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It's a good thing
Ryan Library to foster SED's moral mission

By Brian Fitzgerald

A library with wine and cheese, but very few books - and no furniture? Actually, the School of Education's recent celebration at 621 Commonwealth Ave. was a library dedication, not an opening. The Ryan Library for Ethics and Education will officially open its doors next semester.

	Celebrating the dedication of the Ryan Library for Ethics and Education are (from left) SED Dean Edwin Delattre, Kevin Ryan, founder of the Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character (CAEC), and CAEC Director Karen Bohlin. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky

"We are still developing our modest collection of reserve books and resources," explains Karen Bohlin, director of SED's Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character (CAEC). And with dozens of faculty, students, and administrators crowding into the library on December 5, there would have been no room for tables or chairs anyway. They were there to honor Kevin Ryan, who is recognized nationally as an authoritative leader in the field of character and moral education.

Ryan, SED professor emeritus and founding director of the CAEC, has written or edited 17 books and published more than 90 articles on the education of teachers and character education. "He has helped restore its priority and integral connection to learning, teaching, and the lives of schools," says Bohlin.

Ryan says that the sense of public schools having a moral mission seems to have slipped away over the last three decades. However, in recent years, "efforts in our public schools to foster good character in students have generated enormous interest," write Ryan and Bohlin in their book Building Character in Schools: Practical Ways to Bring Moral Education to Life (Jossey-Bass Inc. Publishers, 1999).

Once commonly discussed by teachers, the concepts of wisdom and virtue have not been emphasized as much in the classroom since World War II, according to Ryan and Bohlin. Schools, which had functioned in loco parentis as caretakers of character, became places where morality was a private matter. Now the pendulum appears to be swinging back.

"Although it is difficult to determine just what the impetus for this renewed interest in character has been," they write, "it appears to have come from outside the educational community. Politicians on both the left and the right, spurred by the rising drumbeat of frightening statistics about youth homicides and suicides and by soaring numbers of teenage pregnancies, began calling teachers and administrators back to what is now called character education."

The CAEC was started in 1989 during the University's sesquicentennial celebration. More than a dozen such centers have been established on college campuses, but BU's was the first to focus on educating teachers to convey character training. "The work of the center has always been premised on an abiding respect for teachers and the dignity of their work as educators of the minds and character of young people," says Bohlin, "with respect for teachers as individuals who have a profound impact not only on performance, but also on the kinds of persons their students are becoming."

The CAEC's programs include 5- to 10-day retreats for educators, professional development institutes for teachers and administrators, and numerous publications, including an award-winning quarterly newsletter, and summer academies in different parts of the country. "This summer we have scheduled three academies in South Carolina, one in Savannah, Ga., and have tentative plans for a five-week-long academy in Connecticut," says Bohlin. "Teachers are rarely afforded time and space for reflection, the time to struggle with tough questions about the development of virtue in the lives of their students and in their own lives. The center's Summer Teachers' Academies have always been designed to provide precisely this opportunity."

However, with character education coming back into vogue - it's even become prominent in the president's annual State of the Union address - the danger is to give lip service to the concept by installing quick fixes, says Ryan. He has often pointed out the dubious worth of programs such as the seven-year-old National Character Counts! Week in October, which features booths at local fairs, bumper stickers, posters, Character Counts! banners across streets, costume days at schools (in which students and teachers dress as real or fictional heroes who have shown good character), and rap contests with rap songs related to character.

According to Ryan, the key is to keep character-building efforts alive for the whole year, not just for five days. Character education "is the central curriculum issue confronting educators," he wrote in a 1993 article in the journal Educational Leadership. "Rather than the latest fad, it is the school's oldest mission."

As for the CAEC library, it will host periodic discussions and lectures from international scholars, school leaders, and teachers. In the spring, Steven Tigner, SED adjunct professor for curriculum and teaching, will speak on Harry Potter and the Good Life. An Internalizing Virtue Institute for lead teachers and administrators will take place there in April. In addition, the library will be the setting of a roundtable discussion with contributors from the Winter 2001 issue of the Journal of Education, entitled Can Virtue Be Taught at the University?

And needless to say, the Ryan Library will also have furniture - and more books and publications. "The library will house some of the finest scholarship and research in ethics and education, and will serve as a place of inquiry, study, and dialogue among teachers, parents, and scholars," says Bohlin. "We hope the Ryan Library will serve as a haven of tranquility for those educators and students of education who find themselves swimming upstream - a place where they can come to study and to read and reflect either as visiting scholars conducting research, or on an occasional basis."

15 December 2000
Boston University
Office of University Relations