1. Course Overview

2. Introduction
Moral discourse is not some abstract, technical or occasional language spoken only by academics and professional ethicists—it is the common tongue of all human beings and it is practiced continually throughout our daily intercourse with one another. It is an implicit feature of nearly all human communication.
Just listen to television shows and the conversations you overhear in coffee shops. They are full of judgments and loaded with moral imperatives. We are constantly making moral pronouncements about our actions and our expectations of others. “She said she would but she let me down. I am not going to blah, blah, and blah!

3. How do we acquire our moral values
How do we acquire our moral values? How do they guide our judgments and what is their relationship to our behavior?
How is morality related to our nature? How is it reflective of our culture and our religious commitments?
How do such commitments inform our views about moral education, for the good of the individual and the good of society?
These are among the most important and enduring questions in the history of education.

4. Is an individual born with some sense of right and wrong, or is this knowledge that must be learnt from experience?
Notice that in the nature-nurture debate biology and culture play a part on both sides. Even the strongest environmentalist accepts that human beings are born with the capacity to learn; while those who look to rich innate powers readily accept the mediating role of culture.

5. Two perspectives can be identified:
Human beings learn their values from the society into which they are born.
Human beings come equipped with moral intuitions.
Both positions have a long history with compelling arguments supporting their claims. They have underwritten vacillating approaches to moral instruction in the history of American education

6. Perhaps the most powerful statement of the cultural learning theory stems from John Locke.
Inquiring if we have any innate ideas he observes the plurality of different values embraced by the world’s cultures. Where are the universals? Do not the different people’s of the world develop very different values and beliefs?
His conclusion; all knowledge comes through experience. Character is shaped from without, through the development of habits.

7. Locke’s environmental view of human nature stands in stark contrast to the assumptions of Calvinist teachers.
Convinced that the child was born into sin, they set out to break the will and teach submission to external authority, the word of God as revealed by the divine truths of the Bible.

8. "Train up a child in the way wherein he should go: And when he is old, he will not depart from it." Prov. 22:6. Here are John Wesley’s thoughts on this essential task Thus may we counteract, and, by the grace of God assisting us, gradually cure, the natural Atheism of our children. But what can we do to cure their self-will? It is equally rooted in their nature, and is, indeed, the original idolatry, which is not confined to one age or country, but is common to all the nations under heaven.

9. A wise parent should begin to break their will the first moment it appears. In the whole art of Christian education there is nothing more important than this. The will of the parent is to a little child in the place of the will of God. Therefore studiously teach them to submit to this while they are children, that they may be ready to submit to his will when they are men.

10. Fundamentally opposed to Calvinism, but sharing its views on the origins of human nature, Horace Mann saw the inherent goodness of the child. God had given men and women the innate powers necessary to life. These included instincts such as sympathy, love of children, and benevolence. It also included a sense of religious veneration. The problem was that—as Rousseau argued—society corrupted these powers. The job of the educator was to train the mind to act as God intended through pedagogic practices that developed rather than frustrated our innate powers.

11. Progressive Era Social Science
The idea that enculturation within society is the basis of an individual's value system was given its most articulate expression by the French sociologist, Emile Durkheim.
For Durkheim all societies create rules, traditions, and value systems to maintain order and fulfill economic needs. Morality is particular to these specific forms—it has no independent or universal existence.
Morality then is a social construct and exists only for individuals who live within the group.

12. In this context moral rules are embedded in authoritative structures—including state and religious institutions—that exert a power over individuals, obliging them to fulfill social duties. As the child develops into an adult they are gradually internalized and the individual acts autonomously according to their own moral conscience.

13. More specifically, facing the problem of establishing social solidarity in an industrializing nation marked by an increasing division of labor, Durkheim believed that schools must teach children the discipline to constrain their desires; attachment to the group; and a sense of individual responsibility.

14. Durkheim’s sociological arguments also proved popular with American social scientists during the first decades of the Twentieth century. Influenced largely by behavioral psychology and the notion that experience was all important, a generation of anthropologists sought to demonstrate how different cultures gave form to human experience.

15. For example, in Patterns of Culture Ruth Benedict argued that all moral values are relative. Morality is culture dependent and cannot be applied to people in other situations. She supported this relativistic position with examples of extreme variations in customs, manners, taboos, habits, and attitudes of the world’s many peoples.

16. Today, Americans have a much greater appreciation for cultural diversity and the right of individuals to their own views—to religious freedom and freedom of thought. We don’t impose our views on others, and expect that others respect the integrity of our opinions—or so we say. This also goes along with the basic belief that we get our values from our social and religious upbringing—from the lessons received in the home, the church, and the broader community.

