One of the central notions in accounts of virtue theories is that of “character”. The virtues are understood as character traits and whether one sees their role as central in accounting for morality or as secondary to some other concept, the notion of character is bound to play an important role in one's theory of virtue. Since the notion of “character” has a significant role to play in virtue theories an immediate question of importance is how we might develop good characters ourselves, how we might avoid negative influences and how we should go about encouraging good characters in others. However, the questions relating to character education are not merely of theoretical significance to those philosophical theories that see a role for character and the virtues in their account of morality.

As any parent knows, a central concern in bringing up one's children is bringing them up right: helping them develop into the kinds of adults one can be proud of, encouraging all that is good in them and discouraging all that is contrary to our conception of the good life for human beings. When asked to articulate what kinds of adults we would be proud for our children to have grown into, we would probably rely on the language of the virtues and aspire to have children who become kind, just, caring, honourable, loyal, trustworthy, friendly, and so on.