Moral Education

Beyond the Teaching of Right and Wrong

By

Colin Wringe Keele University, UK

PHILOSOPHY AND EDUCATION

This volume is unique in providing a comprehensive discussion of moral education in the light of a range of ethical theories. In a balanced, thoughtful and penetrating account, all of these are shown to have a contribution to make to our moral understanding, and hence to moral education, even if none provides a definitive criterion of moral conduct. Though divine command is rejected as a source of moral justification, the possible contribution of some religious traditions to moral education is sympathetically considered. Fashionable relativism and recent moves towards inculcatory authoritarianism are both firmly rejected. The argument is philosophically rigorous throughout. Contemporary issues addressed include the links between personal morality and citizenship, including world citizenship, family values and sexual morality. A final chapter considers some of the practical concerns of the moral educator. The language is lucid and concise and, though written with professional philosophers of education and teacher educators in mind, the text will be readily accessible to practising teachers and those in training, as well as to members of the general public concerned for the moral education of the next generation.

This volume is for professional philosophers of education and teacher educators, as well as for school teachers and administrators, teachers in training and other education students.

Reviewers' comments:

"It cautions against the current tendency to reduce moral education to a set of specific rules and behaviours" [and is to be praised for] "its emphasis on the complexity of the moral life and its openness to a variety of views."

"Its critiques (of recent discussions of moral education) are well done." [It also]"contains an excellent review of current moral theory."

"I found these chapters valuable . . . because they provide first rate formulations and discussions of the views taken up. I do not know of a better review of contemporary moral theory. It is thoroughly well written and well argued...Wringe does an excellent job of developing an even handed critique. The final chapters on citizenship are also well done."

"I think the main contribution of this book is to pull together a body of philosophical material relevant to moral education in one place and to provide an invariably competent and readable discussion and critique of this material."

"In fact, it is superbly written."

Zusammenfassung
Casual reference to moral education or the manner in which young people should be brought up to behave may provoke a range of responses depending on the context and the personalities and ideological perspectives of those present. In the past, these responses sometimes included a Rousseauesque assertion of the inherent goodness of all human beings, which only needed to be left to emerge uncorrupted and undistorted, with the help of infinite loving-kindness on the part of teachers, all with the patience of saints. More extreme versions of this view may have comprised vehement protest at the very idea of the state, through its educational institutions, concerning itself at all with such matters, which were felt to be properly the province of the family or religious organisations, if not a matter of individual choice for young people themselves when they were grown up. Explicit proposals for moral education were invariably at risk of being perceived as indoctrination or an abuse of children's rights of freedom and autonomous development. More frequently these days, the response may be a succinct list of the speaker's own choice moral prescriptions, an assertion that these need to be inculcated in a clear and unequivocal way to all young people of whatever age, inclination or social experience and, often enough, a statement of the sanctions to be applied to those who do not or will not conform.

Inhalt

Responding to a Moral Crisis.- The Scope of Moral Education.- Morality and Religion.- The Status of Moral Judgements.- The Development of Moral Reasoning.- Maximising Happiness.- Rights and Rationality.- Virtues.- Communitarianism.- Caring.- Morality One or Many?.- The Outcomes of Moral Education.- Sexual Morality.- Families and Family Life.- Moral Education and Citizenship.- And Global Citizenship?.- Moral Education in Practice.