There is currently another curriculum review underway in the UK. Emma Worley asks whether lessons in morality be considered within the review and if schools should 'build character and virtue', how should this be done?
"Over the last two decades, many would agree that our educational philosophy at every level has been more and more dominated by an instrumentalist model; less and less concerned with a building of virtue, character and citizenship - 'civic excellence' as we might say. And a good educational system in a healthy society is one that builds character, that builds virtue.”
This was said in the House of Lords by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, following the recall to parliament last week.
The BBC ran a series of lectures by Harvard University professor Michael Sandel during its Justice season earlier this year. The programmes were recordings of his moral and political philosophy course, Justice: A Journey in Moral Reasoning. The course covers a range of political, ethical and moral issues from utilitarianism to surrogate motherhood and military service. Sandel’s classes are not lectures in the traditional sense. He does not stand in front of his packed audience (up to 1000 students at a time) and tell them about philosophers and arguments whilst they take notes. Instead, he facilitates philosophical enquiries, asks questions, and seeks reasons why students think what they think, he links ideas around the room, seeks tension in the dialogue and creates debate so that the participants are engaged in an interactive discussion.
These are lessons in moral reasoning, where the students think about decisions they might make, and then think further about why they might make them, the impact of their decisions on wider society and how this might affect everyone universally. This kind of enquiry can be fertile ground for re-thinking and re-evaluating students preconceived and sometimes knee-jerk reactions to moral dilemmas. It enables people to ‘practice’ moral decision making in a safe environment.
Why would lessons in moral reasoning be better than, for instance, learning about ethics, or considering different religions or lessons in citizenship? The answer perhaps lies in Dr Williams’ comment about the growing instrumenalism of our education system. Too much emphasis has been placed on passing exams, getting the right answer and moving up to the next level or shipping out as quickly as possible. Education is seen as a way to get a job, rather than a way to live in a community or for the sake of the flourishing individual. Utility has become king and as a result teaching seems to be focused on answers rather than on exploring questions; this is not down to teachers alone, but more on the pressure placed upon them to get children to recite the ‘facts’ in order to pass their exams.
Learning moral behaviour as a set of propositional facts to be churned out in exams, may have its role but there are limitations to this approach as stated by Aristotle, some two and a half thousand years ago. He noticed that people who are unrestrained in their actions (they act immorally or have a ‘weakness of the will’) resemble those asleep, drunk or mad. They may be able to reel off the moral verses of Empedocles yet they do not know what they mean, and therefore fail to act upon Empedocles' advice. They are like an actor speaking a part who does not have any understanding of the words spoken. Knowledge and moral behaviour takes time, Aristotle says, for it "to become part of the tissue of the mind".
In the classroom if you ask young children how they should behave they will generally respond with lists of moral behaviour taught to them by the school: ‘listen to each other, respect each other, don’t laugh at people’ and so on. But they do not necessarily act upon these well rehearsed lines. Though children tell teachers and parents what they want to hear they often act upon another set of principles. These principles are ‘operational beliefs’; the beliefs they implicitly hold and act upon, in contrast to ‘received beliefs’ which are those received from parents, teachers and society (and to be found on any classroom wall as ‘School Rules’).
It could be that moral education should begin in a received belief way, something Aristotle may assent to, but there is a point at which one must move beyond this so that the value of the good behaviour is recognised as such. The question then is how do we help children make the journey from received to operational beliefs? How do we make good, virtuous behaviour, part of what Aristotle called 'the tissue of the mind', so that good behaviour is internalised or naturalised? So that virtuous behaviour is part of what one is disposed to do rather than merely a list of principles on which one should act but doesn’t?
This is where moral reasoning as philosophical enquiry could help. By engaging students in a moral dialogue they have to think about why it is good to do one thing over another. They have to go beyond their immediate wants and consider other peoples opinions, beliefs and feelings, then take it further and apply these thoughts universally. Moral reasoning and enquiry are not just an exercise in rational thought, in premises and conclusions, but an engagement with the topic under debate, others in the room, and society at large; a way to listen to others and to creatively rethink and reflect upon our own thoughts and beliefs.
It is reflection that is perhaps crucial in moral development. It is by reflecting on our actions and thoughts and relating these to others and the wider world that we can consider whether what we do is right, or wrong.
