DATE: Sunday, June 29, 1997                 TAG: 9706280573

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A7   EDITION: FINAL 

SERIES: TEACHING KIDS VALUES

SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: SUFFOLK                           LENGTH:   82 lines

REACHING CONSENSUS IN SUFFOLK PANEL STRUGGLES TO DEFINE CHARACTER

The favored character traits came easily enough. People readily agreed on terms like ``fairness,'' ``honesty'' and ``responsibility.''

Tougher for a School Board-appointed committee was agreeing on the meanings behind the terms. How specific do you get? How broad is too broad?

The job has been so hard that, after four months of study, interviews and discussion about character, the 22-member committee wants still more public input this summer.

The School Board charged the committee with agreeing on a list of positive traits that should be taught to the community's schoolchildren.

The list, presented to the School Board this month, is the city school district's first step toward joining a national trend of returning character instruction to the classroom and calling it that.

How to teach the traits will come later. But another thing committee members quickly learned - as have their neighbor cities that have already wrestled with this issue - is that simply teaching the words won't be as powerful or effective as having teachers and other school employees living them.

And students they talked with told them so.

``I've always known it, but it's reinforcing when you hear it from a 12-year-old,'' said schools Superintendent Joyce H. Trump, co-chairwoman of the committee.

Its members - parents, Protestant ministers, educators and others from the community - also found that teaching something in school might not matter much if it's not reinforced in the children's homes or neighborhoods.

``We can't take care of the problems at home, but we can try to mold these children, I guess, once they get into the school,'' said Kathy Runyon, a committee member with two children in city schools.

``A lot of this, it starts at home. You've got to get the parents involved.''

Among the 20 character traits on the committee's wide-ranging initial list are courtesy, self-discipline, perseverance, recognition and acceptance of diversity, the ability to make good choices, and respect of self and others.

``We all think we know what we think good character is,'' said committee member Margaret W. Gartman, also the parent of two schoolchildren. ``It's hard

An example of one proposed pillar of good character that didn't make the final cut is ``morals.''

The committee ultimately considered it too controversial a term in itself, and too hard to define for secular education purposes.

``Too broad,'' Gartman said.

Definitions will continue to be an issue no matter how the city decides to incorporate character education into its schools: adding separate classes or programs, building it into the existing curriculum, leaving it up to school staffers to be living models.

The committee, for instance, looked at the trait ``hard-working.''

``There was some discussion about how do you actually develop this? . . . What makes me hard-working, and someone else not?'' Trump asked.

``That is a very difficult issue for anyone who's a parent, a teacher, a principal, a Sunday School teacher.''

Gartman agreed.

``I think the hardest thing is: You take `honesty' as a good character trait. But what do you mean by `honesty?' Or `respect?' I'm sure there'll be some people who disagree,'' she said.

Committee members read outside materials and news articles for ideas, but wanted Suffolk's character-education program to be distinctly local in flavor.

After the School Board gets a look at the committee's list of traits, the list will be passed around to community and civic groups, Parent-Teacher Associations and other parents in summer newsletters.

The committee also wants to conduct two public forums in September, with a final list going to the School Board after that.

``I believe as a community we certainly will be able to come to a consensus on the essential character traits we should be nurturing through our school programs,'' Trump said.

All see it as a long-range process, not one of simply offering a semester of Character 101 this fall and letting it go at that.

``How do you teach it in your home?'' Gartman asked. ``You don't have a class in it. . . . You show your children respect, and you teach them honesty in day-to-day situations . . . .

``I don't think it's an overnight thing that will happen. I think it will evolve.'' KEYWORDS: VALUES EDUCATION

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