A new book written by Ben Kisby and Lee Jerome that looks at the rise of character education in Britain has been published as part of the Palgrave Pivot series. The book questions the individualistic and moralistic ideas underlying the clamour amongst politicians, educators and authors to promote ‘grit’, ‘resilience’ and ‘character’ in schools. It shows that the development of ‘character’ is wrongly presented as the solution to a wide variety of social problems, with individual citizens expected to accommodate themselves to the realities of the contemporary economic context, rather than enhancing their capacities to engage in civic and political activities to bring about changes they wish to see. The book argues that citizenship education is a tried and tested alternative to character education that is far more likely to strengthen British democracy.