FAIR OAKS, Calif. -- The Will Rogers Intermediate School starts off each day with the same lesson -- one about character.
Commercials appear on closed-circuit television in the classrooms, extolling the importance of virtue. On one recent day, the ad featured a girl trying to convince her friends to help her cheat on a test.After she's been talked out of the dishonest act, a message appears on the screen: "Remember, Cheaters Never Prosper."
The ad is the latest created by the junior-high students through a federal grant aimed at seeing whether character education improves student behavior. The school also uses its grant to reward children who do good deeds.
"It's not a panacea, but it does have some real potential," said Joseph Maloney, director of the Sacramento County Office of Education agency overseeing the experiment at Will Rogers and nine other schools.
Nationwide, 28 states, including California, have been awarded federal grants to develop character education initiatives, according to the Character Education Partnership in Washington, D.C., a nonpartisan advocacy group.
Now state Assemblyman Lou Correa has introduced a bill that would require state education officials to develop a list of character-building programs that districts could use. Correa says he doesn't want to force the curriculum on schools but wants to give them guidance if they choose to add such classes.
The California Education Code already requires schools to teach "the principles of morality, truth, justice, patriotism and a true comprehension of the rights, duties and dignity of American citizenship."
But schools began to stray from those teachings in the 1950s, making classes "value-neutral" to avoid lawsuits challenging their right to teach religious values, Maloney said. National attitudes toward character education began to change in recent years.
"What we were finding in polls in the early 1990s was a sense among the general public and parents in particular that they needed the schools to do something," said Esther Schaeffer, executive director of the Character Education Partnership. "They know they don't really have the hearts and minds of their kids."
In July 1992, the Josephson Institute of Ethics, based in Marina del Rey, named what they called six "core ethical values" or pillars that "transcend cultural, religious and socioeconomic differences." They are: respect, responsibility, trustworthiness, justice and fairness, caring, and civic virtue and citizenship. Since then, nine states have made character education mandatory, while seven encourage it, according to the Character Education Partnership.
In 1995, California was one of four states awarded a four-year federal Partnership Grant for Character Education. With a $1 million budget stretched into five years, Sacramento County was chosen to implement the program within several schools.
"The ultimate goal was to make the character-education program woven into their school life," said Joyce Wright, director of elementary and middle school programs for the county office.
Teachers at the Will Rogers school, in suburban Sacramento, hoped the program would reduce discipline problems, Vice Principal Janice Bowdler said.
On the Net:
California State Assembly: www.sen.ca.gov (Correa's bill is AB2028)
California Department of Education: www.cde.ca.gov/character
Josephson Institute of Ethics Character Counts! site: www.charactercounts.org
Character Education Partnership: www.character.org