Debating Moral Education

Debating Moral Education
Author: Elizabeth Kiss
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2010-01-25
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0822391597

After decades of marginalization in the secularized twentieth-century academy, moral education has enjoyed a recent resurgence in American higher education, with the establishment of more than 100 ethics centers and programs on campuses across the country. Yet the idea that the university has a civic responsibility to teach its undergraduate students ethics and morality has been met with skepticism, suspicion, and even outright rejection from both inside and outside the academy. In this collection, renowned scholars of philosophy, politics, and religion debate the role of ethics in the university, investigating whether universities should proactively cultivate morality and ethics, what teaching ethics entails, and what moral education should accomplish. The essays quickly open up to broader questions regarding the very purpose of a university education in modern society. Editors Elizabeth Kiss and J. Peter Euben survey the history of ethics in higher education, then engage with provocative recent writings by Stanley Fish in which he argues that universities should not be involved in moral education. Stanley Hauerwas responds, offering a theological perspective on the university’s purpose. Contributors look at the place of politics in moral education; suggest that increasingly diverse, multicultural student bodies are resources for the teaching of ethics; and show how the debate over civic education in public grade-schools provides valuable lessons for higher education. Others reflect on the virtues and character traits that a moral education should foster in students—such as honesty, tolerance, and integrity—and the ways that ethical training formally and informally happens on campuses today, from the classroom to the basketball court. Debating Moral Education is a critical contribution to the ongoing discussion of the role and evolution of ethics education in the modern liberal arts university. Contributors. Lawrence Blum, Romand Coles, J. Peter Euben, Stanley Fish, Michael Allen Gillespie, Ruth W. Grant, Stanley Hauerwas, David A. Hoekema, Elizabeth Kiss, Patchen Markell, Susan Jane McWilliams, Wilson Carey McWilliams, J. Donald Moon, James Bernard Murphy, Noah Pickus, Julie A. Reuben, George Shulman, Elizabeth V. Spelman

Moral Education for Social Justice

Moral Education for Social Justice
Author: Larry Nucci
Publisher: Teachers College Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2021
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0807779717

The authors draw from their work with teachers and students to address issues of social justice through the regular curriculum and everyday school life. This book illustrates an approach that integrates social justice education with contemporary research on students’ development of moral understandings and concerns for human welfare in order to critically address societal conventions, norms, and institutions. The authors provide a clear roadmap for differentiating moral education from religious beliefs and offer age-appropriate guidance for creating healthy school and classroom environments. Demonstrating how to engage students in critical thinking and community activism, the book includes proven-effective lessons that promote academic learning and moral growth for the early grades through adolescence. The text also incorporates recent work with social-emotional learning and restorative justice to nurture students’ ethical awareness and disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline. Book Features: Guidance to help teachers move from classroom moral discourse to engage students in community action. Age-specific lesson plans developed with classroom teachers for integration with regular academic curricula.Detailed overview of moral growth with examples of student reasoning.Connections between moral development and critical pedagogy.Connections between moral development and digital literacy.Connections among classroom management, school rules, restorative justice, and students’ social development.Insights drawn from research conducted within the Oakland Public School system.

A Platonic Theory of Moral Education

A Platonic Theory of Moral Education
Author: Mark Jonas
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2020-09-30
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1000195112

Discussing Plato’s views on knowledge, recollection, dialogue, and epiphany, this ambitious volume offers a systematic analysis of the ways that Platonic approaches to education can help students navigate today’s increasingly complex moral environment. Though interest in Platonic education may have waned due to a perceived view of Platonic scholarship as wholly impractical, this volume addresses common misunderstandings of Plato’s work and highlights the contemporary relevance of Plato’s ideas to contemporary moral education. Building on philosophical interpretations, the book argues persuasively that educators might employ Platonic themes and dialogue in the classroom. Split into two parts, the book looks first to contextualise Plato’s theory of moral education within political, ethical, and educational frameworks. Equipped with this knowledge, part two then offers contemporary educators the strategies needed for implementing Plato’s educational theory within the pluralistic, democratic classroom setting. A Platonic Theory of Moral Education will be of interest to academics, researchers, and post-graduate students in the fields of: ethics; Plato scholarship; moral psychology; educational foundations; and the philosophy of education. This book would also benefit graduate students and scholars in teacher education. Mark E. Jonas is Professor of Education and Professor of Philosophy (by courtesy) at Wheaton College, US. Yoshiaki Nakazawa is Assistant Professor of Education at University of Dallas, US.