Emma Worley is co-founder of educational charity The Philosophy Foundation. For more on philosophical enquiry see 'The If Machine: Philosophical Enquiry in the Classroom' available from the Philosophy Foundation.
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We will make progress when we realize that we don't TEACH anything. We can only provide opportunities to learn.
Montessori classrooms allow children to develop moral acuity as older students model and help younger ones. The younger ones then have an opportunity to pay it forward as they become the exemplars. They also learn how to accept help graciously.
Even at the age of 3, students participate in classroom governance and problem solving.
There are "sensitive periods" for increasing our moral awareness and self-discipline. As Dr. Montessori said, "The child absorbs knowledge directly into this psychic life...impressions do not merely enter his mind, they form it."
The problem is that our traditional schools "teach" classes about communication...where students listen to instructors talk about what it is to communicate...but the students do not actually communicate themselves. We "teach" about morality, without giving the children opportunities to behave morally.
It is as nonsensical as asking students to watch a teacher play a violin for 12 years while they sit in their seats, listen, study, and read about it....and then somehow expect them to be able to play the violin themselves upon graduation. That is what traditional schools do.
Please give another look at the Montessori model of education. As we learn more about neuroscience, we realize that the woman doctor from Italy was years ahead of her time.
Watch Dr. Steve Hughes Montessori and the Future of Education on youtube.
I think - in any debate of this nature - that there is a need to define one's terms. For example, what is meant by 'education'? As a retired College Lecturer, I always felt that the process was meant to involve "educare" or the "drawing-out" of the potential of the individual student. Of course, given the way in which our economy is structured around qualifications being required for access to higher education and careers, it is also incumbent upon educationalists to try to assist students to obtain the best educational and/or professional qualifications they can so that they may enjoy good quality lives in the future. When using the term 'moral', I believe our American colleagues use a word - 'mores' - which is particularly useful, meaning - as it does - something like the concept of 'folkways'. Surely, morals represent the ways in which folk interact with one another in order to achieve an outcome of a good society - both for the individual and the collective society, up to and including on the planetary level? If I were attempting to teach morals today, I would ask young - and, possibly, not-so-young - people to consider in what ways they should behave in order to achieve a good outcome for themselves and others? They could be invited to address the same question with regard to their own immediate families and sets of relations, followed by consideration of how such an outcome can be achieved for their local, then regional, then national and, ultimately, global community. Of course, as teachers, we would need to have the knowledge and understanding of how society is organised here and elsewhere to be able to assist the students in understanding how the world is organised and how they may be able to fit within that world and participate in such a way as to maximise their own life chances, along with those of all others; it is a tall order for teachers but if we expect young people to learn about the world and how they may be able to operate effectively within it, we must be able to explain to them just how local government, regional government and national governments all operate, as well as the roles of political parties and interest groups operating within the systems involved.
With regard to creativity, while it is possible to provide the conditions for achieving creativity - curiosity and application - it is not really possible to teach creativity, as this is something which each individual has to want to apply themselves to. Good teachers can play an enormous role in fostering curiosity and enthusiasm in young people but the real desire to know more and to explore the nature of reality is something that arises within the individual. The concept of "flow" seems to arise in this regard over and over again. I think if we could get young people to experience the concept of creative flow, possibly through music, dance and artistic creation in the first instance, then we might be able to set the scene for their greater contribution towards creating knowldege and artefacts of real value in the future.
Very interesting - and thank you for pointing out the extent to which I had misunderstood Weber. I'd previously thought of him as someone who described phenomena such as bureaucracy, charismatic authority, rather than someone in revolt against 'positive' science.
"I'd say that this [dominant] paradigm is much less likely to result in creativity than others we might be able to think of, or arguably have occurred in the past (e.g. post WWII). The great bind is this; we live in a conservative and unimaginative time, we lack confidence in our creative capacity to change things for the better, and therefore even believing another paradigm can exist, never mind formulating one in any detail, is made more difficult. The challenge, I reckon, is to find a way to break this static feeling."
