by inventing self-standing activities dedicated directly to character education. These
approaches are more than likely to generate in children feelings of indignation and suspicion of

42
being preached to and indoctrinated. What is lacking here is the unobtrusive and harmonious
inclusion of the focus on character into each and every subject and school activity.

I believe, that what is forgotten by the school today is the power of an exemplar in upbringing of
the young generation. The conservative thinkers Aristotle, Plato and Bloom were more than
aware of this potency. Bloom repeatedly underlines the necessity of exposing the young
generation to inspiring examples (Bloom, 1987, pp.60-64). Denis P. Doyle in his article defending
a conservative view on character education, goes back to Aristotle and emphasises the necessity
of exemplarity and practice. He writes:

But if I have described what good character education is not, then of what is it constituted? Of three elements:
example, study, and practice. In the final analysis life is about moral choices, not about technique or
spontaneous unfolding. First is the role of virtuous men and women, who, by example, model virtuous
behaviour. Parents first, then teachers and friends. (Doyle, 1997, p.442)

To transfer this to the school setting, alongside the example of the teacher, the subject content,
which is taught, has an enormous potential to generate those examples which unravel the
notions of the good and the bad, the values to be striving for and cherish. As Marshal Gregory
puts it, character is never fully formed but

is always being formed out of the unbroken flow of one's everyday choices and value judgments. Moral
character is always in motion. Just as bodily cells mysteriously arrange themselves into the structure of
distinct tissues, so our choices about behaviour and our judgments about values mysteriously shape and
reshape the sinews of character. (Gregory, 1991, p. 11)

I believe, ‘the unbroken flow’ and ‘everyday’ are key words here. This implies that character
building efforts of school cannot and should not have a sporadic nature but must be an incessant
focus of every teacher talk, discussion and school activity. Meant to ensure the path to human
completeness, these educational efforts can be successful only if they originate from someone
who if not has achieved this human completeness, but at least is well on the way to it. The role
of the teacher’s personality, thus, is crucial, otherwise the endeavour turns into futile devices
and stinks of superficiality and failure. As Bloom writes: ‘Education in our times must try to find
whatever there is in students that might yearn for completion, and to reconstruct the learning
that would enable them autonomously to seek that completion’ (Bloom, 1987, p.63), thus
underlining once again the continuity of character education.

I believe, that, to paraphrase the title of Martha Nussbaum’s book, education (not Democracy)
needs the humanities in order to achieve that human completeness we advocate for. If
Nussbaum sees the role of humanities and literature as a way to develop students’ imagination
and ability to place themselves in the ‘shoes of the other’, and in this way ensure democratic

43
attitudes and set of mind, and, in the long run, serve the democracy as a social order; I believe,
the humanities are needed for the child to become a truly human being able to value one’s own
and others’ lives, the beautiful in the world and capable of selfless outstanding deeds. Nussbaum
does make some concession, though. In her three-pronged argument for humanities she
describes one of those prongs as intrinsic value of humanities in understanding our own lives,
love, death, anger, pain, etc. (Nussbaum, 2016, p. xix). These, however, are supplementary aims,
overshadowed by citizenry and democracy. I believe, that understanding our lives and its key
notions, our past, present and possible future should become the foundation of teaching values,
priorities and, in the long run, character.

I believe, history, arts, literature and philosophical studies should be incorporated into the
curriculum at all levels of compulsory education and include post schooling as well. This corpus
of studies constitutes what is called in some educational systems (in Slavic, post-soviet countries)
as ‘the subjects of general personality development’ and is designed to supplement the narrow
professionally focussed courses to ensure an ‘all-round’ development and education of the young
generation preparing them not just for professional functioning and success but for ‘fully human
life’, to borrow Nussbaum’s wording. She also advances the system of liberal arts education
which alongside the major subjects offers students a choice of humanities courses, but in
Nussbaum’s understanding, these are aimed at preparing the students ‘more broadly for
citizenship and life’ (Nussbaum, 2016, p.xix). I, on the other hand, believe that citizenship agenda
should not be prioritized at the expense of ‘all-round’ development.

The next chapter will further investigate the exemplary role of literature and how literature as a
school subject can lay the foundation for character formation throughout the rest of the
curriculum in the liberal schools under the banner of the Love of the World. Literature opens the
young minds by exposing to the diversity of life and giving an alternative to the narrow-minded
‘black and white’, ‘good and bad’ narratives and world views that some of the societies offer to
their young. Literature can, no doubt, become a double-edged sword and a tool for
indoctrination, so the chapters below will have to raise the question of the choice of the right, as
much as I would like to avoid this word, literature as well.

44
 Chapter 4

A Defence Case for Literature Studies as the Basis for Character Building in
Liberal
Educational Setting

This poetry depicts great human types who embody the alternative visions of the right way
of life, who make that way of life plausible, who excite admiration and emulation. The
Bible, on the highest level, gives us prophets and saints; and in the realm of ordinary
possibility, it gives us the pious man. Homer and Plutarch give us, at the peak, heroes;
and, for everyday fare, gentlemen. But modern philosophy could not inspire a great poetry
corresponding to itself. The man whom it produced is too contemptible for the noble Muse;
he can never be a model for those who love the beautiful. This failing is symptomatic of
the maiming of man effected by the prosaic new philosophy.
- Allan Bloom

To reflect on this citation, school children of today rarely read poems, saying nothing of reciting
them or writing their own, until they choose literature as their exam subject in the middle years.
What will be the cost the humanity will pay for this neglect in the future?

