Author: Dominik Balg
Categories: Philosophy of Education, Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy
Word Count: 999
Moral guidance is an integral part of primary and secondary schooling. For instance, students are praised for being helpful and kind, and told that this is right and good. They are also told not to cheat, bully, and steal, as these actions are wrong and bad.
So schools are engaged in some forms of moral education.[1]
What are the proper goals of this moral education, and how should those goals be pursued?
Theories of moral education try to answer that question: they provide ideas about how we can, and should, try to teach morality and shape students into morally better people.
This essay introduces some of the most influential theories.
1. Directive vs. Non-directive Theories of Moral Education
Theories of moral education can be divided into directive and non-directive theories.[2]
According to directive theories, schools should directly teach students that some actions are wrong, that some actions are right, and tell them which is which and why. They should also teach students some about what’s fair and just, and some about what makes a person morally better and worse: what character traits are virtues and which are vices.
In contrast, non-directive theories do not aim to teach any specific moral views: they focus on developing students’ abilities to discover for themselves what’s moral. These theories do, however, usually propose that moral education involves giving students some knowledge, e.g., about moral concepts and arguments.
2. Directive Theories
There are several influential directive theories, each with a different proposal for which specific moral views should be taught in educational settings:
- knowledge-transmission theories recommend that schools should teach moral views that their proponents reasonably believe are known to be true[3];
- transcendental theories urge the teaching of values that are presupposed by a wide variety of moral outlooks, the moral foundations that people with different moral views on broader social and political issues agree on;
- pragmatic theories propose that schools should teach those moral views that are useful for well-functioning societies.[4]
These theories share a common idea: to become functioning members of society, to make responsible decisions, and to lead good lives, students need to know something about what’s right and wrong, and good and bad. They need to understand and accept some basic rules of conduct: e.g., they need to accept that one should not be violent or treat other people unfairly. Since moral rules can conflict with students’ immediate desires and preferences, we can’t expect students to make good moral decisions without explicit instruction: directive theories attempt to provide this guidance.[5]
While this all may seem plausible, there are, however, concerns about directive approaches. Beyond many of the basic rules of conduct for functioning classrooms and societies, moral issues are often controversial. Concerning ethical questions where there are reasonable disagreements, teaching specific answers as knowledge might amount to wrongful indoctrination, not moral education.[6] Furthermore, people often disagree on the details of which moral views everyone must accept or agree on—what might be “transcendent”—and which exact moral views people need to accept for a functioning society—what’s “pragmatic.”
Finally, even advocates of directive theories should agree students should also learn how to make responsible moral decisions independently: teaching some specific moral views won’t help them develop the skills they need to make well-reasoned moral judgments on their own.[7]
3. Non-Directive Theories
The common aim of non-directive theories of moral education is to enable students to reasonably and responsibly answer moral questions independently. Different theories propose different ways to achieve that aim.
3.1. Skill-based Theories
Skill-based theories aim at the development of critical reasoning skills.[8] These include the ability to give reasons for one’s views, to assess the quality of different arguments, and to reconsider one’s views in light of new evidence.[9] By developing such skills, students can better make their own reasoned moral judgments.
3.2. Emotion-based Theories
According to emotion-based theories, moral education should help students develop emotional skills that should guide their moral judgment: e.g., by engaging in role-plays or reading literary narratives and watching films, students can develop empathy and sympathy.[10] They can also learn how to use techniques like meditation or breathing exercises to cultivate attentiveness or feelings of compassion, hopefulness, or gratitude.[11] Such emotional skills might contribute to students’ own well-being and help them make better moral choices.
