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Moral Education and Moral Choice Educational Considerations Volume 6 Number 1 Article 6 9-1-1978 Moral education and moral choice George Dixon The Ohio State University Follow this and additional works at: https://newprairiepress.org/edconsiderations Part of the Higher Education Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Dixon, George (1978) "Moral education and moral choice," Educational Considerations: Vol. 6: No. 1. https://doi.org/10.4148/0146-9282.1972 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Educational Considerations by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Dixon: Moral education and moral choice Are traditional foundational Most people concerned with moral education are lamillar with the Individual/collective dilemma In rerms of disciplines adequate to the two beliefs that seem to work in opposition to one another. On the one hand, we assert that actions which educational experiences they can be judged as moral or immoral necessarily Involve in· analyze? dividual choice. As moral agents, we can be neither praised nor blamed If we have no degree of choice or con· trol over our decisions and actions; one of the defining charac teristics or ac tions that we call "moral" Is just this fact of individual responsibility. Ethical theories which focus on this factor of individual responsibility and duty share a Kantian emphasis on the formal aspects of moral decisions. Moral But there is obviously more to moral decision than in· dividual duty and private choice. We must also assert that moral decisions are Influenced by circumstances outside education the individual, circumstances that are connected with the time and place of choice, with specific rather than formal factors, with the history of the individual as it is situated between past experiences and expectations for the future. and moral Moralists of the utilitarian persuasion would, in fact, calculate just such factors to the point of explaining how an individual is most likely to decide a moral question. Their emphasis on the collective or social side of the choice relationship aligns them rather clearly with the methods and emphasis of the social sciences. It is in this apparent conflict between Kantian or formalistic ethical theories and their utilitarian or naturalistic counterparts that we find one source of difficulty for the moral educator con· cerned with the foundations of his field. For example, if the moral educator looks to philosophy to clarify this relationship between Individual choice and social Influence, he finds that the problem by George Dixon gets worse before It gets better. Philosophers In this cen· tury, with a few notable exceptions, have regarded moral The Ohio State University decisions as matters of private preference and individual feeling. They have preserved the necessarily Individual aspect or morality, but only at the cost of putting most moral questions beyond reasonable discussion and public evaluation. The result for moral educators has too often A question of continuing importance for the foun. • been one of reducing their task to helping students clarify dations of education is whether the traditional loun· their individual values, and while this Is a worthy vocation, dational disciplines are adequate to the educational ex· it just begins to scratch the surface of the process of periences they help us analyze. Of course, this is not just a moral choice and value formation. For such clarification concern ol educators; researchers in loundational areas must Ignore the social nature of morality; moral con· are also led, at least occasionally, to ask how adequate sensus becomes little more than the tabulation of private their methods are for the analysis of human experience interests. After individual value preferences have been generally. But the question seems more persistent and clarified, the teacher must indeed be ready to move on bothersome for ed ucators who use the methods of quickly to the next topic of discussion; modern sub· philosophy and the social sciences to understand jectivlst theories of morality offer little help on the tough ed ucational experiences. Somehow the greater need 10 issues that logically follow Individual clarification. connect theory with educational practice makes the The moral educator can tu rn to the social sciences for question or methodological adequacy more immediate for help in understanding how external factors condition the educational researcher. who can't as easily push this moral choice, for the social sciences seem to concentrate con.earn into the background or wait for another gen· on exactly those social or external factors that the values eratlon of research before translating