"Nothing is more important for the public weal than to train up youth in wisdom and virtue.” - Benjamin Franklin

Throughout history, sages have stressed the importance of good character. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, "Character is destiny." "Transmitting values," observed the essayist Lance Morrow, "is the work of civilization."

Acting on that belief, the National Liberty Museum has launched an exciting new area of educational programming: the Heroes of Character exhibits and website.

With this initiative, the Museum becomes the only public venue of its kind offering permanent exhibits dedicated to illuminating the timeless and universal virtues of positive character—qualities such as hard work, thrift, generosity, justice, forgiveness, and courage.

Through its companion website, www.HeroesofCharacter.org, the four Heroes of Character exhibits and corresponding character development lessons are able to reach countless people who cannot visit the Museum in person—schools, families, and communities across the United States and around the world.

Each of the four Heroes Exhibits and related website resources has its own Curriculum Guide. This introduction appears in each of these four guides and provides an overview of the Heroes of Character project.

The Museum's Four Heroes of Character Exhibits

Exhibit # 1 - What Should You Do? uses animation to present everyday scenarios such as bullying at school or on the internet; a friend's party getting out of hand; and a fight in the lunchroom. After choosing from a range of responses to the situation, the participants hear a vignette about how a well-known hero handled a similar situation and are encouraged to internalize the lesson by setting a personal goal for action and logging on our website to tell us the results of that action. They can earn prizes or the Museum's Young Heroes Award for their actions.

Exhibit # 2 - Thrift & Generosity Challenge uses animation and a "go for the gold" game-like format in which participants move through a map of the country and earn coins by making decisions that demonstrate an understanding of thrift and generosity. Oprah Winfrey, Benjamin Franklin, Yao Ming and Sir John Templeton give feedback in response to the choices made by the participants. At the end of the game, participants are challenged to demonstrate what they've learned about being thrifty and generous by dividing their earnings among 3 categories: saving for the future, spending now, or giving away to a worthwhile cause. Participants are then directed to our website to learn and earn more.

Exhibit # 3 – JB & The Temple of Success uses an animated adventure game to show how our lives are guided by a set of values, often expressed as words of wisdom (e.g., "Actions speak louder than words," "Honesty is the best policy"), that are our " of Life." As the youth play the game, they encounter various obstacles and need a Law of Life (LOL) to get them through it successfully. Those LOLs become animated (door) keys. In the final scene, the participant selects a LOL key to unlock the door to the Temple of Success and be crowned as the Temple's ruler. Participants are then encouraged to write and/or go on our website to electronically input their own LOLs and share their "rules" with peers to make this a better world.

Exhibit # 4 - Follow In My Footsteps gives participants the opportunity to be photographed "alongside" a Hero of Character whose life embodies the same virtue that is important to the participant. After selecting a favorite picture frame and virtue, the participant poses for a photograph. While the photo is being processed, the participant is taken on a virtual journey through the Hero's virtuous life. Through the wonders of technology, the participant's photo appears in the frame beside the hero with the selected virtue. Participants are directed to the website to download their photo. The featured virtuous qualities, LOLs, and heroes are:

  • Forgiveness and understanding: Anne Frank
  • Kindness and compassion: Mother Teresa
  • Perseverance and courage: Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Hard work and creativity: Ben Franklin

Incorporation of Heroes of Character Exhibits into the Museum's Educational Programming

The new virtues-based exhibits are now a core component of the Museum's educational programming:

  • Heroes of Character Tours. Age-appropriate, character-themed tours use the exhibits as a springboard for discussion about character and especially how young people can live by their values and make a positive difference in their school and community.
  • Curricular materials. Pre- and post-tour Heroes of Character classroom activities are sent to groups visiting the Museum. The activities will prepare teachers and students for their visit and extend discussions about character to the classroom post-visit.
  • Printed Heroes of Character activity and field journal for visitors. These resources help families make the most of the new virtues-based exhibits and are available year-round at the Museum.
  • Accredited professional development course on the teaching of character in the classroom. The new course is an offering of our Teacher Training Institute, for teachers, counselors and youth-workers throughout the Delaware Valley, and via videoconferencing, to educators across the country.