3.3. Character-based Theories
According to character-based theories, moral education should build moral character. This view is usually spelled out in terms of cultivating moral virtues such as honesty, courage, humility, and compassion[12]: by promoting the development of such virtues, teachers can help students to become better people.[13] For example, teachers can read and discuss texts of virtuous exemplars like Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King with their students to motivate them to emulate these persons’ attitudes or characters.[14]
4. Conclusion
Any particular choice between these theories of moral education must respect students’ autonomy and acknowledge that moral questions are often controversial: this will constrain the use of directive approaches, which recommend teaching specific moral views. But the fact that moral questions are often not controversial will constrain non-directive approaches also: if a student concludes from some attempt at non-directive moral education that there’s nothing ever wrong with cheating, bullying, and stealing, or that arrogance and cruelty are virtues, then that “moral education” has failed.
A general challenge is that successful moral education should ideally not just have an impact on how students think and feel, but also on how they act. People often believe they should act a certain way, but can’t bring themselves to do so. So students not only need to be brought to have appropriate moral beliefs—which often isn’t easy—they also need to learn to put their moral beliefs into practice: that’s often even harder, for anyone, at any age, and at any level of education.[15]
While many open questions remain, the above considerations should also give rise to some optimism: there are many theories that schools and teachers can experiment with as they try to help students become better, and hopefully genuinely good, people.
Notes
[1] This essay is about moral or ethical education, but what is morality or ethics anyway? (Philosophers often consider ethics and morality to be the same thing: what’s ethical is moral, what’s immoral is unethical, and so on.).
This is a challenging philosophical question, and one way to answer it—among many other ways—is that ethics or morality concerns behavior that ethical or moral theories would condemn as wrong, or support as right. Two influential ethical theories include consequentialism, which focusses on promoting overall good consequences, and Kant’s ethics, or Kantian deontology, which focuses on respecting persons and following rules that we’d accept that everyone follow. For introductions to these theories, see Consequentialism and Utilitarianism by Shane Gronholz and Deontology: Kantian Ethics by Andrew Chapman.
To better understand what morality and ethics are, readers are encouraged to review these and other morally theories, and reflect on how they might be relevant to personal ethical choices and ethical questions about law and social policy: many essays in the Ethics section of 1000-Word Philosophy can provide guidance in reflecting on particular ethical issues.
[2] For a more detailed explanation of the distinction between directive and non-directive theories of moral education, see, e.g., Hand 2014, 526; 2020, 14.
[3] Advocates of knowledge-transmission theories, of course, presume that there is some moral knowledge, or that some moral claims are known. While the idea of moral knowledge is sometimes controversial, many people would think and say that they know it’s usually good to be a helpful and kind person and that it’s always wrong to bully innocent people, and that stealing is usually, if not always, wrong: so most people seem to think there is some knowledge. For introductions to moral epistemology—the application of epistemology, or theory of knowledge, to moral claims—see Epistemology, or Theory of Knowledge by Thomas Metcalf and Ethical Realism by Thomas Metcalf.
[4] On knowledge-transmission theories see, e.g., Balg 2023. On transcendental theories, see, e.g., Hirst 1974 and Tiedemann 2019. On pragmatic theories, see, e.g., Hand 2014, 2018.
[5] For a more detailed discussion of the indispensability of moral education, see, e.g., Hand 2018, 7-10.
[6] On what indoctrination is and why it’s often problematic, see Indoctrination: What is it to Indoctrinate Someone? by Chris Ranalli. For an introductory discussion of how we might respond when reasonable people disagree in their views on an issue, see The Epistemology of Disagreement by Jonathan Matheson.
[7] See Moral Testimony by Annaleigh Curtis for a discussion of how gaining knowledge from others might not result in understanding that topic. Applied to moral education, the concern is that someone might know that some action is wrong, yet not understand why the action is wrong in a manner that will allow them to apply that understanding to other moral issues. A concern about directive theories of moral education is that they won’t provide this type of understanding.
[8] For a defense of skill-based theories, see, e.g., Meyer 2023, Musschenga 2009.
[9] See Critical Thinking: What is it to be a Critical Thinker? by Carolina Flores and Arguments: Why Do You Believe What You Believe? by Thomas Metcalf. These essays review critical thinking and argument analysis concepts and skills in general, and these concepts and skills can be applied to ethics and moral education.
