Didactics - Week 2 -

This week we've read three articles about the aim of education. The one which cought my attention the most was "Character as the aim of education".

Almost everybody associate education with knowledge of the different subjects at school and not with the quality of character the person develops. Character as the aim of education, the writter, David Light Shields, believes that will improve the quality of education in our schools.

Education should develop four forms of personal character (intellectual, moral, civic and perfomance character), which will achieve a more comple citizens. This kind of characters are focused on how a person acts in various aspects of life and learning. The objective of education is not recieve knowledge alone. What endures along your schooling are personal quialities. If educators promote in first place character, knowledge will become conected knowledge. Conversely, if we focus on content, the result is an isolated knowledge and superficial understanding.

Now, I'm going to define each king of character.

• Intellectual character: A person of strong intellectual character is curious, open-minded, reflective and thruth-seeking. The two keys of intellectual character are the following; first, growth in intellectual character will tend to generalize. The aimis that a student will be capable to use this in a math class as well as in social discussions. Secondly, being good at maths helps you to achieve high marks , but not to make you a better citizen. Developing intellectual character can't be done alone. From the perspective of intellectual character, intelligence isn't innate, so it's a disposition to apply one's ability among the complexities of life.
• Moral character: The aim of education is to educate good people. Moral character goes after the good and right. It increases student's sensitivity to situations. The goal is to develop a disposition to seek goodness. Like intellectual character focuses on intelligent action, moral character is more about enacting goodness. Martin Luther King imposed that justice should be a right to everyone. The essence of moral character is to help students to gain the cognitive capacity to think deeply about moral principles.
• Civic character: A booming nation depends on citizens who participate in governance and civic life. John Adams said "the passion for the public good is needed to achieve liberty." This passion is what is called civic character. The result of civic character was public education. Society has a right to expect that its public schools will graduate students who can participate in civic life. This will cultivate respect for freedom, equality and rationality.
• Perfomance character: Perfomance character refers to the dispositions, virtues, or personal qualities that qualify an individual to reach intentions and goals. It's necessary to make the other dimensions effective. Like the other aspects of character, perfomance character can't be developed directly but only through working with content.
• Character and culture: Culture and character are needed to support the development of individual character. Personal character and school character complement each other to make a complete individual. The developing of personal character is not only in individuals, but in members of a community. Character contributes to the quality of our collective life.