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Educational contribution to understanding moral development
Teaching morals in public schools
Educational contribution to understanding moral development
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A New Breed of Students
The American public school system does not prioritize the moral education of its students. As a result the majority of so-called "well educated society" is ethically challenged and morally desensitized. In Jonathan Kozol's book The Night Is Dark And I am Far From Home, Kozol develops a series of virtual indictments against the American public school system. According to Kozol students emerge both brainwashed and without a sense of purpose. In essence, many students do not understand the full potential of their intellectuality: "public education, for most children, is a twelve-year exercise of ethical emaciation" (Kozol 169). In the course of twelve years students have been sculpted to accommodate the needs of society; they have been conditioned to repress their own ethics and morality. In order to rectify this situation, schools should make the necessary adjustments to their philosophy. Instead of merely churning out "good citizens", public schools should take the time to educate "ethical human beings" for the benefit of humanity.
It seems as if the typical middle class citizen is practiced in the custom of ignoring the root cause of any educational issue today. The question of integrating moral and ethical components into the school structure is virtually taboo. The national standard is to escape all topics surrounding morality (i.e. religion, racial issues, and homosexuality etc…). As American citizens attempt to be politically correct all the time. It would be too risqué to start incorporating personal concepts into public institutions. Many would argue that as a country America has come incredibly far in terms of open mindedness in the past several decades. It is true that since Kozol's book was published, there have been tremendous advances in many aspects of social issues. However, resulting from this progress is the overall hesitancy to delve into any aspects of morality on an educational level. This hesitancy directly hinders the educated person from truly thinking as an individual.
Throughout this essay I will refer to the terms morality and ethics on several occasions. For clarity's sake I will explain what I think they represent. Morality is a learned characteristic. Society tends to equate moralism with the church. However, morality and ethics have less to do with religion than they do with a general philosophy on living. People can be without a religion and still be looked upon as moral beings. Morality simply has to do with being able to identify the difference between right judgements and wrong judgements.
Loewen’s idea that history textbooks are to blame is true. “Moreover, the processes have changed over time, for the class structure in America today is not the same as it was in 1890, let alone in colonial America. Yet in Land of Promise, for example, social class goes unmentioned after 1670” (Loewen 205). It is not possible to teach someone to be passionate about the issues that affect them, if they do not learn all of the facts. Kozol’s idea of “cutting class size and constructing new school buildings or providing universal preschool” (Kozol 414) are great ideas. However, Kozol’s ideas only address a part of the
Morals are set standards of right and wrong for society as a whole. One ’s self image of morals are what the individual thinks is right and wrong according to what he or she learns; however, this “Internal compass” can be influenced because society controls most of what they learn. One’s self image of morals allows an individual to provide compelling arguments, provides emotional stability and allows for an individual to have predetermined views of right and wrong; on account of the fact that said individuals choose to follow the revolutionary figures who provide a strong base for the creation of one’s self image of morals. In most cases, religion plays a major role in the creation of this aspect of identity; made evident in Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in which, through use of historical and religious examples, Dr. King justifies his participation in a non-violent protest to expedite the process of integration. Also, “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne shows how an individual’s self image of morals provide a strong emotional base and an unwavering sense of right and wrong. Even my own experiences have led me to believe that having a strong self image of morals allows an individual to be emotionally stable, and have a strong sense of right and wrong.
I believe that schooling should enable its students to identify the flaws in society and seek to take action to address these flaws. While I do not believe that society, as is, is terrible, I do acknowledge that there are clear flaws in many social and political systems in this country. Thus, I believe that schools should serve as the educational means for identifying these issues. I believe that society and schooling depend heavily on each other. Schooling should not serve as a mechanism to maintain the current social order – in fact, it should do the opposite. Society should look to schooling to fix its flaws, and schooling should view society as a permanent work in progress. Schooling cannot act as a politically neutral entity, meaning that school should act to advance the political views of its students. Schooling can interrupt social reproduction by being politically explicit and enabling its students to think about these social systems which may oppress certain groups. As Bourdieu
The realm of education tends to shine a negative light on younger generations labeling them as menace to society and ultimately excluding them without fair opportunity. Every child is different; some may require more attention from teachers than others. Schools tend to forget this unique characteristic of human life once standardized testing and grading comes into the equation.
By the 1950’s, Americans began to grow concerned about the morality of their children, especially since “the common school inculcates all Christian morals; it founds its morals on the basis of religion; it welcomes the religion of the Bible.”3 School boards across the region began to investigate ways to teach moral...
