By William Barnes
What is moral education?
It is usually thought of as inculcating virtues such as love, justice and tolerance through stories, examples and discussion in "Moral Education" or "Character-building" classes. This is a good method, and is often the best arrangement possible in many schools. But conceived in this manner moral education remains only a special subject of study, often divorced from practical daily realities rather than illuminating them. A deeper understanding of human virtues however thinks of them not just as ideals to be taught, but as expressions of the inner forces that operate at the reality of every human being, gems of inestimable value that proper education can reveal and enable the community to benefit from. That is spiritual qualities are the basic foundation, and adorn the true essence of man; and knowledge is the cause of human progress. Such inner qualities are dynamic, positive forces for change seeking full expression. In this light, moral education is the process of drawing out these powerful inner forces in various contexts and for the good of all.
Such moral education is at the center of any model of integrated education, and the orbiting academic disciplines reinforce and complement the center, using spiritual principles to organize the content of the academic study. The proper form of organizing such knowledge and curriculum is based on organic, not mechanical, metaphors. That is, the relationship between subjects is not one of logical connection, or linear attachment, such as A is necessary to understand B, but one of resonant fit. In such a fit there exists a harmony of subjects in the curriculum pointing not outwardly toward a remote horizon, called employment, for example, but inwardly toward a center which is the student. (1)
Said in another way, the real subjects of moral education are the students themselves, and not math, science, art and language, which become from this perspective means for the student to understanding him or herself and the world. Hence whether a student is studying physics, literature, or physical education, that study should lead him to understand human nature and the world more deeply. Thus, moral education is not separated from other forms or names or styles of education by well-defined borders. That is, moral education is not another fenced in field of study, but a magnetic center of interest and a focus of intellectual relationships.
Besides this individual and intellectual aspect, the other, outer and intimately related purpose of moral education is a social one, namely, service to humanity and contributing to the advance of civilization. The importance of service will be seen only if the social purpose of moral education is understood and appropriate instructional methodologies that emphasize the ethical content of learning are used. But much of the effectiveness of such instruction depends upon the students will to learn and be educated. If they don't see their purposes as developing nobility of character and behavior and advancing civilization they will not consent to be educated in moral ways, nor make the effort to do so.
The Moral Faculty
What separates human beings from other forms of life is the power of understanding . The organ of intelligence most important for moral intelligence, though, is the human heart, by which I mean, of course, not the pump in the middle of the chest but the sensitive organ constituting the center of being. It is in the human heart that the chief powers and capacities for moral advance reside, because the heart is where values and truths are weighed and evaluated.
The educational systems of today have not developed this faculty, regardless of the technical wonders we enjoy, because the best educated of these systems don't recognize their responsibility to develop and act morally. One of the sorry results of this underdevelopment of the heart is a precipitous decline in moral standards and behavior, and the concomitant rise of violence, despair, cruelty and death, because the moral compass of every culture has broken and society is drifting aimlessly and dangerously on a sea of relativity. The foundation of any curriculum of education, then, must be close and continued study of those universal spiritual principles that define what it means to be truly human. And the fundamental aim of moral education is to nurture and train the heart's intelligence, for in this is the foundation of character and true self-knowledge.
Acquiring excellence of character is prior to academic excellence. Schools for academic studies must at the same time be training centers in behavior and conduct, and they must favor character and conduct above the sciences and arts. Good behavior and high moral character must come first, for unless the character be trained, acquiring knowledge will only prove injurious. Knowledge is praiseworthy when it is coupled with ethical conduct and virtuous character; otherwise it is a deadly poison, a frightful danger.
Values into Virtues
I will call these inner moral potentials, such as love, human values, for they are what is of most value to human life. The expression of these qualities, such as loving one's parents, I will call virtues, for a virtue is not a disembodied concept, but a consistent pattern of behavior, the proper expression of the value in the services performed for others or for the common good. Concepts of proper behavior and attitude are more properly called spiritual principles, which tell us the full and proper expression of the moral potential: for example, "Love your neighbor as yourself."
A spiritual principle, then, is either an articulate statement or a demonstration of a value that harmonizes with a moral potenial within the human reality. Spiritual principles work as a kind of objective correlative to the inner qualities or values, by identifying, drawing out and training the inner moral potential as mathematics, for example, draws out and trains a certain potential for logical reasoning with measurable quantities. But spiritual principles not only present a perspective which harmonizes with that which is immanent in human nature, they also induce an attitude, a dynamic, a will, an aspiration, which facilitate the discovery and implementation of practical measures. They create a moral context for solving problems, meeting challenges and evaluating novelty.
Spiritual principles are found in all great traditions, of whatever culture. They are universals of behavior and thought. These are the virtues parents try to inculcate in their children; that schools teach their students, that are reflected in great art, and lived by noble poeple.
The process of character development, of turning moral potential into actuality, is one of bringing out the inner, latent values through the inculcation of spiritual principles and demonstrating them properly in outer behavior. A value becomes a virtue as opposed to a moral ideal only when knowledge of spiritual principles enters into and helps to construct, regulate and transform social relationships.
Some spiritual principles are obviously associated with our emotional life, such as love, tenderness, and loyalty. Some are connected with volition, like perseverance, self-sacrifice, and patience. Some are intellectual, such as tolerance, detachment and seeking after knowledge. But moral education cannot consist solely of learning spiritual principles as objects of study, as part of the intellectual content of learning, any more than the principles of physics can be taught and understood in isolation from interaction with the physical world, or vocabulary taught independently from language use. Moral education can best be taught within a context of social interaction, because this is its main arena of application.