Let us go back in time. The tradition of storytelling for upbringing purposes is as old as the
humankind. The power of the story in education has been repeatedly highlighted in conservative
theories starting with antiquity. Plato, for instance, while describing the first stage of education,
distinguishes secondary or literary education as part of it and establishes a strong link between
the literature (poetry) presented to children and character building (Plato, 2007, pp. 67-69). The
general purpose of this stage of education is seen in training both character and moral and
aesthetic judgement, these last two being closely related. The rigid control of music and poetry
to be used in education is required and the state censorship of educational literature is advocated
(Plato, 2007, p.96). It is important to cover both what is said and how it is said (Plato, 2007, p.86).
Plato writes: ‘Good literature, therefore, and good music, beauty of form and good rhythm all
depend on goodness of character; I don’t mean that lack of awareness of the world which we
politely call ‘goodness’, but a mind and character truly well and fairly formed’ (Plato, 2007, p.97).
For Plato, though, there is a necessity to match the type of stories the children are brought up on
with their role as the future citizens. For the Guardians to acquire qualities of discipline, courage
and greatness of mind the exposure to the stories celebrating these qualities is of the paramount
importance. Plato goes further and suggests the necessity to perceive the qualities this particular
person will need in order to fulfil his role in the society and offer suitable representations of them
(through stories) until those qualities are acquired by the trainee (Plato, 2007, pp.98-99). This
approach, undoubtedly, will not be met favourably in the current liberal educational setting.
However, the direct link Plato made between the stories the children are fed from yearly years

45
and forming a child’s character is beyond dispute. Taken up by many philosophers and
educationalists since Plato’s times, this link, though, has undergone numerous interpretations
and twists. The current educational policies and curriculum in many countries seem to be
oblivious of this link altogether and seem to have embarked on the campaign if not to eradicate
the Humanities from the curriculum, then shrink them to give room to ‘more valuable’ subjects
(Nussbaum, 2016, p. xiii).

This chapter’s title comprises the word ‘defence’ and I do not see a better way of engaging into
this campaign than borrowing, yet again, from Allan Bloom. He writes in the preface to The
Closing:

Although it is foolish to believe that book learning is anything like the whole of education, it is always
necessary, particularly in ages when there is a poverty of living examples of the possible high human types.
And book learning is most of what a teacher can give—properly administered in an atmosphere in which its
relation to life is plausible. Life will happen to his students. (Bloom, 1987, p.21)

Disillusioned in educational potentialities of the modern liberalised society, Bloom clearly links
the narrative or storytelling with the idea of learning from an exemplar. In his interpretation, with
nowadays’ shortage of real-life heroes and role-models of quality, books (good books, mind you)
become the sources of exemplars for moulding character. Without literature, in Bloom’s
conviction, no observations and distinctions of human types are possible (Bloom, 1987, p. 64),
nor can one construct the adequate view of the past, the present and the future. Bloom writes:
‘Thus, the failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal
tendency—the belief that the here and now is all there is’ (Bloom, 1987, p.64). Literature, in other
words, is a way to combat short-sightedness and limitations of one’s ‘bubble-world’ dominated
by conformity and typecast thinking shaped by public opinion, authority and peer pressure.
According to Bloom,

Students have not the slightest notion of what an achievement it is to free oneself from public guidance and
find resources for guidance within oneself. From what source within themselves would they draw the goals
they think they set for themselves? Liberation from the heroic only means that they have no resource
whatsoever against conformity to the current "role models." They are constantly thinking of themselves in
terms of fixed standards that they did not make. Instead of being overwhelmed by Cyrus, Theseus, Moses or
Romulus, they unconsciously act out the roles of the doctors, lawyers, businessmen or TV personalities
around them. One can only pity young people without admirations they can respect or avow, who are
artificially restrained from the enthusiasm for great virtue. (Bloom, 1987, pp. 66-67)

Bloom further develops his argument based on the opposition to pop culture representations of
human values and notions of life, love, gender roles, etc. He writes in The Closing:

46
 Kramer vs. Kramer may be up-to-date about divorces and sex roles, but anyone who does not have Anna
Karenina or The Red and the Black as part of his viewing equipment cannot sense what might be lacking, or
the difference between an honest presentation and an exercise in consciousness-raising, trashy
sentimentality and elevated sentiment. (Bloom, 1987, p. 64)

It pains me to think that Kramer vs. Kramer which Bloom considers trashy would be considered
by a sensitive teacher as that desirable classic today, taking into consideration from what our
children learn about sex roles now. The all-encompassing epidemic of diminishing standards. In
my vision, the role of literature is precisely that – to put back up the standards, of what it is to be
truly human, and to re-establish the demand for perfection from oneself because, to cite from
Bloom,

