he numbers are in and they don't look good." That was the assessment of the Josephson Institute of Ethics last October, when they conducted a survey about the moral standards of more than 20,000 middle and high school students. Almost half the young people reported stealing something from a store in the previous 12 months. In the same period, seven out of 10 cheated on an exam.
Should we be worried? Many observers say that we should. We see evidence of more antisocial behavior than ever among our youth—a sort of divorce between personal ethics and everyday behavior. Even among our most academically talented students, personal interest seems to triumph over the common good.
From across the political spectrum come calls to address the problem, as people from left, right, and center—however differently they may understand morality—recognize that building character is everyone's business. And, of course, in American society, whatever is everyone's business and involves children quickly leads us to the school.
The ideal that schools should produce people who are both smart and good has a venerable tradition in the United States. Most children in 19th century America learned their ABC's from McGuffey Readers, which were replete with stories of honesty, self-reliance, and courage. The Readers' author, William H. McGuffey, was a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Virginia. But by the early 20th century, schools were beginning to lose their comfort with such moral indoctrination. As America became a more pluralistic society, it was harder to come up with a shared notion of good behavior. Given the lack of agreement, moral education, it was argued, was best left to the individual child's family and religious institution. By the late 1970s, character development had all but disappeared as a goal of American public schools.
Several factors have swung the pendulum back in the other direction. First is the growing recognition that families and religious institutions need help. Competing with them for moral authority are peers and the mass media, which all too often lead young people in troubling directions. Schools have become necessary partners with parents in the race for a balancing influence.
Also, as educators, we have come to recognize the essential moral elements already present throughout the curriculum—especially in the literature we read, the history we discuss, the science we implement, the behaviors we model and reinforce, the relationships we develop, and the virtues we promote every day. Ignoring this moral substance in the interest of neutrality simply shirks our responsibility to educate persons whose thought has some well-reasoned content. The only real question left to us is whether we will approach the moral dimensions of the curriculum poorly or well; we cannot sidestep them.
he numbers are in and they don't look good." That was the assessment of the Josephson Institute of Ethics last October, when they conducted a survey about the moral standards of more than 20,000 middle and high school students. Almost half the young people reported stealing something from a store in the previous 12 months. In the same period, seven out of 10 cheated on an exam.
Should we be worried? Many observers say that we should. We see evidence of more antisocial behavior than ever among our youth—a sort of divorce between personal ethics and everyday behavior. Even among our most academically talented students, personal interest seems to triumph over the common good.
From across the political spectrum come calls to address the problem, as people from left, right, and center—however differently they may understand morality—recognize that building character is everyone's business. And, of course, in American society, whatever is everyone's business and involves children quickly leads us to the school.
The ideal that schools should produce people who are both smart and good has a venerable tradition in the United States. Most children in 19th century America learned their ABC's from McGuffey Readers, which were replete with stories of honesty, self-reliance, and courage. The Readers' author, William H. McGuffey, was a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Virginia. But by the early 20th century, schools were beginning to lose their comfort with such moral indoctrination. As America became a more pluralistic society, it was harder to come up with a shared notion of good behavior. Given the lack of agreement, moral education, it was argued, was best left to the individual child's family and religious institution. By the late 1970s, character development had all but disappeared as a goal of American public schools.
Several factors have swung the pendulum back in the other direction. First is the growing recognition that families and religious institutions need help. Competing with them for moral authority are peers and the mass media, which all too often lead young people in troubling directions. Schools have become necessary partners with parents in the race for a balancing influence.
Also, as educators, we have come to recognize the essential moral elements already present throughout the curriculum—especially in the literature we read, the history we discuss, the science we implement, the behaviors we model and reinforce, the relationships we develop, and the virtues we promote every day. Ignoring this moral substance in the interest of neutrality simply shirks our responsibility to educate persons whose thought has some well-reasoned content. The only real question left to us is whether we will approach the moral dimensions of the curriculum poorly or well; we cannot sidestep them.
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