Teaching Character in Schools

I'm thinking right now about the goal setting and planning pieces set up in Success, but I came across this article related to the book I'm reading by Paul Tough. Here's the link.
http://www.commonwealthmagazine.org/Departments/Book-Reviews/2013/Winter/Content-of-their-character.aspx
 Also, the first page of the KIPP school webpage lists the 7 character strengths incorporated into the school. These came from the work that Peterson did. Duckworth worked on an evaluative tool for teachers to use.http://www.kipp.org/our-approach/character


In addition to a review of Tough's book, another book called Character Compass*, is reviewed in this article. I found the author, Scott Seider, giving a talk on the book online and here's my takeaway from that-

Seider set out to see whether good character can be taught.

He examined three schools but focused in his talk on two of the three.  He said that Roxbury Prep and Boston Prep both had character education in their mission statements. Roxbury’s focus was more on performance character and Boston Prep’s was more on moral character. 

He found that students in all the schools show an increase in the key measures- integrity, perseverance, connectivity, empathy. Seider indicated that success is directly related to how students identify themselves. For example, if they say “I’m the kind of person who…” doesn’t cheat, then they don’t cheat. He calls this schema building, the way a volleyball player sets the ball – a person “sets” who they are over time. He indicates part of the success may be because the schools he studied have character education that is part of the thread of "who" the school is, rather than having character education handed to them from an outside source (like the government). Within the classes at all of the schools, there are ethics classes where students are actively engaged in discussing daily school issues- cheating, bullying, responsibility using practical examples and a common language.

There's a good bit here that sounds like the MKA ethics classes so I feel really confident about what our school is doing to teach character. 

*How Powerful School Culture can Point Students Toward Success
---Here's my final thought for now- when I look at the subtitle of Seider's book, I wonder if we have the school "culture" that's needed- in other words, how do other things that make up our culture clash with the character education going on in Ethics classes?