Public Schools Should Teach Morals and Ethics

714 Words2 Pages

Public Schools Should Teach Morals and Ethics

Jonathon Kozol writes, "Public schools in the U.S. do not exist to educate an ethical human being…Schools do exist to educate defeated, unprovocative, well-balanced human beings…". This statement is certainly true, but should public schools be required to teach students ethics and morality? I would argue that an education devoid of ethics and morals is detrimental to our society. Scholar Joao Coutinho writes in the Harvard Educational Review, "Education is either for domestication or for freedom…There is no neutral education."

The absence of educating morals and ethics in the classroom is actually a method of suppression. By purposely not informing students that they can develop their own set of moral and ethical standards the school is educating "defeated, unprovocative, well-balanced human beings", who will not challenge the system when change is what the society needs. The people who have held the power for (essentially) the United States' entire existence have built the public education system to train the public into thinkin...

Open Document