The Discourse of Character Education: Culture Wars in the Classroom

In The Discourse of Character Education: Culture Wars in the Classroom, authors Peter Smagorinsky and Joel Taxel examine “how character education is grounded, framed, implemented, and assessed, focusing on the discourse of proposals submitted to OERI (Office of Educational Research and Improvement) for character education funding” (p. xv). These proposals were submitted in response to an OERI Request for Proposals as part of its Partnerships in Character Education Pilot Projects grants in the last half of the 1990s. Smagorinsky and Taxel requested proposals and other documents from the 31 states that received OERI funding, but only 11 states responded to their request. Of that number, 8 states provided full documentation including proposals; and three provided limited materials such as pamphlets and fliers. Additionally, the authors examined web-site descriptions of five other OERI-funded state initiatives.

The study is based on a “relational analysis of schooling and culture” (p. 13), a method that derives from the author’s belief that texts are situated in specific discourse streams—that is, texts emerge from and are embedded within specific and local contexts and cultures. Interrogating the texts from this perspective, Smagorinsky and Taxel determined that the discourses of these proposals fell along a philosophical continuum with one pole being “didactic and individualistic” and the other “reflective and communitarian.” They chose two proposals that fell within each extreme and focused on them to “identify the ideological nature of the different conceptions of character and how to educate for its betterment” (p. 17), locating them within geographical and cultural parameters of the Deep South and the Upper Midwest, respectively.

The researchers present their study in five parts. The first section, consisting of five chapters, includes an impressive and clear history of character education in the United States and a careful outlining of the major points and players in the current debates. The second section of The Discourse of Character Education outlines commonalities that exist within the discourses of the Deep South and the Upper Midwest. The focus of this section then shifts to a somewhat cloudy review of the discourses of each region regarding character education as revealed in the proposals. In each case, the book focuses on locating each within an intertext of ideas that represent an ideological perspective on society. The third and fourth sections examine the cultural context of each respective region, identifying the cultural values that are embedded in and contributed to creation of the proposals and then using this frame to examine the curricula that were developed as part of the grant within the specific regions. The final section presents findings and conclusions.

Smagorinsky and Taxel’s Discourse of Character Education raises interesting questions and opens provocative discussion about the current character education movement and of the actors within it. At times, Smagorinsky and Taxel mirror easy, stereotypical visions of the South and Midwest. Additionally, the authors identify but under examine a problem that arises in their study: the role of the discourses of the RFP itself in shaping the discourses of proposals. All RFPs come to grant writers with ideology embedded therein and are thus located within specific cultural contexts. Responses to these RFPs are tricky and complex undertakings, developed for two primary reasons: (a) the writers have a perceived vision and/or a need; and (b) they seek resources to fund and support it. This situation requires that they navigate between their vision and the demands they must meet in order to secure funding. In other words, they must fit their discourse and their response within the frame laid out in an RFP. This tension raises an important question: How much does a proposal’s discourse reflect its creators’ cultural ideologies and needs and how much does it reflect their perception of the ideologies, discourses, and demands of the RFP and its reviewers? How researchers and scholars can unravel one form of discourse from another through textual analysis remains unclear.