From Values Clarification To Contemporary Character Education

With the reform of economic system, our social values appear plurolization. If there are no core values guiding the adolescents, they would feel puzzled, so we need to strengthen values education. Values education is the core of moral education. Many American scholars have studied the theories, the designing of teaching methods and practice of values education, and they have developed many kinds of theories. This thesis chooses two of these theories to study. They are Values Clarification and Character Education. We focus on the changes during Values Clarification to Character Education because: Firstly, Values Clarification is a systematize theory; moreover, it lays stress on practical results. It develops a lot of ways for teaching and teaches teachers to use it in classrooms, which makes it the most popular values education at that time. Our traditional ways in moral education are unitary and the teaching results are not satisfactory enough, so we can study the ways of Values Clarification in order to absorb the useful part into our moral education. Secondly, the core values that American Character Education proposes are similar to our traditional virtues. Its main idea and ways are useful to our moral education. Thirdly, we can learn something from the development of the two values education, and explore the developmental trend and regularity in American plurolization society.This paper has crosswise and vertical studies to Values Clarification and Character Education. In crosswise study, it describes the two theories, including the background of the origin, definitions, aims, main ideas and the main teaching ways. Furthermore, it analyzes and appraises the two kinds of education. In vertical study, it compares the two theories in four aspects: philosophical foundation, education views, education practice and teaching method. By the comparison, it summarizes the developmental regularity in America. In the last part of the paper, it combines our moral education with American values education and absorbs the rational parts, then it proposes that we should focus on our traditional virtues education in order to improve the adolescents'abilities of moral judgment and decision. It advices to use many kinds of ways on moral education, such as instillation, discussion, setting examples, consulting references, permeation, using network, values clarification, and so on.This study has two kinds of meanings both in theory and practice. In the past, people always study one values education theory or thought, but this paper studies two important American theories in crosswise and vertical, which enriches the content of moral theories. At the same time, this paper pays much more attention to the analysis and usage of the teaching ways, which is very useful to our moral education.