A Western Character Education Program: A Case Study

Certain moral truths remain constant across civilizations, but the influence of the culture is a point of contention. It is this source of cultural influence on morals, virtues, values, and ethics that allows for further examination as a school attempts to implement a character education curriculum. This was an intrinsic case study conducted at the American Creativity Academy (ACA), an international school in Kuwait delivering an American based curriculum to a predominantly Muslim student population. The four themes that emerged from this study were Ambivalence, Importance of Modeling, Communication, and Unrealistic Expectations. Superficially, conflict resided in time issues and professional development, but the center of discord resided in differences of personal beliefs and values and the inability to discuss the differences. Students, teachers, and administrators must understand the different cultural value systems that exist among people within a school. Without a cultural value awareness, curricula adopted in isolation and given no opportunity for open communi­cation are susceptible to animosity, lack of acceptance, and poor implementation.