Sowing the Seeds of Character: The Moral Education of Adolescents in Public and Private Schools

A rabbi and educator shows how moral education can be crafted to address each of the three main branches of the moral life: philosophy, civics, and ethics.

Sowing the Seeds of Character: The Moral Education of Adolescents in Public and Private Schools is a book for all teachers and parents. It rests on the premise that the moral education of students falls within the purview of schools, whether they assume responsibility for it or not. Regardless of the place of moral education in the formal curriculum, all teachers serve as moral exemplars to their students, for good or for ill. Teachers of science, social studies, history, and literature courses cannot help but inculcate moral sensibility and attitudes in their students by the ways in which they lead them to grapple with--or glide over--the moral implications of what they teach.

Judd Kruger Levingston draws many lessons and examples from his extensive research and teaching experience in Muslim, Jewish, Roman Catholic, public, Quaker, and Chinese schools. He argues that teachers should become proficient in directing role-playing simulations of moral decision-making as morally complex topics arise within the standard curriculum.

Author: Judd Levingston
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published: 06/01/2009
Pages: 204
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.40w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780313351914

Review Citation(s):
Choice 04/01/2010
Reference and Research Bk News 11/01/2009 pg. 223

About the Author

Judd Kruger Levingston is a rabbi and educator. He lives in Philadelphia where he teaches at a Jewish day school and at Temple University.