theory into practice. clarification approach tends to ignore. But that strength in Certainly II is more convenient to push concern for explaining how and why people choose and act as they do method into the background and get on with the research comes to the social sciences at Its own high cost. For the at hand, for such problems are perennially troublesome conclusion that seems implicit In most social science and usually tied into classical philosophical paradoxes research is that external lactors determine Individual that defy quick resolution. One such paradox that is decisions and actions; the moral responsiblllty that especially troublesome in education generally and par­ educators seek to enhance turns out to be an illusion. ticularly puzzling in moral education is the In· From a social science perspective, actions can be ex­ dividuallcollective relationship mentioned by Professor plained and even predicted, but In the course of such Klohr in his essay " Emerging Foundations for Curriculum research we seem to remove the action ooing studied Theory.'" from the realm of morality. That Is, we can hardly praise or 20 WVC/\ TIONAL CONSIDERATIONS Published by New Prairie Press, 2017 1 Educational Considerations, Vol. 6, No. 1 [1978], Art. 6 blame a person for " having made a choice" if that person has had a choice in the same way that Skinner's hen has had an egg.' So far in this analysis I have stretched the opposing Ct(IMtht $:;1')1>~ M >'.(>"U !4t: of th ~ '.1 :.;;1 SM1 " I0111. l!M•Jt poles of the individual/collective paradox, si mplifying "'"'~"PP.::1.it'lll>~ ()'<~C10!J~ll<.'~S ~11:1 ~l'l:~r llfC each position and ignoring those developments in t. ;1.111l$l•>!" t.· l. IJJ~lmnt h.- 1'1;11 iSl•,,,;nt n~Nr~I ~nd Ob ~IC'.Ct ;,( j•l\'o.'li 1,1r1> }0(flll . .... philosophy and the social sciences which have worked to 1:,) i;• i ~11 ~ll"I~· :•".).111 Ctltll1 \'I(.\' Ylf'Ol'V.>t<"· t C.:" tNIP·lll': "ll• (<c11rw1tio.-. (If p~IC~I mitigate the split. Unfortunately, such developments tend :1~ntl Th11v;I!~ ; , illH"Y"l>:n'.41 i . ··~.id,. ictt.>0:1 •tlkt:is.. il1 plN~ .'l't rf1'"'<1~ H (.inlSHtertMht \':I) to fall outside the mainstream of the various foundational t1m;1v~'> t•cMn9t disciplines, so that it is usually Quite difficult for 3. 9:-od•:<O)' J . (tl•~"C~ po'IWHy Yl\f~cr.ct ode111,o,:1c11 l'WlNilt,f t,) llt'!"'):.0"$ educators to get in touch with them. This seems to me to V!l'0')1• ')o•H I • SN•t' no• ~l'CllP~ :lb f'1 i11; • ~tl'•'<.1~\/(l(O explain why those curriculum theorists called Recon· (Oll~lttc•.):Cr-'• t'\IRJI :hf11~lot. ~0::t)rlV~t1et: ceptualists often look outside mainstream social science of 1~·111 1111~ rertcrs of t~t' and sometimes to disciplines like literature and art for II, 1 ~.. ..~ 1.:<•CN:I< ~ccl~I ""'«->· ~1H tc111 111'\:0r C." IM• '"Kn· h ~· (l! "" nHl«t) con:vn;ty tot.;•.m l•tcrn1111:c-11 red irection; they deliberately seek out researchers "~"HtiW S.,~:~t'I working on the fringes or crossing disciplinary lines In or· wd <1 l · s. cld l llW~,t (itl.'CMlll> M s. ~ der to reconceptualize problems that have resisted 1:r COl>Ull~t<al ~..., IK'~! i <; -1- .., ,. ror:~t·,);cf'o· l\'\j•li~ r~rt traditional solutions. Thus we might say that even though tl<n•l T~(IM lJi•lt 6. " tiliMI· some philosophers and social scientists have begun to pd nc111b (ld~(Ol,l \IM :,, no;nl !'"l.'l'::li• jr.MCUOll pr'Vtt \' ~\'r)t"' address the individual/collective paradox and have un· d tllt (Ill>• U SoCll covered some promising directions for resolution, the '\clcnc.:) J paradox is still very much with us. And it proves to be especial ly debilitating In moral education, which has at its $(;,rte: t"M( fttc ticllh<r<'• ' <-:.o o h :~ Cu;11·., ' fa H.co-:"orc l'i~ll~l, t<l· . e~'"'N !\.;ot:~~,1~ ~.X ~<..:t.•·wZ1>$·~ ·:»:.. 'tort, :\I?!), 1<1\ll\' 1, DoHl nHl«i 01 aor~I center the problematic relationship between individual $lo)~$. choice and determining social circumstances. • ltN11~ttod l<i ~It~ K.-..~r.::. •1oqr<1 l C\ov~l111ni'<1t ~M i>;O !<tnUtf: ·' tl <1r1 lit<1:i~11 , • One philosopher and social theorist whose recent !!.!!l· 21: p ;)~. work may be helpful to moral educators is Jurgen Haber­ mas. For a variety of reasons, his work is not generally cision through a later adherence to social conventions known in this country. although it is widely read in his own to a more reflective or " post·conventional" stage. (See country of Germany and th roughou t Europe. Chart 1) As we might expect from Kohl berg's labels, most Habermas' work is admittedly difficult, especially for people reach the third or fou rth stage of cognitive moral those with a philosophical background in the Anglo· development and remain there for most o f their lives.
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