‘Man is a being who must take his orientation by his possible perfection… As it now stands, students have
powerful images of what a perfect body is and pursue it incessantly. But deprived of literary guidance, they
no longer have any image of a perfect soul, and hence do not long to have one.’ (Bloom, 1987, p. 67)

However, both Bloom and Plato are considered conservative thinkers. How would these
convictions and a call for resorting to particular literature for inspiration be of assistance for
liberal educationalists of today? As Marshal Gregory writes:

Liberal education- that mode of education dealing most consistently, richly, and fully with knowledge of and
modes of thinking about such value-laden issues as the meaning of historical events, the criticism of values
and ideas, the application of justice, and an ongoing critique of different notions of how to live- is deeply
formative of character and thus may be accurately described as reaching primarily for ethical aims. (Gregory,
1991, p.7)

How can one achieve those ethical aims in educating a ‘critical thinker’ and a ‘global man of the
democratic world’? Karen Bohlin, for instance, the co-architect of the National Schools
of Character Program, US, and the author of Teaching Character Education through Literature:
Awakening the Moral Imagination in Secondary Classrooms (2005), proposes to resort to
narrative to teach school children responsiveness to ethical themes and as a way to awaken
moral imagination (Bohlin, 2005, pp.7-8). In the article ‘Literature as an educator: Ethics, politics
and the practice of writing in Thomas Mann’s life and work’ (2022) Andrius Bielskis enquires into
the question to which extend literature can school us in moral virtues and comes to the following
conclusions: ‘Literature’s key internal goods are spelled out: the common aesthetic enjoyment
achieved by the writer’s ability to create a truthful fictional narrative the reader is drawn into
and the expansion of our narrative identities and self-awareness’ (Bielskis, 2022, p.1). According
to Bielskis, good literature enables the children to reflect on the nature of their identities and to
acquire cultural self-awareness as well as cultivate virtue (Bielskis, 2022, p. 2). He writes:

47
 Literature also brings insight into the different cultural and political situations we find ourselves in as part of
our societies. It expands our knowledge of the world and of different cultures. Literature helps us to develop
our moral imagination through its ability to analyse the existing social and political order by pinpointing moral
dilemmas of its time. In doing so and by creating moral heroes (think, for example, of Victor Hugo’s Les
Misérables and its main protagonist Jean Valjean), literature plays an important role in our moral education.
(Bielskis, 2022, p.4)

Thus, literature is both the mirror and the way of criticism of the current society, its ailments,
and values. It has an enormous potential to expose what is good in the World and worth
preserving (that’s is exactly what Post-Critical pedagogists are after), and what is bad and should
be discarded; and in this way, advertently or inadvertently, forming our values and the vision of
the World as it is and as we want to see it.

Following the conservative tendences of Plato, Aristotle and Bloom, the liberal educationalist
Martha Nussbaum, also sees a way to remedy the formation of the modern ‘self’ in humanities,
particularly, literature. ‘Stories - she writes - learned in childhood become powerful constituents
of the world we inhabit as adults’ (Nussbaum, 2016, p.36). In her search for resolving the
confrontation between the forces of compassion and respect and individual strive for domination
over the others, she proposes to reconsider the common narrative of human childhood and
resorts to the latest research on psychology of disgust (Nussbaum, 2016, p.30). A new-born
human being, she points out, is a queer combination of completeness, when all his needs are
met, and helplessness, when ‘good things do not arrive at the desired moment’ (Nussbaum, 2016,
p.30). The latter condition is, in Nussbaum’s interpretation, responsible for the children’s desire
to enslave parents to ensure the flow of ‘the good things’ and prompts the sense of shame of
incompleteness which leads to instability and moral danger (Nussbaum, 2016, p.31). This very
weakness and neediness, unless channelled cautiously by the parent, can result in ethical
deformation and cruelty of behaviour. Further on, in the process of potty training, the infant is
introduced to the feeling of disgust at his bodily waste which is, according to experimental
psychology, an embodiment of our own animality and mortality (Nussbaum, 2016, p.32). This
feeling of disgust, unless managed properly, leads to the desire to distance from one’s own
animality by projecting its properties onto some group of people, who are considered dirty,
contaminating, an undercast; be it Jews, homosexuals, women, low castes, or people from the
Caucasus. In this mechanism Nussbaum sees a trigger for creating social hierarchy and, as a
result, a threat to democratic equality (Nussbaum, 2016, p.33).

It is not all doom and gloom, though. The solution can lie in resorting to education for help in
shaping people’s attitudes towards weakness, need, mortality and interdependence. Nussbaum
writes:

48
 Because stigmatizing behaviour seems to be a reaction to anxiety about one’s own weakness and
vulnerability, it cannot be moderated without addressing that deeper anxiety. … Jean-Jacques Rousseau
made the learning of basic human weakness central to his whole scheme for education, saying that only
cognizance of that weakness makes us sociable and turns us to humanity; thus, our very inadequacy can
become the basis of our hope of a decent community. (Nussbaum, 2016, p.34)

