• Honesty & truthfulness
• Kindness
• Consideration and concern for others
• Compassion
• Obedience
• Responsibility
• Respect
• Duty

While parents are the first and foremost teachers of values and the ones best able to convey cornerstone values, the school too, has an important role to play. Homes are undoubtedly the primary place where values are taught and observed both consciously and subconsciously. In contrast, in a school, the most effective way of teaching cornerstone values is through habit, principle, and example; and because values are communicated through relationships, ‘quiet examples’ are the most powerful of the three.

Unlike character education, values education is less concerned with behavioural outcomes and more concerned with the quality of students’ thinking.

Character education is defined as the process that fosters character in individuals and helps young adults become good people and good citizens (Heenan, 2002). The following eleven principles (Character Education Partnership) serve as the criteria that schools and other groups can use to plan a character education effort and to evaluate available character education programmes, books and curriculum resources:

• Character education promotes core ethical values as the basis of good character
• Character must be comprehensively defined to include thinking, feeling, and behaviour
• Effective character education should provide an intentional, pro-active and comprehensive approach that promotes the core values in all phases of school life
• The school must be a caring community
• To develop character, students need opportunities for moral action
• Effective character education includes a meaningful and challenging academic curriculum that respects all learners and helps them succeed
• Character education should strive to develop students’ intrinsic motivation
• The school staff must become a learning and moral community with shared responsibility for character education and adherence to the same core values that guide the education of students
• Character education requires moral leadership from both staff and students
• The school must recruit parents and community members as full partners in the character-building effort
• Evaluation of character education should assess the character of the school; the functioning of the school’s staff as character educators, and the extent to which students manifest good character.