I'm not sure what these paradigms might be. I'd agree that the post war era was an era of great intellectual creativity, but it almost had to be, with the collapse of previous systems of thought, the stark choices posed by the Cold War, and the need to rebuild, avoiding perceived mistakes of the past. The intellectual developments of the era which intrigue me are for me responses to the crises in what I'd say is a continuing liberal, Enlightenment tradition. You might say there were paradigm shifts, in the way that Kuhn characterised changes in sciencific thought such as caused by relativity, but I'd say were just the sort of exciting things which will happen - at unpredictable intervals - an intellectual tradition within which human creativity is fermenting. But what characterises this tradition is not creativity for its own sake, but the external discipline of the natural world. Within the natural sciences, how this works is so well established that among practicing scientists controversies are about deviations from the paradigm - essentially Popper's requirement of falsifiability.
I'd argue that there are - should be - corresponding reality checks within the social sciences. This is implied by anyone who's ever described anything as a failed social experiment - the problem is getting agreement on what constitutes failure. This problem tempts some into constructing essential differences between these two worlds, and so creating two intellectual tribes. One the one side you have conservative, unimaginative adherents of the dominant tradition - that's me folks! - who parrot such utilitarian maxims as "by their fruit ye shall know them" - and on the other free creative spirits, surfing the changing waves of paradigms.
I don't believe there is such an essential difference, and talking as if there is is dangerous. To bring it back to teaching, the danger I see most - because I'm a mathematician / engineer by background - is that creativity and imagination are directed away from these subjects, as they become identified more with the discipline of learning quite precisely what has already been achieved in these domains. There will be a corresponding danger that bright kids who thrive on such disciplines will look down on social sciences and the humanities as merely decorative.
I don't think anyone is really trying to totally junk the Enlightenment. That would be ridiculous with the benefits it has brought us. But there's a point to made about the Enlightment that's been around since Weber, at least, but it's complicated and hasn't fitted the mood of modernity and so has only gradually become more widely acknowledged outside of intellectuals. And it's that despite all the wonderful aspects of its influence, the Enlightenment has a dark side. And it's that in the refusal of arbitrary dogma and superstition, and the pursuit of reason, we have opened ourselves up to other dogmatic principles and the limits of certain types of reason in explaining the world to us.
I think this relates to the point you make. Really morality is the domain of the social sciences, that was even how Smith saw economics. I don't think viewing people as 'automata' is as widely pervading in social studies as you suggest. But it's certainly true, and particularly so of economics, that an axiomatic and a kind of rigid positivism (inspired by the natural sciences) has been adopted in some of these disciplines.
It's also worth noting the evolution of the social sciences and their relationship to the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment. Their initiation as the disciplines we know today, with the temptations of natural science methodology and assumptions, and importantly as separated disciplines, comes from this time.
I'd agree that we should never reject individual responsibility. But you really have to be realistic about to what extent this can be exercised, how little elbow room some people have, that the way they percieve the world is utterly framed by sets of experiences and conditions that will be considerably different from, for example, the people who've posted on here, and I think you can strongly argue are limiting.
"Sure, many in this dominant tradition will fail to think creatively within it, but that can happen with any paradigm." - I'd say that this paradigm is much less likely to result in creativity that others we might be able to think of, or arguably have occured in the past (e.g. post WWII). The great bind is this; we live in a conservative and unimaginative time, we lack
confidence in our creative capacity to change things for the better, and therefore even believing another paradigm can exist, never mind formulating one in any detail, is made more difficult. The challenge, I reckon, is to find a way to break this static feeling.
PS. I suspect the real 'danger' of engaging students in a moral debate, allied with an understanding of politcs, philosophy, history, economics etc. is that they still might end up out on the streets, but they sure as hell wouldn't be bothering with Footlocker.
I think there are also other social initiatives, besides education, that needs to be added to sustain ethical behaviour in children and adults, to actually use ethics from education in their everyday lives. Because one thing that doesn't seem to be emphasized is how to ameliorate the barriers that prevent people from doing this. For example, there are lots of adults who work in professions where they are aware of moral obligations, who still do not behave ethically. To counter-act this, society needs to create value for people who do behave morally, instead of the current situation where individuals are often punished (or perceive that they may be) for being ethical.Think of the people our media focus attention on, not the individuals who are ethical, but those who are immoral, and how preoccupation with these people in turn, rewards them with a type of public praise in the form of fame.