Heroes of Character Website

The new website, www.heroesofcharacter.org, is dedicated to the character education exhibits and designed to extend their impact worldwide. Easy to navigate features include:

  • An online version of Heroes of Character exhibits, providing fun, interactive experiences with content from each exhibit.
  • An interactive forum (i.e., Blogs), allowing for online discussions of character-related topics.
  • Extensive resources for teachers (i.e., wide range of virtues and Laws of Life, downloadable, age-appropriate classroom activities and discussion guides)
  • Resources/links to character-related organizations and activities for teachers, students, families and communities.

National Liberty Museum

The National Liberty Museum is located in the birthplace of our nation, on Philadelphia's Liberty Trail. Since its founding, the Museum's mission has been to defuse violence and bigotry and highlight the responsibilities of being American citizens who live in a free and diverse society.

The Museum is comprised of a series of galleries, exhibits and stories of heroes. Some of the galleries use exceptional glass sculptures by world-renowned artists as a vehicle for teaching the universal moral values that unite us. Other installations showcase historic and contemporary people, some famous, others not, who exemplify the good character to which we all we all aspire.

The National Liberty Museum has partnered with various organizations like Big Brothers/Big Sisters, the YMCA, and the Salvation Army to bring meaningful character education programs to the community. In addition, the Museum is a state-accredited teacher training institute that provides instruction on how to incorporate character education initiatives into the core content, anti-bullying programs, modeling effective communication, and civic responsibility.

The Museum's Anti-Violence Outreach Program offers leadership training to both teachers and students; and the annual Young Heroes Award honors young people across our nation who have made a significant contribution to their communities because they exemplify the integration of the head, heart and the hand.

Given the Museum's mission, it is not surprising that it is an ideal "classroom" for providing character education to both students and teachers.

The Growing Character Education Movement

The past two decades have witnessed a dramatic resurgence of character education. This can be seen in the proliferation of grassroots character education initiatives, a spate of character education books and curricula, federal and state funding of character education, the establishment of national character education organizations, the emergence of a Journal of Research in Character Education, and reports on how to prepare future teachers to be character educators. Concurrently 18 states mandate that character education be taught; 18 strongly encourage that it be taught; and seven support the implementation of some type of a program.

The purpose of character education is two-fold. One aim is to reduce the negative behaviors that hurt our children and hurt society. Character educators hold that the troubling behaviors we observe in youth—and many of the adults who set the example for youth—have a common core: namely, the absence of good character. Developing good character, unlike piecemeal reforms, strikes beneath the symptoms to the root of the problems and therefore offers the best hope for improvement in all areas. Recent research on youth development finds that well-designed character-building interventions have been effective in reducing anti-social and self-injurious behaviors and promoting school achievement.

But the second purpose of educating for character is, ultimately, even more important: to prepare young people for a flourishing and fulfilling life. In recent years, the positive psychology movement has emphasized the importance of "asset building"—identifying and developing those human strengths that enable us to become all we are capable of being.

Character education is best understood as the intentional effort to develop these character assets by modeling and explicitly teaching universal values such as respect, honesty, diligence, fairness, and compassion. A universal value is one we feel obliged to abide by regardless of how difficult or inconvenient it might be. As Dr. Thomas Lickona argues in his book Character Matters, we can hold that these universal values are objectively good because they meet certain ethical criteria:

  • They promote the happiness and well-being of the individual.
  • They serve the common good, making it possible for us to live and work in community.
  • They stand up to the ethical tests of reversibility (Would you want to be treated this way?) and universalizability (Would you want all people to behave this way in a similar situation?).

The United Nation's Declaration of Human Rights affirms many of these universal values, such as freedom from slavery and innocence until guilt is proved. The very fact that a declaration like this exists, in addition to the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, demonstrates that regardless of global diversity, there is, ultimately, tangible moral consensus.

Universal values such as the Golden Rule are taught by nearly all of the world's religions. However, the teaching and learning of objective universal values does not require religious belief. These values dwell in the realm of natural moral law; they can be arrived at through reason and experience.