While it is clear that spiritual principles cannot be abstracted from the social context in which they must find expression, neither should they be separated from the intellectual disciplines. Spiritual principles must create the context, or containing forms, of knowledge in moral education, the conditions which enable all intellectual learning to take place, the root the feeds the tree of mind. In today's integrating world, the fundamental spiritual principle of moral education must be the principle of the oneness of humankind; the belief that human beings are essentially the same everywhere and at every time, but that social conditions vary so that different qualities may be brought out, trained and find proper expression in society.
If this principle alone were to be the guiding ideal and purpose of education, with associated principles organizing the specific subjects of the formal curriculum of learning, I believe such education would, if effectively implemented, go a long way toward reducing the unreality of most current moral education where the formal study of values or virtues is only another and often mis-fitted part of the curriculum. I say mis-fitted because in most schools moral values and principles of peace, harmony and prosperity for all must compete with history classes which unconsciously value conflict because they study war as the main preoccupation of human beings, and with social studies classes which unwittingly value violence, prejudice or vengeance because they study the various means of exploitation and revolt. They must also compete with natural science classes which conceive nature as a dead object and material progress as a legitimate form of greed, with economics instruction which promotes materialism because it only emphasizes increasing material productivity, and with civics classes that inculcate nationalistic attitudes instead of universal ones. Spiritual principles are overwhelmed in this situation and study of them in such an anti-environment can have only marginal effect on human behavior.
Using spiritual principles to organize information and learning will be to change subjects so that they will be taught in ways that complement each other as the inner values and outer virtues themselves do, creating a nurturing intellectual environment that will generate spiritual knowledge, will unify human understanding , promote moral aspiration, and mature the intelligence. Different cultural traditions, for example, will be taught in lessons that show the essential unity of all human civilization, thus quenching the fires of prejudice. Arts, or the symbolic dimension organizing perceptions of reality, will ennoble human vision, not just reflect current, fragmented vision. Natural science teaching can be structured around the necessity of preserving the natural world, of perceiving its exquisite beauty and understanding its structure as an analog of human beings. Social science can be built upon the idea of world citizenship, with all the rights, duties and responsibilities that the word citizen implies. History may be taught so that students see civilization-building as an ever-advancing process to which all peoples have made important contributions. Vocational training should emphasize the value of service to the common good, and physical education is an excellent arena in which to nurture values of cooperation, teamwork, and unity by working toward group goals and including everyone irrespective of ability, and to instill a sense of sportsmanship by applauding all noble effort regardless of winning or losing. To find such principles we have only to look at the teachings of any or all of the world's great spiritual luminaries, for they have all taught the one moral code.
Methodologies
Now, some words about instructional methodology. Instructional methodologies must reflect the way human beings learn. Experience shows that, whatever the curriculum, students learn best when they are engaged in real experiences yielding authentic results that have utility, worth and purpose for a greater good, and potential for reward. Modern learning theory has proved that human beings construct meaning collaboratively, that human reason needs communication and community to develop, for human beings think best in communion; that is, learning occurs best in meaningful social and intellectual contexts. From these statements we can see that participative methods of learning form the matrix of the learning world in moral education.
We all know of the studies proving that people retain significantly different mounts of information according to the methods of instruction they receive. Simple lectures rank very low, participatory methods--meaning the highest. The main reason for this is the increased activity of the learners, their bringing more of themselves into the learning process so they understand their own processes of learning by applying knowledge in trial and error situations. They learn how to learn.
Consultation, the sharing of opinions in a common search for truth is a means of self-reflection leading to the development of new capacities for perception. In consultation several lines of thought (the individual participants) merge and combine to give a complete picture of any problem, because a comprehensive unit of thought surrounds the subject. But besides social and intellectual contexts there are, too, proper attitudes that individuals must bring into the consultative endeavor that make up the real context of meaning, and create an environment where truth may appear and flourish. Here again, spiritual principles play a powerful role; inculcating principles of respect for others, detachment from one's own opinion. courtesy, seeking truth objectively, will create a proper moral and social environment where the truth may be allowed to emerge and implemented. Moral training should enable students to harmonize conflicting forces in themselves and their environment, and through service to others to build new, more inclusive social relations that reflect a sense of community.
Any method of instruction should have as its object leading the child to discover for him or herself the connections between these different contexts. Let us teach students to approach learning strategically, allow them to learn techniques, such as consultation, that demand that they be active and that provide feedback in the utility of that action and instruction in why, when and where such activities should be applied. Such a problem-solving, constructivist approach helps build the mental structures of comprehension.
Conclusion
I realize that the above is in no way empirically convincing. As just described, moral education is, at this point, more an attitude toward the world and knowledge, than a dogma of content. It is a way of viewing the character of the world and of knowledge and how individuals experience this world through this knowledge. This paper has been more concerned with establishing perspectives than with adding to our store of empirical knowledge. But quantitative results start with qualitatively new ideas that cannot be confirmed by existing facts and ideas, but which must, themselves, generate that confirming evidence.
Moral education is the bringing out of innate qualities into progressive forms of understanding and behaviour, that is, building inner human realities into outer forms. Spiritual principles unify the subjects of study, both internally within each subject and across subjects, and they are the shaping power behind the integration and development of the person because the cognitive, affective and volitional aspects of the human being grow out of connecting these with essential parts of the human spirit. The result of this education is virtues and the virtuous human being. Hence such learning helps to integrate the school, and to develop the inner person and advance society, for learning that finds its end in service is civic.
Notes
1. An example of such curriculum can be found in the documents of International Educational Initiatives.
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