17. If we are products of enculturation then—logically at lest—we cannot expect what seems so good and true to us to apply to others with very different social and religious backgrounds.
We thus embrace a principle of tolerance.
But for many such tolerance is another name for moral apathy.
How can we accept the seemingly heinous moral practices witnessed around the world as just so many different moral practices each with their own internal integrity?

18. Are so called honor killings really moral imperatives
Are so called honor killings really moral imperatives? Can we turn a blind eye to the oppression of women and brutal treatment of minorities in third world countries? If society justifies racism, sexism, and classism, does that make it right?
It we don’t accept this in our society, why should we accept it in others?
The ability to critically address and evaluate such questions is a central concern for any effort to educate citizens for life in a democratic society.

19. One popular answer to the moral skeptic is the assertion that every normal individual has the power to determine the difference between right and wrong: that we are born with a moral sense to tell us good from bad, even if we do not choose to use it. The moral sense doctrine also has a long history. Most notably it was invoked by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence to justify the emancipation of America from British rule.

20. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Here is the clearest statement that rights exist independently of society and that government may, indeed must, be held up to moral evaluation.

21. What is the nature of these moral intuitions?
Historically there were two broad responses; sentiment and reason.
David Hume argued that our actions arise from feelings.
Reason can inform us of the means to an end but it cannot motive us to action.
That is the role of the emotions.

22. For Hume, the sentiments provide feelings of approval (esteem and praise) and disapproval (blame and disgrace) which determine our sense of the good. Witnessing a cruel act generates a feeling of injustice and this, not abstract principles, underlies our moral judgments.
He avoids relativism by suggesting these feelings are common to all men and women, part of our human nature.

23. The opposite path to morality—based upon the dictates of reason—was taken by Immanuel Kant. For Kant, morality has nothing to do with emotion, but the intent to do the right thing as reveled by rational judgment. Do we treat others equally? Do we recognize their rights? Do we regard them as our moral equals, or as means to our own selfish goals?

24. After Darwin, scientists sought an explanation of such intuitions through inherited instincts. But with the rejection of Lamarckian use inheritance the logic of natural selection did not appear a promising mechanism for explaining innate moral concepts. How could the struggle for survival account for human altruism? Unable to explain moral values through natural selection, by the 1920s social scientists turned to enculturation.

25. Similar debates have continued through the Twentieth Century, yielding a variety of psychological theories that vacillate between nature and nurture. Behaviorism stressed environment and the reinforcement of approved actions. Freudian psychology talked of constraining dangerous biological drives and the development of a healthy personality. Developmental psychologists, such as Piaget and Kohlberg, constructivist explanations of Kantian reason. Feminists focused upon feelings of care—but are they innate or learned?

26. Current Psychological Arguments The current trend is to offer evolutionary accounts of our moral instincts. People are presented with ethical dilemmas in order to find psychological universals embedded in the neural structures of the brain. Many psychologists believe the picture that emerges is a Darwinian version of Hume’s sentimentalism. This has important implications for moral education in the Twenty-first Century.

27. Consider the Trolley Problem. What would you do in the two scenarios?
Would you divert the runaway trolley, allowing one person to die rather than five?
Would you throw someone in front of the runaway trolley to save five lives?

28. Here is how people respond: Between 80-90% are willing to divert the train in case A; but only 10-20% will sacrifice the fat man in case B. It turns out that men are more likely or push the fat man than females are. As too are hospital workers. But on the whole, intuitions are pretty constant by age, economic status, and ethnicity. Importantly, respondents are found to be adamant in their views but struggle for reasons. Judgment appears to come before thought. It is also accompanied with emotional conviction. The good news is that our fast thinking can be overcome by slow, deliberative reason.

29. The Educational Challenge Given the diversity and global reach of modern life—the world-wide impact of religion, science, politics, and culture—moral education should have a prominent place in the American school. More then ever, we need citizens who can weigh their intuitions and particular beliefs against the moral imperatives of rights, welfare, and justice central to the democratic life. If these complex skills are not taught in school where can they be learnt? Yet in a world and a nation seriously threatened by conflicting values, moral education has virtually disappeared from the curriculum. What remains, under the banner of Character Education, is not only disorganized and poorly administrated, for many it is manifestly contrary to the idea of critically-informed citizenship.

30. Moral Education Since the 1960s How do schools prepare children to deal with the moral challenges of modern life? Consider the social problems that engulfed America in the 1960s. Questions of diversity and democracy came to the fore—along with new psychological theories explaining the moral life of the child.

31. Values Clarification was proposed in an effort to recognize and give voice to different cultural viewpoints. Its goals were: To help students become aware of and identify their own values and those of others; To help students communicate openly and honestly with others about their values; To help students use both rational thinking and emotional awareness to examine their personal feelings, values, and behavior patterns

32. More influential was the work of developmental psychologists
More influential was the work of developmental psychologists. With the cognitive revolution of the late 1950s and 1960s psychologists started to look at the development of morality in terms of mental processes. Here Piaget’s work later developed by Kohlberg came into the forefront. They focused on the judgments children make.