Acceptance of our mortality and finite condition without hate and repudiation, as a fact of life,
and understanding the human place in Universe are the first cobblestones on the road to
compassion and human completeness. And that’s where, according to Nussbaum, the power of
the right story comes in. She states that many stories the children are commonly exposed to
today teach that perfection, invulnerability, and control are the key to success in adult life and
that the evil is always out there not within us. Many children’s stories represent the world as
divided into ‘pure’ and ‘impure’ and restate ‘the construction of ‘we’ who are without flaw and
a ’they’ who are dirty, evil and contaminating’ (Nussbaum, 2016, p.34-35). This evil can be
conglomerated in the character of a monster, a witch or a bad guy. Once those incarnations of
evil are removed, the world will be set right. This simplified, ‘black and white’ or ‘good and bad’
representation of the world sustains the inborn inclination to direct one’s disgust onto an
outsider. Literature, thus, stresses Nusbaum, should introduce children to the world of real
complexity and diversity of human nature, teaching the children deeper analysis and critical
thinking based on the rational principle (Nussbaum, 2016, p.36). Only in this way can democratic
equality be maintained, and hierarchies abandoned.

Borrowing on the conservative idea which emphasises the link between the storytelling and
character building, liberal education needs to take it further in order to achieve the goal of
liberation and democracy. From Nussbaum’s writing it is clear that literature plays a vital role in
liberating young people by freeing them from disgust at their own animality and mortality, by
teaching diversity and complexity of their own world and the world around them. Fostering the
right attitudes to life, death and other people are cornerstones in developing the character of a
democratic man who believes in liberal values. Since the principles of a liberal education reject
the very idea of deliberate shaping and moulding of another being, seeing it as the threat to the
individual’s freedoms, character building policies in schools present a clash with the liberal
thinking per say. Exposure to the right narrative from the early days can be that unobtrusive way
to direct the development without coercively squeezing the child’s character into a standard
mould. As Bielskis puts it, ‘literature contributes to the formation of our own individual
narratives’ (Bielskis, 2022, p. 2). He reflects on the Aristotelean idea of practicing virtues and,
reading practice in the MacIntyrean sense, contests it and links it with the educating power of
literature.

49
 But to develop virtues, practices, no matter how important they are, are not enough: We need to find a
meaningful place for each of them so that they contribute to the flourishing of our lives rather than frustrate
them by bringing dissatisfaction and unhappiness. The concept of the narrative unity of the single life is meant
to do precisely that: An ability to see a narrative coherence in our lives helps us to order the goods and ends
we pursue. Literature is essential in this respect: By telling fictional stories about failures, tragedies as well as
successes of imagined lives, it teaches us about the vanity and nobility of different human ends. It fills us with
stories that help us to form our own identities. Whether implicitly or not, literature helps us to ask the
question of what the good life for a human being is. The second level of education in literature—the narrative
formation of our worldview—is the unique feature of literature. (Bielskis, 2022, p. 5)

It can be inferred from the above, that Aristotelian idea of practicing virtues in order to become
a good flourishing man through avoiding excesses and attaining the golden middle, or the mean,
becomes meaningful only when the virtues are put into context. And the story, the narrative
becomes that context in which we are able to visualise the ends we pursue and the valuable
goods of life we strive for.

To conclude this section, I would like to restate that the two most ardent contemporary
champions of literature studies as the necessary component of education in general and
character building in particular, Bloom and Nussbaum, gave, nevertheless, contrasting
justifications for such inclusion. For Bloom literature is the source of admirable exemplars and
the way to form one’s notion of the good; for Nussbaum it is a way of exposing to diversity of life
and providing the alternative to ‘black and white’ vision of the world presented in most children’s
fairy tales, thus teaching imagination and critical thinking necessary for supporting democratic
values (Nussbaum, 2016, p. 35). My bewilderment lies in why the role of literature in forming
character should be viewed either as one or the other. My argument is that literature is all of it
– exposing to exemplars of what being a Good Human Being means, teaching the idea of the
Good, but also exposing the young to other ways of life and showing the diversity of its forms,
creating situations which allow the children to put themselves into the shoes of the other and
learn to sympathise, understand and accept the differences in culture and thinking. If we educate
the young generation based on the idea of the Love of the World and the commonalities we
share, literature becomes that medium to show the world and what is good in it and worth
preserving. It helps to tell about the common values we all share and the differences that we
need to respect. Literature builds, without direct moulding, that necessary foundation of beliefs
and values, the understanding of what is good and what is bad which lay out the grounds for
exercising rational principle and reasoning in making one’s life choices ailed by imagination and
critical thinking. Just imagination and critical thinking without that firm cemented ground
embody dangerous potentiality and can lead to distorted notions of good/evil as well as
misapplication of the freedom of choice.

50
Moreover, in my firm conviction, the main aim of literature is not just that of providing
information and knowledge, but as any other form of art, be it music, art or dance, in nourishing
the soul through the sensation of being moved by the beauty, and it does not matter by the
beauty of word, move, or image. This gentle pulling at the strings of the heart and senses
develops the soul, thus animating Bloom’s quest for its perfection. To be able to feel deeply, to
be moved and touched in a compassionate way by something outside the confines of one’s own
being, that what develops the soul of a fully human being and through the appreciation of beauty
develops a truly human character and the notion of sacredness of life. Books that have that
potential are the good books and this brings us to a brief discussion of the dilemma faced by
every teacher - that of the literature selection.

