Character education is an umbrella term loosely used to describe the teaching of children and adults in a manner that will help them develop variously as moral, civic, good, mannered, behaved, non-bullying, healthy, critical, successful, traditional, compliant or socially acceptable beings. Concepts that now and in the past have fallen under this term include social and emotional learning, moral reasoning and cognitive development, life skills education, health education, violence prevention, critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and conflict resolution and mediation. Many of these are now considered failed programs, i.e. "religious education", "moral development", "values clarification". Today, there are dozens of character education programs in, and vying for adoption by, schools and businesses. Some are commercial, some non-profit and many are uniquely devised by states, districts and schools, themselves. A common approach of these programs is to provide a list of principles, pillars, values or virtues, which are memorized or around which themed activities are planned. It is commonly claimed that the values included in any particular list are universally recognized. However, there is no agreement among the competing programs on core values (e.g., honesty, stewardship, kindness, generosity, courage, freedom, justice, equality, and respect) or even how many to list. There is also no common or standard means for assessing, implementing or evaluating programs. Terminology "Character" is one of those overarching concepts that is the subject of disciplines from philosophy to theology, from psychology to sociology—with many competing and conflicting theories. Thomas Lickona defines character education as "the deliberate effort to develop virtues that are good for the individual and good for society." More recently, psychologist Robert McGrath has proposed that character education is less focused on social skill acquisition and more on constructing a moral identity within a life narrative. Character as it relates to character education most often refers to how 'good' a person is. In other words, a person who exhibits personal qualities like those a society considers desirable might be considered to have good character—and developing such personal qualities is often seen as a purpose of education. However, the various proponents of character education are far from agreement as to what "good" is, or what qualities are desirable. Compounding this problem is that there is no scientific definition of character. Because such a concept blends personality and behavioral components, scientists have long since abandoned use of the term "character" and, instead, use the term psychological motivators to measure