The LSU AgCenter's 4-H Youth Development Program began its efforts to teach character education in 1996.  In 1997, with the leadership of State Representative Beverly Bruce, a proposal was developed and state funding was received. The plan that the LSU AgCenter is implementing begins by creating classrooms of character, then schools of character, and finally communities of character.  The following paragraph was taken from the Journal of Extension, April 1998:

 

After reviewing character education literature, Matthews and Riley (1995) determined that effective ethics education is grounded in community. "We ensure failure if we teach ethics without using a community context to illustrate, nurture, and support ethical development. Without grounding ethics within the particular community and cultural context of the learner, ethics remain abstract, outside the scope of experiences of the learner and ultimately irrelevant" (p.17). Without an environment that is conducive to being a person of character, character education cannot be effective (Kohn, 1997).
 

The LSU AgCenter's character education program began with the school system because there was a readiness for character education.  However, the plan is to expand the program from the school system into the community to ensure long-term success of the program.

Sixty-two of the state's 66 school systems have partnered with the LSU AgCenter to conduct a character education program called CHARACTER COUNTS!  During the fall of 1999, Extension Service personnel conducted 95 trainings reaching 3,912 student trainers and 3,265 teachers.  Approximately 5,000 teaching kids have been provided as well as 3,000 resource books for teachers.  For the 1998-99 school year, 48 parishes reported reaching 93,965 children with the program and 75% of 735 teachers observed "some" to "very much improvement" in classroom behavior after the Exercising Character In Schools lessons were taught; and in the school year 1999-2000, 191 principals were surveyed and 75% of them observed "some" to "very much" improvement in behavior at their schools.  It is anticipated that 150,000 to 200,000 will be reached this year.

 

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CHARACTER COUNTS! is a service mark of the CHARACTER COUNTS! Coalition, which is a project of the           Josephson Institute of Ethics

 

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