Chapter 5
On Selection of Literature

There is a proverbial wisdom saying ‘You are what you eat’; I

would say: ‘You are what you read’.
This author

Rousseau in Emile gives his pupil only one book to read, that of Robinson Crusoe because its hero
is a man in nature, outside of the civil society, governed only by his needs of survival and
preservation (Bloom, 1978, p. 139). The choice of the book corresponds with the educational
principles and credo of the tutor – raring of a natural man for himself, outside the society. Plato,
on the other hand, advocated for censoring the poetry the youths are exposed to, on the principle
that it should present the gods in the right light and foster the right traits of character in young
man – bravery, courage, the love of the good, and the like. Throughout the history of education,
a special attention has been given to what the children read and are read to. That is until now. If
the guiding principle used to be what kind of man we want to rear, in the contemporary setting
the sentiments have somewhat shifted into the consideration of what would keep the child
entertained and at least marginally keep them from general aversion to reading which has
plagued our technologically advanced society of images and ‘one-click’ culture. The tendency for
popularising educational content and ‘lowering the bar’, diminishing the goal to strive for has a
disastrous effect on children’s achievements and character. The crisis of the quality of literature
our children are exposed to and the problem of the selection of books in school setting are
present now more than ever before.

Allan Bloom felt the arrival of this crisis more than fifty years ago. He saw experiencing of the
greatest texts from childhood as prerequisite of the life-long concern with the beautiful and the
good. He was distraught by the modern students for whom ‘there is no printed word to which

51
they look for counsel, inspiration or joy’ (Bloom, 1987, p.62). He championed the idea of 100
Great Books everyone is obliged to read in order to become a fully human being. Burman writes
in his article: ‘As a counterforce against all these tendencies, Bloom proposes a return to “the
good old Great Books approach”: that the students should study the classical books of western
literature, philosophy and science’ (Burman, 2019, p. 73). The idea can be considered as
admirable, the content of the list, however, arguable and too rigid to have a universal potential.
Bloom, the advocate of wide travelling as a way of learning from other cultures, contradicts
himself in restricting the list to Western Literature only.

Nussbaum, on the contrary, does not support the idea of a single ‘must-read’ set of books and
widens the list, in fact making it open to additions and alterations due to particular cultural and
educational needs (Nussbaum, 2009, pp.56-57). She states that the choice should be governed
by the blind spots:

…thought needs to be given to what the student’s particular blind spots are likely to be, and texts should be
chosen in consequence. For all societies at all times have their particular blind spots, groups within their
culture and also groups abroad that are especially likely to be dealt with ignorantly and obtusely. Works of
art can be chosen to promote criticism of this obtuseness, and a more adequate vision of the unseen.
(Nussbaum, 2009, p. 57)

According to Nussbaum, by identifying these blind spots (race intolerance, women roles in the
society, etc.) and by carefully crafting instruction in arts and humanities to address these painful
issues, school can cultivate their students ‘inner eyes’ and, thus, contribute to the ‘citizen of the
world’ educational project (Nussbaum, 2009, p. 58). This paper sees some tensions in such
approach, though. The vocabulary used (crafting, cultivating, filling in the gaps) hints heavily at
moulding and indoctrinating, which is in opposition with the very essence of the liberal
philosophy. The argument of this paper is that because Nussbaum’s design of liberal education
is defined by the citizenship goals and democracy slogans, the moulding and indoctrinating
aspects are visibly present. The question is, though, can these aspects be totally extricated in
character formation endeavour? If we revisit the arguments of Chapter 4, it is clear that the
power of the narrative in representing the world in particular light already embodies the threat
of indoctrination as it is in the hands of the author how to present the world, what to paint as
the good and desirable and what represent as evil. The teacher, then, becomes the key figure
and moderator in his selection of the stories to offer to the children.

So, how to define good literature? In pondering over this question Andrius Bielskis writes in the
article ‘Literature as an educator: Ethics, politics and the practice of writing in Thomas Mann’s
life and work’ (2022):

52
 The claim – ‘this is a good piece of literature’ is a judgement of taste, something that invites and is
accompanied by disagreement. Yet, as long as we can speak of literature as a practice with its peculiar goods
and standards of excellence, we can and should make evaluative distinctions between better and worse
examples of literature. (Bielskis, 2022, p.4)

Bielskis is pointing here at the relativity of the idea of ‘good literature’, but it is not only ‘taste’
that is the judgemental factor. There are internal goods that define the quality of the book and
its educational value. Bielskis explains that

… good literature does indeed question and reflect on our conceptions of ends and extends linguistic and
cognitive faculties in a way that we are able to understand our world, culture, ourselves and others better. It
educates our ability to rank order the goods we pursue and tells us what ends we ought to value. Literature’s
standards of excellence are, of course, historical. What was considered excellent literature in the past does
not necessarily mean the same today, although its classical texts—whether those of Sophocles, Dante,
Shakespeare or Goethe—still serve as a standard. (Bielskis, 2022, p.4)

