Moral education versus indoctrination
- 15 July 2016
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Theory and Research in Education
- Vol. 14 (2), 149-167
- https://doi.org/10.1177/1477878516656563
Abstract
Moral education is open to worries about indoctrination given the controversies there are about a wide range of ethical matters. I argue, however, that moral education is no more liable to being ‘indoctrinal’ than education in history or science. I begin by proposing an account of what indoctrination involves. I then note that moral education takes different forms and that the different forms raise different concerns about the potential for indoctrination. First is ‘moral socialization,’ which can begin before children have moral concepts. Second is ‘propositional moral education’. Some propositional moral education occurs in the teaching of moral concepts or as an outgrowth of moral socialization. But some addresses highly controversial issues of the kind that raise the greatest concern about indoctrination. I argue that even in such cases, moral education need not involve indoctrination. In concluding, I discuss the objection that my defense of moral education relies on debatable meta-ethical assumptions.This publication has 4 references indexed in Scilit:
- Towards a Theory of Moral EducationJournal of Philosophy of Education, 2014
- Moral Naturalism and Self-Evident Moral TruthsPublished by Cambridge University Press (CUP) ,2007
- Minimalism and Truth AptnessMind, 1994
- Moral Philosophy and the Teaching of MoralityHarvard Educational Review, 1965