Summarizes major trends in character education in U.S. classrooms, beginning with an early twentieth-century "Children's Morality Code," and progressing through 1950s moral and values education, three past decades of drug and sex education programs, and current efforts to develop valid program evaluation methods. The next step is…

A number of issues concerning the evaluation of moral and civic education programs are discussed. Four program types are described: (1) rationalist, which involves a high cognitive knowledge of the law and legal processes; (2) actionist, in which students participate in out-of-class projects; (3) values clarification, in which students study,…