What Bielskis stresses here is the duality of the notion - on the one hand, there is a corpus of
timeless classics whose quality, aesthetic and educational value do not diminish with time and
there are books which have an appeal only within a certain historical period because the themes
they deal with, or the reading of the timeless topics are not universal. He goes on to say:

Good literature is often philosophical. By ‘philosophical’ I mean literature’s ability to pose questions about
the meaning of human life and reflect on the ends of our lives. Aristotle was right when he argued in the
Poetics that ‘poetry is a more philosophical and more serious thing than history, since poetry speaks more of
things that are universal, and history of things that are particular. (Bielskis, 2022, p.4)

As mentioned at the beginning of Chapter 4, poetry is something that has rare appearance on
the reading lists in the schools today, unless it is nursery rhymes in the kindergarten. This paper
sides with Bloom and Bielskis in the campaign to bring poetry of quality back to schools because
its educational value does not just equal but even rivals that of a novel or a story. In a compressed
form, it deals with topics of universal appeal and touches a variety of senses – rhythm, music,
beauty of the word and imagery contribute to overall effect on the reader and help to perfect
the soul in a subtle way.

To sum up this chapter, the question of selecting literature in the school setting is a very sensitive
one. First of all, its educational power is such, that it can easily be turned from a facilitating tool
into a dangerous weapon of indoctrinating and brainwashing, especially when the main goals of
education are politically dictated and oriented towards citizenry and sustaining a particular social
order, even if it is democracy. This paper advocates for shifting the goals of character education
towards those of perfection of soul, quest for human completeness and the Love of the World.
Thus, the teacher governed in his work by the Love of the World will search for literature which

53
raises timeless questions of universal importance, which exposes to examples of admirable
human behaviour in a variety of contexts and geographies, which combines in itself not just the
desired themes and characters, but also the beauty of the word. What matters is not just what
the book tells about but also how it does it, if it is to have a profound esthetical effect on the
child and touch all his senses, and thus develop the soul. Our teacher will also choose the book
that teaches nobleness of the mind, majesty of the soul and the appeal of a heroic deed based
on unselfish motives. Such books, in this paper’s opinion, have the desirable potential for
character building and formation of the modern ‘self’ in contemporary liberal setting.

Conclusions

This paper has viewed the topic of character education in a broad sense and has interpreted
character education as part of the formation process of the modern ‘self’ in contemporary liberal
school setting, thus going away from the traditional Aristotelian reading through virtue ethics
and moral character. There are several reasons for such elucidation. Frist of all, with the
liberalisation of the society and education in the Western Countries, new development horizons
have emerged thus altering our expectations from the younger generation and our vision of
human fulfilment and happiness. As Dewey stressed, the current advance of technology and
democratic ways of life results in the unprecedented rate and speed of changes and ‘it is
impossible to foretell definitely just what civilization will be twenty years from now. Hence it is
impossible to prepare the child for any precise set of conditions. To prepare him for the future
life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he will have the full and
ready use of all his capacities’ (Dewey, 1897, p.77). The stress on young generation to meet the
demands of the times results in reviewing of what the modern ‘self’ means. As Thomas Popkewitz
(2005) writes, the "modern" self is a particular historic invention linked to concepts of agency,
science, and progress and it is not something that the individual is born with but something that
is "made" (Popkewitz, 2005, p.5). Thus, the modern self is fabricated, constructed by the
technology, society, school, and the time we live in. The second reason for the broad reading of
the topic is connected with the language used by policy makers. The current character education
policies in the USA, UK, European Union and Sweden, studied in the first chapter of the thesis,
use predominantly the language of values, while the language of virtues is marginalised.
Character education is read by the policy makers in a wide sense, prioritising teaching values
(British, democratic, etc.), civic education and preparing for success in adult life. There is a
considerable stress on educating for citizenship and democracy in the policies, thus endowering
them with the instrumental character, which provides the definitively negative answer to the first

54
research question of this thesis: ‘To which extend the focus of liberal educational policies has
shifted from educating for citizenry?’

This paper has contested the instrumental approach to character education. By adopting the idea
of The Love of the World advanced as the guiding principle of education by Hodgson, Joris and
Zamojski in their Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy (2017), I have attempted to give an
alternative look at what the modern ‘self’ should be. I did so by resorting to the past of the
philosophy of education and drawing on the present research. The first step in this endeavour,
after the overview of the policies, was to study conservative, liberal and critical theories of
education related to character formation, which underpin the current policies. The conservative
ideas of making education the concern of the state and rearing the right people with the right
values for the state are visibly present in the discussed policies in their citizenship education
component. However, it has been demonstrated that some of the strengths of the conservative
thought, such as acquisition and habituation of virtues, striving for human completeness and
flourishing, love of the truth and the good, have not found sufficient reflection in the policies.
This paper considers it an oversight and argues for the necessity to remedy it. Following the
conservative lead, the discussed liberal philosophers Dewey and Nussbaum support the
instrumental take on education, viewing the child as the future citizen of the democratic world
and aiming at reforming society by reforming the child. This paper sees the weakness of the
liberal theories in prioritising freedoms of choices based on unsubstantiated critical thinking and
questioning the tradition rather than on profound knowledge of the world and self, and firm
notions of the good, the beautiful and the worthwhile to preserve. Being aware of the flaws of
liberal education, critical pedagogists have sought to expose its problems such as educating for
(global) citizenship, instrumentality, creating exclusions and inequality while striving for equality
and objectification of the human being. However, as Chapter 2 demonstrated, they have not
provided comprehensively developed solutions.