The Three-Fold Nature of Character

Character education in the home, school, or community seeks to develop all three facets of character: knowing, feeling, and behavior. Students must learn what is morally right, desire to do what is morally right, and then act accordingly. It is not enough simply to know what is right or merely empathize with victims of an injustice. It's also imperative that we develop the fortitude to act. History is full of examples of individuals and societies that saw moral decrepitude but did nothing about it. The consequences of moral inaction can be, and often are, fatal.

This concept of moral knowing, feeling and action is often referred to as the head, the heart, and the hand. The goal of character education is the integration of all three.

The Importance of Character in Our Democracy

The success or failure of any society depends on the virtue of its citizenry. This is especially true of a democratic society such as ours where the government is "of the people, by the people, for the people."

Many of the greatest challenges to the United States have been moral in nature. Whether it is right or wrong to hold slaves, to forcibly relocate indigenous people from their ancestral lands, or to use torture in times of war, are all essentially moral questions. Currently, debates over how to best provide equitable healthcare, in addition to how to regulate economic institutions in order to mitigate the effects of systemic corruption are, at their core, questions about morality.

Of course, parents are the primary teachers and role models of good character and morals. But schools, by their very nature, have an immense role in the character development of children. Because schools are environments in which people interact with one another, the morals of adults (teachers, principals, lunchroom aides, custodians, etc.) are constantly on display and readily available for students to observe, internalize and emulate. It's impossible to not teach character in a school.

Character education acknowledges this fact and overtly fosters good values by creating a school environment where good character is modeled and opportunities are created in which students can learn and practice moral knowing, moral feeling, and moral action. But character education also integrates the precepts of good character into the core curriculum. For example, literature lessons provide opportunities for students to recognize and examine the character of literary figures and observe just how much impact a single person's character can have. History is replete with opportunities for examining the good and bad consequences of human choices.

What Research Shows

For nearly 20 years, the Child Development Project (CDP) has researched how character education efforts and programs in schools have affected student behavior and learning. Their research demonstrated positive outcomes for students who participated in programs from kindergarten through fourth grade.

Behavior, both in the classroom and playground areas, improved. Children were more cooperative, affectionate, and encouraging toward one another. In addition, participating students showed better problem-solving skills and a greater awareness of the importance of democratic values.

Responsive Classroom, a teaching program that focuses on both academic and social/emotional development, found in a 2001-2004 study, that in addition to students having better social skills and a more positive attitude about school, they also scored higher in reading and math on the Connecticut Mastery Test.

Researchers Benninga, Berkowitz, Kuehn and Smith found that when schools provided a clean, safe environment; when parents and teachers promoted and modeled good character; when opportunities were provided at school for students to make meaningful contributions to their schools, and communities, and when a caring community and positive social relationships were encouraged, students ranked higher on the API, and achieved higher scores on the SAT-9.

With the Heroes of Character Program, the National Liberty Museum endeavors to provide both educators and students with meaningful, contemporary and energetic experiences and curriculum, which can be used as the foundation of a school-wide character education initiative, or as a complementary component to an already existing program.

Heroes of Character and Character Education

Heroes of Character Program was developed around both state and national health, social studies, language arts/literacy, civics and, naturally, character education standards. In addition, the National Liberty Museum has augmented the interactives by developing cross-curricular lesson plans and activities (correlated with relevant standards) that can be used in conjunction with existing classroom lessons or as stand-alone units.

Language Arts and English teachers will find multiple activities that incorporate reading, writing, listening and speaking. Social Studies and history teachers will discover lessons that require students to research historical figures; examine the impact of culture, economics, government, and civic ideals and practices. These lessons also provide health and physical education teachers, in addition to athletic coaches, activities that incorporate the ideals of perseverance, personal responsibility and integrity.

The Heroes of Character Program curriculum contains comprehensive, engaging, and easy-to-use activities that span the core curriculum.

No matter what age level or subject you may teach, this Guide will help you and your students get the most out of the Heroes of Character program and advance your curricular goals.

We'd love to hear from you about how you worked with the program and any activities you developed for your students. Post your comments and ideas on the Teacher's Blog.

Bibliography

i V. Battistich, Character education and the prevention of problem behaviors: A position statement (Washington, DC: Character Education Partnership, 2004).