Which teacher is most clearly promoting moral development in his or her students?

Volume 28, Number 1
January/February 2012

Promoting Moral Development in Schools

How can schools inspire and teach students to be moral people—to care about and take responsibility for others, to think clearly about and pursue justice, to sacrifice for important principles? This is not a trivial question. Polls indicate that about 70 percent of public school parents want schools to teach “strict standards of right and wrong,” and 85 percent want schools to teach values. And research suggests that many overworked, frayed parents, doubting their capacities as moral mentors, are looking to schools to take on a larger role in their children’s moral growth.

In response to this demand, a billion-dollar character education industry has cropped up in the last few decades, including myriad organizations marketing packaged character education programs to schools. Many of these programs are devoted to inculcating values such as self-discipline, responsibility for others, and honesty. Some of these initiatives are carefully considered, rigorous, and tuned in both to children’s developmental experiences and to teachers’ needs and capacities. But most of these undertakings appear to have little or no impact on children’s moral lives.

What is moral development, and what types of school programs and efforts are likely to promote it? Why do some school efforts succeed while others fail, and what are the essential principles and ingredients of successful efforts? How can these principles and ingredients realistically be implemented and scaled in a school reform era intensely focused on academic achievement?

Cultivating a Moral Identity
Several years ago, I asked my six-year-old daughter and a few of her friends a question posed in a popular character education program: “Should you be honest with your teacher if you forget your homework?” One of my daughter’s friends hesitated slightly but then piped up: “Do you want me to tell you what you want to hear, or do you want me to tell you the truth?” Emboldened, another friend stated flatly, “I know that you want me to say I should be honest, but nobody is honest about that.”

Many schools post values on walls and reiterate the importance of values in classrooms, during assemblies, and at other school events. But the challenge is not simply moral literacy—in fact, research indicates that most students, like my daughter’s friends, know values such as honesty and respect by the time they are five or six years old. Because they know these values, many children—especially adolescents—feel patronized by lectures about values. And some children, as the question asked by my daughter’s friend suggests, become nimble at simply parroting back what adults want to hear.

This is an excerpt from the Harvard Education Letter. Subscribers can click here to continue reading this article.

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For Further Information

For Further Information

J. D. Hunter. The Death of Character: Moral Education in an Age Without Good or Evil. New York: Basic Books, 2000.

T. Lickona. “A More Complex Analysis is Needed.” Phi Delta Kappan 79, no. 6 (1998): 449–454.

E. Schaps, E. F. Schaeffer, and S. N. McDonnell. “What’s Right and Wrong in Character Education Today: Why Three Advocates Are Worried about the Movement.” Education Week 21, no. 2 (2001): 40, 44.

N. Walser. “R is for Resilience.” Harvard Education Letter 22, no. 5 (2006): 1–3. Available online at www.hepg.org/hel/article/309

Abstract

There are at the present time two major approaches to moral education which have arisen out of the theory and research of Kohlberg and his collegues. The first to appear, the moral discussion approach, began as a result of the efforts of Moshe Blatt, a doctoral student of Kohlberg's who attempted to stimulate development through the discussion of hypothetical dilemmas in his Sunday School class. The second, the just community approach, orignated in a women's correctional institution and was later applied to high school settings. The moral discussion approach clearly grew out of Kohlberg's psychological investigations into moral development. The very dilemmas which Kohlberg used to assess an individual's moral stage were appropriated for classroom use in order to stimulate stage development. The just community approach while drawing in part from Kohlberg's psychological research represents other important theoretical considerations, considerations which have important implictions for future research in moral development and education. Il y a actuellement deux conceptions majeures de l'enseignement de la morale qui sont issues des théories et recherches de Kohlberg et de ses collègues. La première, la discussion morale: résultat des efforts de Moshe Blatt, un disciple de Kolhberg qui dans sa classe de l'Ecole du dimanche essayait de stimuler la discussion en proposant d'hypothétiques dilemmes. La seconde, la "communauté juste", est née dans un institut correctionnel pour femmes et fut ensuite adaptée à l'école secondaire. La discussion morale est manifestement issue des recherches psychologiques de Kohlberg dans le domaine de la morale. Les dilemmes que Kohlberg utilisait pour établir le niveau moral d'un individu ont été utilisés dans les salles de classe afin de stimuler la morale. Quoique dérivant en partie des recherches psychologiques de Kohlberg, la "communauté juste" inclut d'autres considerations théoriques importantes, qui auront d'importantes implications dans de futures recherches sur le développement et l'enseignement de la morale.

Journal Information

The Journal of Educational Thought promotes speculative, critical, and historical research concerning the theory and practice of education in a variety of areas including administration, comparative education, curriculum, educational communication, evaluation, instructional methodology, intercultural education, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. The Journal is international in scope and qualitative in nature. It serves a broad readership: specialists in the areas mentioned, scholars, and the public in general. La Revue de la pensée Éducative a pour but de promouvoir la recherche fondamentale, critique et historique autour des questions que soulève la théorie ou la pratique de l'éducation, dans les domaines tels que l'administration scolaire, l'éducation comparée, la programmation, la communication, l'évaluation, la didactique, l'éducation interculturelle, la philosophie, la psychologie et la sociologie de l'éducation. La Revue, d'envergure internationale, dessert un large éventail de lectuers: spécialistes, chercheurs, profanes.

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