The third chapter of this paper answers the second research question ‘What are the alternative
approaches to replace educating for civic virtue?’ It analyses strengths and week points of the
theories and consolidates what are considered the worthwhile postulates that would help to
design character education governed by The Love of the World. The transformative power of
education in the strive for perfecting the soul and the validity of defence of education for
education’s sake are brought to light to contest the instrumentalism of education in creating
citizens. This paper argues that educating for the Love of the World puts in foreground other
priorities and goals – human completeness and the quest for the good and perfecting the soul.
These timeless notions underline our commonalities and ensure the continuation of the common
world we share, substituting localised blind patriotism. The paper’s arguments imply that
resetting priorities can minimise those conflicts which are currently shattering the world and

55
stress the commonalities we share. What the humanity needs are ground human values that
cement the individual’s relation with the world, himself and The Other, leading to harmonious
life, rather than that of a functional citizen.

I further resort to the educating power of literature to address the question of how to foster
character in liberal schooling of today, when the child and what is good in the world replace the
current slogans of educating for citizenry and democracy. I argue that literature as a school
subject has a potential to achieve character education goals without jeopardising the idea of
liberalisation of the child as opposed to moulding. Literature sets inspiring examples, places
teaching virtues in meaningful contexts which help the students to recreate the narratives of
their own lives (Bielskis, 2022), exposes to the notions of human nature and different human
types, thus allowing the young to hatch from their narrow ‘bubble-world’ and acquire acceptance
of diversity and tolerance. It challenges the pangs of conformity to the current standards and
gives firm foundation of virtues and knowledge for critical attitudes encouraged by today’s
schooling. Literature reaffirms and sets up the standards to strive for in perfecting the soul and
teache to accept human finiteness and mortality, thus moderating feelings of hate, repudiation
and disgust. It lays the path to understanding one’s place in the Universe and contests the ‘black
and white’ presentation of the world as well as the predominant narrative of invulnerability and
control as the key to success in life.

The paper sees it necessary to make some concessions, though. Literature is a powerful tool in
representing the world and defining the ends we strive for and the life goods we pursue (Bielskis,
2022). For the same reason, it can easily become a dangerous weapon in fashioning and
indoctrinating of the modern ‘self’. These tensions are aggravated by misplaced goals of
education and its politicised agenda. By redirecting the goals to a universal re-humanisation
effort and the idea of human completeness and perfecting the soul, these tensions can be
minimised, however, not completely eliminated. The role of the teacher in selecting the right
narratives for the children is thus highlighted. I argue that the themes of universal, timeless
character, accompanied by the beauty of the word and form have a desirable educational value.

56
References

Aristotle (2004). The Nichomachean Ethics. London: Penguin Classics

Bielskis, A. (2022) Literature as an educator: Ethics, politics and the practice of writing in
Thomas Mann's life and work. Journal of Philosophy of
Education, 00 1– 16. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12654

Bloom, A. (1978). The Education of Democratic Man: Emile. Daedalus, 107(3), 135–153.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20024568

Bloom, A. (1987). The Closing of The American Mind. How Higher Education has Failed
Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students. Touch Stone Book.

Bohlin, Karen (2005). Teaching Character Education through Literature: Awakening the Moral
Imagination in Secondary Classrooms (1st ed.). Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203299838

Bohman, J. (2021) "Critical Theory", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2021
Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/critical-theory/

Booth, W.C. (1988). The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction.

Burman, A. (2019). Martha Nussbaum and Liberal Education. In: Martha Nussbaum: Ancient
Philosophy, Civic Education and Liberal Humanism / [ed] Anders Burman & Synne Myrebøe,
Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2019, p. 69-88

Csikszentmihalyi, Mark, "Confucius", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2020

Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/confucius/

Character Education Framework. (2019). Department for Education: Publications. Published 5

November 2019. Character education framework - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Character education…Our Shared responsibility. U.S. Department of Education brochure. 2021

Character Education���Our Shared Responsibility

Cline, R. (1960). The Conservatism of Philosophical and Educational Liberals. Peabody Journal of
Education, 37(4), 207–210. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1490139

Connor, Steven (1990). Review of The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction; The Ethics of
Reading: Kant, de Man, Eliot, Trollope, James, and Benjamin; Contingencies of Value:

57
Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory, by Wayne C. Booth, J. Hillis Miller, & Barbara
Herrnstein Smith]. The Modern Language Review, 85(4), 891–894.
https://doi.org/10.2307/3732650

Curren, Randall (2017). Why character education? IMPACT: Philosophical Perspectives

on Education Policy, (24), pp. 1–44 (44 p.)
Curriculum for the Compulsory school, Preschool Class and School-age Educare (Revised 2018).
Skolverket, Stocholm. https://www.skolverket.se/publikationer?id=3984

Dewey, John (1916/2011). Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of

Education. Benediction Classics, Oxford

Dewey, J. (1897). My Pedagogic Creed. School Journal, Volume 54. Published in January 1897,
pp.77-80.

