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A Moral Education?
There was in interesting exchange this morning in the thread for our Sex Education show. Kristieflanagan kicked it off by writing:
Schools need to get back to teaching Morals... why not raise the bar along with giving them education?
ORSunshine and Robot disagreed, as did bigdaddy124:
The PUBLIC schools system is not for teachng MORALS. That is for the parents to do. If you are expecting MORALS based teaching, enroll you children into a private school run buy a religious sect...
But then uncommonsense joined in with a new wrinkle:
If we weren't talking about sex ed, isn't it ok for a school to teach Morals?
For example, most of us would agree that wasting energy and over consumption is a legal personal decision made from one's morals.
Does that make it inappropriate for a teacher to encourage people to carpool do reduce thier footprint?
Let's use some common sense (that's my thing). A responsibile sex education program NEEDS to tell middle and high school children that it is in fact not a morally sound decision to bang everything that walks by. This does not need to be framed in religion, this needs to be framed in fact.
In a nutshell, it would be irresponsible to tie the hands of the educational system by not allowing them to teach something responsible that a person may interpert as a moral.
Do morals — however you define them — have a place in a public school classroom?
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Comments are now closed.
That was an interesting exchange.
Morals is a broad term, with many meanings. Views on sex are a different category of morals from general views on what is the 'right' conduct of a society or community. Views on sexual morals are often rooted in religious ideas and these views differ widely from group to group. In a sense schools are already teaching a component of morals when they teach abstinence at all. I think teaching abstinence as an option is fine, and going into some basic arguments of why someone may choose abstinence is acceptable. But, what would teaching morals in a broader sense actually mean? Whose morals would they teach? This would open an unintended door by the individuals proposing it. Because, to teach morals in an educational environment, would entail a discussion of opposing views and other peoples morals.
When people say they want morals taught, I don't think they realize this would mean teaching all kinds of 'right', they really want an education based on what they think is 'right.' To teach morals equitably, would require including the morals of everyone. In areas of sexuality there is little (if any) empirical evidence to suggest what is 'right' or 'wrong.' Even if sex causes disease it doesn't speak to the 'morals' of it.
In discussions on something like climate change, schools are primarily teaching science, they are not generally going further into the moral components of the topic---schools are being matter-of-fact about the subject. Essentially they are saying 'this is the science,' and if they go further and suggest we take action, it is generally under a largely commonsense assumption that most people want the earth to continue or think saving the planet is a good thing. In actuality teaching morals in a comprehensive way would result in the opposite of what people probably intend when they suggest it. I am not sure if they want to bring that on.