A Comparison of Character Education in Primary and Junior Secondary Schools in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China

Abstract

Character education have been implemented in schools worldwide from twenty centuries, considering the growing social-moral problems that beset modern societies. The fact of moral decline and negative behavior of youth require character education to provide programs of eliminating such behavior that emerge in social, political, and economic contexts. It was proved that students who received character education and moral values in schools had better test scores and had lower incidents of vandalism, absenteeism, and dishonesty on tests. An interpretive approach has been used in this study and focused on the difference of character education among Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China, seeking how the character education implements in schools and its communication with other subjects on the support of policies, how the teachers make of this curriculum, and whether the program of character education takes the impact on children’s character building.