Donald Clark has his own style of blogging, and this new post is no difference. He discusses the has announcement of funding and awards (£5 million) for the teaching of ‘character’ in schools by the British Department of Education.

Do read his analysis of a.o. Kolhberg and you’ll understand this conclusion:

When a politician such as Cameron, Osborne, Gove, Morgan or Hunt talk about ‘character’, my heart sinks. It’s like Jimmy Saville taking a line on sex education – he’s an expert of sorts, just the wrong sort. Politicians love to meddle in educational practice, in a way they would never in say, medical practice. That’s because they think of themselves as ideals and whatever ‘they’ experienced in education must be good for the rest of us. This explains their obvious disengagement from the voters and blindness when it comes to judgments on the role of character in education, even the world at large. Let’s put this rather odd ‘C-word’ back where it came from, in the files marked ‘bad theory’, ‘old-school thinking’ and ‘political conceit’.