33. Piaget maintained that individuals construct meaning based upon their social interactions. Development is not the unidirectional “society shapes the child,” but rather the product of the interactive “society-individual dialectic.”

34. Piaget’s goal was to challenge Durkheim’s influential account of moral education.
If moral authority comes from society, Durkheim must accept that different societies will arrive at different moral rules. This suggests moral relativism and the denial of any universal principles by which participants or outsiders can judge social conventions. It also paints the individual as a passive and accommodating agent unable to question of challenge the social order.

35. For Piaget this was a far too static view of society
For Piaget this was a far too static view of society. Durkheim’s model could not account for the dynamics of change.
Although complaint to adults in early life, Piaget noted how the teenager developed an independent sense of right, justice, and welfare that could be used to criticize family life and social rules.
The adolescent, he argued, could be both rebellious and idealistic.

36. As relationships with peers develop, bonds with adults change
As relationships with peers develop, bonds with adults change. Among children everyone is an equal so concepts of fairness, justice and welfare emerge in their cooperative play.
Mutual respect replaces unilateral respect.
Duty comes from adult authority, justice from free consent within the group.

37. Piaget’s writings on moral development were published early in his career, before his mature stage theory was established. Kohlberg thus sought further the cognitive program by integrating mental and moral development more effectively. The result was a more explicit hierarchy of cognitive stages that mapped the kinds of judgments children made as they progressed from heteronomous to autonomous morality.

38. How does the child solve moral problems
How does the child solve moral problems? Kohlberg identified three levels, each with two sub-stages:
Level 1 (Pre-Conventional) 1. Obedience and punishment orientation (How can I avoid punishment?) 2. Self-interest orientation (What's in it for me?)
Level 2 (Conventional) 3. Interpersonal accord and conformity (The good boy/girl attitude) 4. Authority and social-order maintaining orientation (Law and order morality)
Level 3 (Post-Conventional) 5. Social contract orientation (rules were agreed) 6. Universal ethical principles (Principled conscience)

39. With this sophisticated account of the developing child's mind Kohlberg attacked then current approached to moral education in American schools. He had two targets: moral training and values clarification. He forcefully attacked the idea that teachers could imprint children with a “bag of virtues” through behavioral reinforcement. Not only had this approach proven ineffective—as shown by Hartshorne and May’s research—but it boarded on indoctrination: Whose values are to be instilled?

40. Conversely, he rejected the ethical relativity of the values-clarification approach. Assuming there were no universal principles, this program focused on letting children express and coordinate their views together with developing toleration for others. The teacher would serve as an impartial moderator; their ideas were not to be imposed on the child.
For Kohlberg this went against his psychological findings and undermined the very meaning of deliberation in a democratic community.

41. Form the cognitive developmental perspective, moral education has to facilitate superior forms of moral reasoning. To this end he devised tasks that would promote qualitative changes in the way children think. His method was to engineer cognitive dissonance, a disequilibrium (in Piagetian terms) between the child’s view of the world and some problematic situation. This would help the child order their thought at the next stage.

42. Objections to Kohlberg’s theory came from several directions
Objections to Kohlberg’s theory came from several directions. I note just two prominent arguments. A Internal Some argued that Kohlberg's stages are culturally biased. Do the structures of individualistically-oriented Western societies forged in the philosophical tradition of Enlightenment reason apply to non-Western collectivist cultures? Even more influential has been the criticism that Kohlberg's theory is sexist. This argument was developed by one of Kohlberg's own co-authors, Carol Gilligan. Noting that Kohlberg's stages were derived from experiments conducted only with boys, she argued that they represented a male-only orientation to morality that prioritized abstract principles of rights and justice.

43. This conception of morality she argues fails to capture the distinctly female approach to moral problems. Women, Gilligan maintains, focus less on rights than relationships; they develop an ethic of care over an ethic of justice. The ideal is not impersonal fairness but compassionate ways of living. In contrast to the abstract arguments of men, women focus on the situation and practical outcomes.

44. Today psychologists recognize that both males and females make judgments based on both justice and care. But the degree to which such orientations are gender identified remains hotly debated. Gilligan came under severe criticism from feminists who thought she was advancing a form of biological essentialism that would undermine women’s call for equality in the workplace. Would insistence on female ways of knowing, especially their unique power of caring not cement traditional stereotypes and consign women to lives of labor in the nurturing professions of teaching and nursing?

