1.3Moral Learning InThe School
It would be a mistake to assume that all the moral learning that goes on outside
the school is unreflective and uncritical while
all that goes inside it is always educational in the full sense. Some parents
undoubtedly work to promote moral education of a rational kind. Whereas, much of
moral learning inside the school is of unreflective nature. Moral learning that takes
place inside the school is the consequence of the way in which teachers organize the
work of the pupils, react to the behaviour of the individuals, use punishment,
exercisediscipline, handle their classes etc. Moral mind-sets are caught from every
interaction of teachers and pupils.
School contributes to this kind of unreflective moral learning both by its deliberate
attempts and through unconscious absorption. Most of us have seen teachers saying
“be quite when I tell you to do so”. “We must not talk when we are in the class room”
and the like. All such injunctions provide wrong kind of basis for morality, for they all
are based upon awe of authority of the teacher. It is a kind of moral teaching which has
earlier been referred to as indoctrinatory and authoritarian.
Then there are many hidden sources of moral learning in school. Many mind-sets,
values etc. are assimilated by pupils in a largely unconscious manner. The moral
values, mind-sets that a teacher holds and the manner in which he holds these, will be
communicated to his pupils whether he wishes or not. The individual teachers’ values
will be plain from the way in which he sets about his business in the classroom, the
kinds of relationships he develops with his pupils, the way he organizes the learning,
the way he refers to their mistakes etc. his use or abuse of punishment; in general, his
whole approach to the job of teaching. The teacher who, without question or
explanation, requires a pupil who has not done his homework to write it out ten times
Comparision of Moral Reasoning of Youngsters with Teachers and Parents 51
by the next day, is clearly promoting a different kind of moral learning from the one
who asks whether any circumstances at home made it difficult for him to do it.
From all these sources, both inside and outside the school, children will acquire
moral mind-sets, beliefs and habits of behaviour. All moral learning must be converted
into moral education. We must accept that every pupil will have a content to his moral
learning and that we must as teachers contribute to such content, and also provide it a
‘form’ of moral education. Let us now see how we can provide the content and form of
moral education to the moral learning that the child has already obtained.