“Character education” tends to mean vapid posters exhorting students to niceness, notes Betsy, who endorses a NRO column on teaching character through literature or even movies, such as the new adapation of Pride and Prejudice or Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
One of the most magical things about J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books and now films, the last two of which have been just splendid, is the way they subtly weave lessons about ethical choice and character into their gripping plots. Indeed, the plots themselves pivot on the crucial choices of the major characters for good or for evil, choices that at once form and reveal character.Attention to moments of choice and to the development of character, for example, in the latest Potter film and in the wonderful film version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, can help to educate the moral imagination of young and old alike.
P&P is about making sound judgments in a world that resembles a gossipy. status-conscious high school. Harry Potter must face his insecurities to muster his courage to fight evil.
I particularly liked the allusions about “feeding the moral imagination”. The best part about a good story is that it slips the lession behind the conscious and into the heart.
We have used stories almost from the beginning to teach our kids all kinds of lessons - everything from “don’t go in the street” to the value of friendship.
I even use stories liberally in my college class to illsutrate finance and economics concepts.