The Second-Person Standpoint

The Second-Person Standpoint
Author: Stephen Darwall
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2009-09-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674034627

Why should we avoid doing moral wrong? The inability of philosophy to answer this question in a compelling manner—along with the moral skepticism and ethical confusion that ensue—result, Stephen Darwall argues, from our failure to appreciate the essentially interpersonal character of moral obligation. After showing how attempts to vindicate morality have tended to change the subject—falling back on non-moral values or practical, first-person considerations—Darwall elaborates the interpersonal nature of moral obligations: their inherent link to our responsibilities to one another as members of the moral community. As Darwall defines it, the concept of moral obligation has an irreducibly second-person aspect; it presupposes our authority to make claims and demands on one another. And so too do many other central notions, including those of rights, the dignity of and respect for persons, and the very concept of person itself. The result is nothing less than a fundamental reorientation of moral theory that enables it at last to account for morality’s supreme authority—an account that Darwall carries from the realm of theory to the practical world of second-person attitudes, emotions, and actions.

Explorations of Chinese Moral Education Curriculum and Textbooks

Explorations of Chinese Moral Education Curriculum and Textbooks
Author: Desheng Gao
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 131
Release: 2021-05-07
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9811619379

This book shares with English readers Chinese theoretical and practical explorations of moral education curriculum for primary schools within the basic education curriculum reform project since 2001.The book expounds this moral education curriculum reform and focuses on three main ideas: The curriculum’s aim is to enrich children’s experiences and reflect their own lives; the curriculum’s content is originated from children’s lives; the curriculum’s structure is developed from children’s learning approach in their morality and social study. In this book, light is also shed on how to construct moral education textbooks, direct moral instruction, and moral teacher identity in the perspective of moral learning; how to knit law education and Chinese traditional culture education in moral curriculum. This is the first comprehensive book focusing on Chinese moral education curriculum reform. It will appeal to researchers, research students, and writers of moral education textbooks. It is also suitable for teacher training programs to help future teachers learn about moral education curriculum and help them effectively design and organize it for children’s morality study.

Power and Moral Education in China

Power and Moral Education in China
Author: Wangbei Ye
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2014-04-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0739175483

Chinese moral education reform in the last three decades represents the most significant decentralization of decision-making power since the foundation of People’s Republic of China in 1949. On one hand, it shows how de-politicized China’s moral education curriculum has become following the introduction of China’s “Open-door” policy and economic reforms and the resultant social transformations. On the other hand, it reveals persistent problems in moral education caused by political stresses and tight state control. To explain these tensions, Power and Moral Education in China analyzes the characteristics of power relationships in school moral education curriculum goal-setting, content and pedagogy selection, and implementation. The ultimate purpose is to identify not only what factors impact Chinese moral education curriculum decision-making at the school level, but also how and why. Through a multiple case study conducted during 2008 in three schools in Shenzhen City, and based on four major data collection instruments (observation, interview, questionnaire, and document review), Wangbei Ye analyzes how power relationships have evolved in school moral education, and how and why school power affects school moral education. Contrary to the common belief that Chinese schools are passively impacted by external forces in moral education curriculum development, this book suggests that school power is a “semi-emancipatory relationship” that acts as a major force shaping moral education. This means that although both the Chinese Communist Party and the state are positioned to control schools and moral education, schools nonetheless have the power to either negotiate for more influence, or partly emancipate themselves by collaborating with other external forces, responding to grass-root needs, empowering school teachers and adjusting internal school management style. This helps to explain the influence of Chinese schools in moral education and suggests a broader theory of power relationships in curriculum.

International Handbook of the Religious, Moral and Spiritual Dimensions in Education

International Handbook of the Religious, Moral and Spiritual Dimensions in Education
Author: Marian de Souza
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 1417
Release: 2007-06-04
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1402052464

In today’s pluralistic world, many cultures feel a shift in the relationship of people with religious traditions. A corresponding movement is a resurgence of interest in human spirituality. This Handbook presents the views of education scholars who engage these concepts every day, in a collection of essays reflecting the international state of the discipline. Out of these rises a vision for the emergence of a just and peaceful world.