CultureFeed.com’s Angus McBeath, a former public school teacher and administrator in Canada, recently sat down with sociologist Jeffrey Guhin to discuss Guhin’s research on shaping student character in a sample of US urban public high schools. Guhin, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California-Los Angeles, has summarized the results of his research in a chapter of the book “The Content of Their Character: Inquiries into the Varieties of Moral Formation.” 

In Part I of this this interview, McBeath and Guhin discuss a range of issues, including the importance of teachers, what surprised Guhin in his research, and a divided view of the good life in the schools he visited.