Michael Schulman

Michael Schulman is an American psychologist whose professional work has centered on moral education and the developmental psychology of children's moral growth. He chaired the Columbia University Seminar on Moral Education and also served as chief psychologist for the Group Homes Division of the Leake and Watts Children's Homes, an institution providing services to children and youth in care. Precise public information about his education and academic path is limited, though his name recurs frequently in the literature on character education and moral psychology.

His best-known work is Bringing Up a Moral Child: A New Approach for Teaching Your Child to Be Kind, Just, and Responsible, published in 1985 with co-author Eva Mekler, a school psychologist with the New York City Board of Education, and reissued in a revised 1994 edition with additional material on racism and gay rights. The book argues that moral upbringing is not achieved through commands, punishment, or the teaching of abstract rules, but through cultivating empathy, moral belonging, role-modeling, moral dialogue, and the practical exercise of responsibility — proposing tools such as role-play, behavioral scripts, and games.

Schulman's significance lies in moving the discussion of moral education from general exhortation into the domain of developmental psychology and practical instruction. His work has been cited in the character-education literature for its treatment of the roles of family, school, moral models, and everyday dialogue in shaping children's moral conscience.