Educating the virtue of fortitude from childhood: a challenge in 21st century education.At the University of Birmingham there is a center dedicated to education in virtues and values, it is called the "Jubilee Center"which has just opened an office in Spain, in the Francisco de Vitoria University.
The objective of this center is to investigate and put into practice all those advances in the formation of character that allow people to develop not only at a professional level, but also at an inner level. All this because its members are convinced that "all professions need to acquire the moral qualities of integrity, courage, self-control, service, generosity and others in order to be a good professional".
In order to better understand the work of this institution and its importance at the university level, Omnes has interviewed the director of the center in Birmingham, James Arthur, who, in addition to holding this management position, is a member of the Society for Educational Studies, a former editor of the British Journal of Educational Studies and an honorary professor at the universities of Glasgow and Oxford.
Your institution began in 2012 and has been growing ever since, but how did the Birmingham Center for Virtues and Values Education come into being?
-I have been doing research on education in virtues and character education for the past 25 years and I have worked on many such projects prior to the birth of the Birmingham Jubilee Center. This was founded by many charities and with government money to explore character education and its contribution to citizenship. In 2012 the John Templeton Foundation granted $30 million to establish a center at the University of Birmingham to research and apply the various perspectives on character and virtues
The center is a pioneer in interdisciplinary research that focuses on character, virtues and values, with a focus on human development. It promotes a moral concept of character in order to explore the importance of virtue in public and professional life. The center is a leader in policy and practice in this area and through its wide range of projects contributes to the renewal of character virtues both among individuals and in society.
The center seeks to strengthen character virtues through:
- address critical character issues;
- to promote, through rigorous research, the development of good character in education, business and society, both in the UK and globally;
- build and strengthen character virtues in the contexts of family, school, community, university, professions, volunteer organizations and the workplace in general.
What is the importance of such a center existing in a society where practical skills such as engineering are more important than the liberal arts or the formation of virtue and character?
-In education today there is a growing anxiety that emphasizes student success as the end of education. Our educational system is built on the idea that the purpose of human beings is production and consumption in the marketplace, and the measure of success is that of that marketplace - profitability or, in the case of individuals, wealth and status.
In the face of this, our center believes that education should focus on training people to be able to live well in a world worth living in. Technical sciences are important, but the personal development of each individual is more important.
What does the activity of this institution consist of?
-The center has authored more than 250 articles and books on character virtues research and has produced 56 reports along with other documents and frameworks. All of these can be accessed free of charge from our website.
The center was chosen from more than 1,200 nominees for the QS World University Rankings awards, considered the "Oscars of education". The international jury, drawn from more than 77 countries, and the grand jury chose the Jubilee Center's work on the workplace environment for schools for its innovative and effective pedagogy, and for making a remarkable and scalable impact globally.
This recognition comes on the heels of international accolades for the Center, including Germany's Ferdinande Boxberger Prize in 2019, and the Expanded Reason Award from the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Foundation in 2020. The Framework, the third edition of which we have just published, has also been the basis for million-pound grants from the John Templeton Foundation, the Templeton World Charity Foundation and the Kern Family Foundation.
You have just opened a branch at the Francisco de Vitoria University, how can character education be promoted among university students?
-As far as the value of higher education is concerned, the increase in economic potential is only a partial measure. The value of a college education is calculated through the lives of graduates-their personal development and their contribution to social welfare. It is calculated not only through what students do, but also through what they become.
Recently, many universities have expressed their commitment to holistic, socially embedded higher education. Concepts such as full potential, development or well-being apply to both students and university communities, and are found in both university policies and goals. All this, given the claim that "universities shape lives" and the fact that many universities mention personal qualities that they want their students to develop and have internalized when they graduate.
You talk about virtues in professions such as nursing, law, education or the military, why did you focus on these specific areas? What impact does training in virtues and values have in these areas??
-We look at many professions and not just the ones we have studied so far. We have also looked at social workers and police officers.
The vast majority of professions, vocations and occupations in civil and civilized societies have more or less formal codes of conduct, or codes of ethics designed to ensure good and fair practice, and to protect clients from the contrary.
However, these codes are not sufficient to guarantee the compliance of every worker with them. From this point of view, many professional mistakes or scandals in contexts of public interest, such as politics, law, medicine, social work, education or business, could be attributed to personal weakness, lack of resolve, greed or simply the folly of the professionals: in short, to failures in the moral character of the person. We recognize that all professions need to acquire the moral qualities of integrity, courage, self-control, service, generosity and so on to be a good professional. This is universal.