[10] People often think of empathy as a moral virtue: it’s good to be a person who would respond with empathy. But many philosophers and psychologists define empathy as a specific emotional capability, i.e., the ability to imagine other people’s feelings (see, e.g., Eisenberg and Strayer 1987; Goldman 2006; Hoffman 2000). Against the background of such an understanding, empathy shouldn’t be conceived of as a virtue because virtues and capabilities are two different things: while the former indicate what a person would (not) do under certain circumstances, the latter indicate what a person is able to do (Battaly 2011). Given this, a person could use her empathetic capabilities for purposes that are morally problematic: e.g., to manipulate or exploit other people. So, empathy is not, in itself, a moral virtue: it is a virtue only when it is used to promote right and good ends, so to speak.
For a defense of emotion-based theories that specifically appeal to the emotion of empathy, see, e.g., Nussbaum 2003, Slote 2009. For a defense of an emotion-based theory that specifically appeals to the emotion of sympathy, see, e.g., Noddings 2002.
[11] For an emotion-based approach that specifically recommends the use of such techniques, see e.g., Ash et al. 2019.
[12] See Virtue Ethics by David Merry for a discussion of what virtues, or good character traits are
[13] For a defense of this view, see, e.g., Arthur et al. 2017, Kristjánsson 2015 or Miller 2022.
[14] For a discussion of this strategy, see, e.g., Vos 2017.
[15] Indeed, it has been observed that too many philosophers and ethicists (and other thinkers), even ones who develop moral theories and theories of moral education, sometimes have false, unjustified, or bad ethical views and/or behave badly. For discussion about how to respond to this, see Responding to Morally Flawed Historical Philosophers and Philosophies by Victor Fabian Abundez-Guerra and Nathan Nobis.
References
Arthur, J., Kristjánsson, K., Harrison, T., Sanderse, W., and Wright, D. (2017). Teaching Character and Virtue in Schools. Routledge: London.
Ash, M., Harrison, T., Pinto, M., DiClemente, R., and Negi, L. T. (2019). A model for cognitively‑based compassion training: theoretical underpinnings and proposed mechanisms. Social Theory & Health 19: 43–67.
Balg, D. (2023). Moral Disagreement and Moral Education: What’s the Problem? Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. Online first.
Battaly, H. (2011). Is empathy a Virtue? In: Amy Coplan, and Peter Goldies (ed): Empathy – Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 277-301.
Eisenberg, N., and Strayer, J. (1987). Empathy and its development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goldman, A. (2006). Simulating minds: The philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience of mindreading. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hand, M. (2014). Towards a Theory of Moral Education. Journal of Philosophy of Education 48(4): 519-532.
Hand M. (2018). A Theory of Moral Education. London: Routledge.
Hand, M. (2020): Moral Education in the Community of Inquiry. Journal of Philosophy in Schools 7(2): 4-20.
Hirst, P. (1974): Moral Education in a Secular Society. London: University of London Press.
Hoffman, M. L. (2000). Empathy and moral development: Implications for caring and justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kristjánsson, K. (2015): Aristotelian Character Education. Routledge, New York.
Meyer, K. (2023): Moral Education Through the Fostering of Reasoning Skills. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. Online first.
Miller, C. (2022): How Situationism Impacts the Goals of Character Education. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. Online first.
Musschenga, A. W. (2009). Moral Intuitions, Moral Expertise and Moral Reasoning. Journal of Philosophy of Education 43(4): 597-613.
Noddings, Nel (2002): Educating Moral People: A Caring Alternative to Character Education. New York: Teachers College Press.
Nussbaum, M. (2003): Cultivating humanity. A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tiedemann, M. (2019): Philosophical Education and Transcendental Tolerance. Analytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxis 39(2), 32-40.
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About the Author
Dominik Balg is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Mainz. He received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Cologne. He specializes in philosophy of education and philosophical issues in teaching philosophy. philpeople.org/profiles/dominik-balg
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