Doyle, D. P. (1997). Education and Character: A Conservative View. The Phi Delta Kappan, 78(6),
440–443. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20405818

Framework for the Key Citizenship Competences. March 2016. Published by We are Europe

Friere, P. (2017). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Penguin Books. UK

Gregory, M. W. (1991). Liberal Education and Ethical Criticism: Character Formation in the
Literary Classroom. CEA Critic, 53(2), 5–21. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44378221

Guilherme, Alex. (2018). Philosophy of Education: Contemporary Critical issues. Foro de

Educacion.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322201279_Philosophy_of_Education_contempora
ry_critical_issues

Gur-Ze’ev, I. (2010). The Nomadic Existence of the Eternal Improviser and Diasporic Co-Poiesis
Today. In Gur-Ze’ev, I. Diasporic Philosophy and Counter Education (pp. 29-46). Rotterdam:
Sense Publishers.

Hamilton, Andy, "Conservatism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2020 Edition),
Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entries/conservatism/>.

Harrison, Tom (2016). Why British values should be Folded into Character education. The
Coversation: on-line journal. Published January 11, 2016.

Hodgson, Naomi, Joris Vlieghe, & Piotr Zamojski (2017). Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy.
Punctum Books., doi:10.1353/book.66801.

58
Homiak, Marcia, "Moral Character", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2019
Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2019/entries/moral-character/
Why British values should be folded into character education (theconversation.com)

Lintner, Timothy (2011) Using “Exceptional” Children's Literature to Promote Character

Education in Elementary Social Studies Classrooms, The Social Studies, 102:5, 200-
203, DOI: 10.1080/00377996.2010.550955

Morgan, Nicky (2014) ‘Secretary of State for Education: our plan for education’, 27 November
2014, www.gov.uk/government/speeches/ secretary-of-state-for-education-our-plan-for-
education

Mucke, M.P. (2015). Professor Bloom’s Delight on the Right: American Conservatism and The
Closing of the American Mind. Anchor.

National Council for the Social Studies. 1997. Position Paper: Fostering Civic Virtue: Character
Education in the Social Studies. http://www.socialstudies.org/positions/character

Nussbaum, Martha C. (1997). Capabilities and Human Rights, 66 FORDHAM L. REV. 273 (1997).
Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol66/iss2/2

Nussbaum, M. (2009). Tagore, Dewey, and the Imminent Demise of Liberal Education. In: The
Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education. Ed. Harvey Siegel.

Nussbaum, Martha C. (2016). Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton
University Press

Plato (2007). The Republic. London: Penguin Classics (480 pp.)

Popkewitz, T. S. (2012). Cosmopolitanism, making the nation and the citizen as a salvation
theme of turn of the twentieth century pedagogy. Tarja Tolonen, Tarja Palmu, Sirpa Lappainen
and Tuuli Kurki, Editors. Cultural practices and transitions in education (pp. 41-58) London: The
Tufnell Press.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263369688_Popkewitz_T_S_2012_Cosmopolitanis
m_making_the_nation_and_the_citizen_as_a_salvation_theme_of_turn_of_the_twentieth_ce
ntury_pedagogy_Tarja_Tolonen_Tarja_Palmu_Sirpa_Lappainen_and_Tuuli_Kurki_Editors_Cu

Popkewitz, T. (2005). Inventing the modern self and John Dewey. Modernities and the travelling
of pragmatism in education- an introduction. In Popkewitz, T. S. (Ed.). (2005). Inventing the
modern self and John Dewey: Modernities and the traveling of pragmatism in education. (pp.3-
38). Palgrave Macmillan Press. 10.1057/9781403978417_1.

59
Popkewitz, T. (2013). The sociology of education as the history of the present: Fabrication,
difference and abjection. Discourse: Studies in The Cultural Politics of Education. 34. 1-18.
10.1080/01596306.2012.717195.

Rexhepi, J., & Torres, C. A. (2011). Reimagining Critical Theory. British Journal of Sociology of
Education, 32(5), 679–698. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41237694

Rorty, A. O. (1998). Plato’s Counsel on Education. Philosophy, 73(284), 157–178.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3752074

Schaeffer, E. F. (1999). It’s Time for Schools to Implement Character Education. NASSP Bulletin,
83(609), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1177/019263659908360901

Strategic Plan 2002-2007. U.S. Department of Education, Office of the Deputy Secretary, Planning
and Performance Management Service, U.S. Department of Education Strategic Plan,
Washington D.C., March, 2002.

Sullivan, P. A. (1945). Plato and Modern Education. The Classical Weekly, 39(8), 61–62.
https://doi.org/10.2307/4342183

The 11 Principles of Effective Character Education. (2017). Berkowitz M., Brown Ph., Wangaard
D. (editors). Character.org

We are Europe.2015. Home (wreurope.eu)

Wollstonecraft, Mary (1985). A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. London: Penguin Classics

Zuckert, M. (2008). On Allan Bloom. The Good Society, 17(2), 81–83.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20711304

60