Many believe the two are interchangeable when speaking about morals and ethics, when the two in no way mean the same thing. Morals are subjective beliefs that belong to an individual, they are one’s own beliefs as to what is right and what is wrong. Ethics on the other hand are the rules that society creates and teaches regarding proper and improper, right and wrong, social behavior. Morals are internal, ethics are external, and they have been the unwritten rules of society as old as mankind, which govern proper social conduct based on the greater good of the popular belief. Philosophers have tussled over the nature of the concepts of morality and virtue, where they stem from as well as their true meanings.
John Taylor Gatto, in his essay “Against School: How Public Education Cripples our Kids, and why”, argues that the contemporary purpose of education in public schools is to produce “harmless electorate,” “a servile labor force,” and “mindless consumers” (28). According to Gatto, he is blaming public schools by explain that the purpose of education is to shape students to certain expectations and habits without their interests. He argues that students “want to be doing something real” (Gatto 23). Also, He explains that they produce a manageable working class and “mindless consumers” (27-28). His point is that students want to learn something new that help them in their life better than actual books from school which don’t apply their interests and their experience (23). So he recommends home-schooling as option to schools (24). Gatto claims that contemporary schools “adopted one of the very worst aspect...
The term “ethics” discusses how one’s morality needs to take acknowledge that of the rest of the members of the group or community t...
As I was reading a lot of things stood out to me. I never thought about public education being a topic to be discussed deeply. In the book A Place Called School Goodlad states, “Teachers frequently have perceived themselves as confronting difficult problems of teaching less motivated students: “some of our classrooms are loaded with youths who have no wish to be there, whose aim is not to learn but to escape from learning” (pg.12). Reading this section of the reading made me so sad because unfortunately I do see how different our generation is becoming, and that affects students at school. During an internship I had last year at an elementary school I remember hearing a student say, “learning is for losers”. I was really surprised with what
Ethics is the good in an individual and should not be confused or interchanged with morality. As morality are the ways that an individual can obtain good by following the laws of one’s society and the commandments of one’s religion. Although there are many great philosophers whom have impacted the world, multiples of them have extremist views about society, and therefore Aristotle is the philosopher whom I consider has a similar perspective of ethics as myself. He discusses how the “good life” comes from happiness and continues to explain to attain the “good life” it must be done as a community. Even though Aristotle is one of the eldest philosophers, his ideas of ethics are still relevant in today’s society.
Understanding this concept could be difficult if one does not realize what it means to have good morals. Morality is the distinction of knowing between right and wrong, good and bad. This judgment happens in everyday activities and can be as small as a little white lie or as big as killing someone. Studies show different ways of one’s morality forming. One way, researchers believe, is from one’s religion and what one believes in. If one is a Christian then they would learn from what God says is right or wrong in The Bible. If one is Islamic, one would believe what Allah says is right and wrong and what is in The Qur’an. One might also learn what is right from wrong from...
...ure, with the notion of 'the moral point of view', an impartial interpretation of the rightness of one's actions. 'Ethics' refers to the former; 'morality' to the latter.
What is ethics one may ask, well according to the oxford online dictionary ethics is moral principles that govern a person 's behavior or the conducting of an activity. That is what a person may view as right or wrong and good or bad. Ethics is very important in one’s society and each society as its own moral and principles governing certain issues and religion and philosophical ethics is no different. For centuries religion and religious principles has been criticized by different denominations across the world. Today I am going to speak on some moral principles of religion ethics whether they are absolute or relative to philosophical ethics, I will also be comparing religion ethics and philosophical ethics and last but not least I will speak
...the concept of what should we do or what we ought to do. Ethics is design to help one receive the life they want and live it with purpose. In certain situations it’s unclear as to consider it moral or immoral as ethics comes to play alongside morality. Some would argue the concept of what can be define as moral as immoral in conjunction with ethics by means of feelings, religion, law, culture, and science. Although they prove good standings they cannot be accounted for as those rationales are more so that of opinion that are altered daily depending of that of the individual. For this reason any act can be considered moral as we can use descriptive education depicting that of ethics, in which we live a life seeking how things should be and that it depends on the individual. So who is to say what’s right and what’s wrong. If it exists in the universe it can be moral.
When considering morality, worthy to note first is that similar to Christian ethics, morality also embodies a specifically Christian distinction. Studying a master theologian such as St. Thomas Aquinas and gathering modern perspectives from James Keenan, S. J. and David Cloutier serve to build a foundation of the high goal of Christian morality. Morality is a primary goal of the faith community, because it is the vehicle for reaching human fulfillment and happiness. Therefore, great value can be placed on foundations of Christian morality such as the breakdown of law from Aquinas, the cultivation of virtues, the role of conscience in achieving morality, and the subject of sin described by Keenan.