ABSTRACT
The Character Education Partnership plays a large role in promoting character education, formed during a conference of the Aspen Institute and organized as a coalition of character education organizations and Character Counts! International. There are a number of assumptions held by the religious right that support a kind of character education that in turn would move young people toward embracing the assumptions of neoliberalism. The Nicomachean Ethics is arguably the first character education text, one that precedes even the Bible. The character education discourse may indeed be "silent" on this concern regarding critical thinking, but it is far from disregarded. Increasing use of vouchers for private religious schools, increased corporate encroachment into classrooms, and use of No Child Left Behind for military recruitment are but a few of the examples that parallel the untoward use of character education for purposes of the agenda.
