Introduction

A number of misgivings have been expressed about the viability of character education in general, and its Aristotelian variant in particular, for use in today's schooling. This chapter outlines the shortcomings of previous classic and contemporary versions of Aristotelian character education in more detail. Approaches such as US-style character education, social and emotional learning, citizenship education, and positive psychology's recent virtue theory are all brimming with references to Aristotle. All developing human beings will need to possess a host of intellectual virtues, such as curiosity and critical thinking. The chapter explores how one of those intellectual virtues, namely phronesis or good sense, occupies a special position in Aristotle's system and builds a bridge between the moral and the intellectual. Aristotelian character education provides teachers and pupils with a non-artificial language to talk about moral conduct in the classroom, language that may have partly gone astray in recent decades but still bears retrieval.