45. B External
Kohlberg is often credited for bringing American educators face to face with principled morality. At the time of the Civil Rights Movement teachers could no longer assert that social rules were necessarily right and just. They had to be examined and defended.
Of course some critics found this very troubling. Is it not socially dangerous for people to place their own principles above society and the law?

46. So it is that Kohlberg has been attack from the political Right
So it is that Kohlberg has been attack from the political Right. Rather than asking children to make complex judgments in a challenging society, conservative critics demanded a return to character education. Children, they believe, should be taught to act virtuously not expected to reason between right and wrong.
For Conservatives, society has been in a state of decline since the liberal upheavals and excesses of the 1960s and 1970s. Putting self-interest of over the good of the community, by the final decades of the Century individualism had dragged American Society into a state of moral crisis.

47. Civic engagement, personal responsibility, manners, and morals, we are told, are all on the wane.
Religion has declined and family values are in need of repair.
Personal character has been corrupted by the search for easy and facile pleasures in an electronically exciting consumer driven society.

48. Sociologists talked of a poverty of values that arose from the breakdown of the family and life in the squalid ghettos of the inner city. A new underclass seemed to be emerging. How could children learn important life lessons from a single mother? Add to this the drug culture and violence of urban life, and many feared for the future of society.

49. And what were society’s leaders doing
And what were society’s leaders doing? Particularly troubling for conservatives were the messages heard on television and the liberal media. Hollywood elites promoted relativism and an indulgent, self-serving lifestyle. The family was either dysfunctional or non-traditional—leading to Dan Quale’s attack on Murphy Brown.
How would such lessons help people develop the habits and values that would lead them out of poverty?

50. Laying out a more moral past, nostalgic calls were issued for the restoration of civic virtue. William Bennett, Ronald Regan’s Secretary of Education, took up the challenge, issuing a strong criticism of Kohlberg. Bennett demanded a focus on action rather than thought. He did not want children deliberating over the right course of action; he wanted to instill appropriate behavior through the development of moral habits in the early years of life.

51. To this end he promoted the role of moral stories (he published The Book of Virtues and The Moral Compass) as life lessons and the modeling influence of parents, teachers and other significant adults in a child’s life.
Character education had to develop traits such as honesty, loyalty, patriotism, and kindness essential for American citizenship.

52. Cruse the internet and you will find numerous character education programs. Many, like Character Counts, are supported by business. Others are particular to schools, districts, or states. What they share is an effort to capture approved behavior in a list of values or virtues. These become the core themes that are supposed to be internalized by children and used to guide their behavior in all situations. While often presented as universal principles of right conduct each list seems to differ. Also problematic is the application and evaluation of these pillars of conduct in the school. The result is a hodgepodge of ineffective and poorly implemented schemes that seem to have very little educational impact.

53. Moreover, many find such programs deeply problematic on moral and political grounds.
Take for example the Character Counts program sponsored by Chick-fil-A. Are the six pillars of trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship are designed to create good workers, or democratic citizens?
Indeed, the is little different to the social virtues offered by efficiency oriented theorists of the Progressive Era. Moreover, the reward system (involving coupons for conduct) raises troubling questions about our value system. Should Johnny be good for fries?

54. Larry Nucci presents a more critically driven vision of moral education. For Durkheim morals are derived from social conventions that serve to regulate the community: they are local and arbitrary. But as Piaget and Kohlberg argue moral principles carry an “ought” that transcends situations: they are universal and prescriptive. These imperatives are revealed in our basic intuitions and explain why we get upset when we are treated unfairly. A third domain of values can be identified with the personal wishes of individuals. Moral dilemmas result from the clash of principles, conventions, and personal desires.

55. Children understand that conventions only apply with a given society and cannot be applied to other cultures. They also know that morals are not based upon rules; they are not a means to an end; and they hold everywhere and for everyone. Conventions are justified in terms of the authority behind the rule, a parent, the government, the church, and so on. Morals are justified in terms of the harm done to an individual, the infringement of a person’s rights or the unfair treatment of others. Children can recognize a wrong even when there is no social rule, or when rules are inherently bad.

56. Nucci argues that such distinctions are clearly understood and displayed by children as young as four years old. And this holds true around the world for all cultures and religions.
Based upon these distinctions Nucci believes that moral education can be conducted in a secular space with the ethical principles that form a common part of all children’s psychological experience.

57. What right have we to criticize the treatment of women in other cultures? For Nucci we can enter judgments about such practices by examining the power structures (race, class, gender etc.) maintained though customs and laws. In this case patriarchal bonds that justify men’s privileges and women’s subservience. This does not mean dismissing another person’s values because they differs from yours, but it does mean holding up their conventions to the measure of moral principles—universal ideas of rights, welfare and justice—as indeed we should hold up our own values. Such critical conversations, Nucci concludes, are essential to all who would be educated for democratic citizenship in an multicultural society.