A character education curriculum is in the works in the

Metro public schools, under the guidance of Superintendent

Richard Benjamin. The Metro school board recently agreed to set up a pilot character education and life skills curriculum for grades K-4 (Tran, THE TENNESSEAN, 8/19). The effort is supported by a $750,000 award from THE TENNESSEAN, reports the paper.

“Project: Solution” focuses on 18 skills ranging from

“doing what is right” to “building community,” notes the paper. However, some parents protested at a summer meeting that schools are not in the business to teach values, and whose values would they be teaching anyway.

THE TENNESSEAN editorialized a response to those concerns:

“Respecting another’s person and property is right (Shelly, 9/5).

Lying or treating someone unfairly is wrong. These are not

borderline issues. They are not distinctive to one gender, to acertain ethnic group or to church-goers. These are basic

building blocks to what we call ‘character.'”

The editorial also points out that the district’s character

education program does not “over-ride parental authority, but

supports it. It neither depends on religion nor negates a

religious world view. It does something much simpler: It

focuses attention on and recommends to young people a nucleus of virtues that our city, nation and world must have in place in order to maintain a social order that is functional and safe.”

– Nasville Tennessean