Newsgroups: bit.listserv.edpolyan
Date:         Sat, 21 Nov 1992 11:47:01 EST
              <EDPOLYAN@ASUACAD.BITNET>
From:         JFCOVALE@SUVM.BITNET
Subject:      Moral and Spiritual Values

Perhaps this discussion has already gone on overlong, and those of us with
interest in continuing should go private.  But before doing so, I ask
patience to try to do two things: calrify some issues that seem to be getting
confused, and (2) bring the theoretical questions back to policy questions.

1.  My basic premise is twofold: (1) schools do, must, and should teach child-
rend about the moral domain; amd (2) that is not the same as teaching religion.
On the first point, I claim that even if we define schooling as narrowly as
possible - teaching only mathematical algorithms, e.g., - and refrain from all
overtly "moral" instruction, that is still instruction about the moral domain:
viz., to do sums carefully and with attention is the mark of a good person
around here and we do not count the domain often marked off as "moral" of
sufficient importance to discuss around here.  (Bruce: this is what I meant
when I said that all education is moral - that it contains instruction re-
gtarding the nature and the importance of the moral domain; I did not mean to
calim that is was moral in the sense of "morally correct".  Induction into the
Mafia includes moral instruction).  Basing an argument on the social responsi-
bility of educators in a democratic society, I could go on to argue that
educatoirs should be involved in the moral development of their children, but
I actually take that to be a moot point: we cannot help but do so.
      As to the second point, Jack rightly points out that Christians not
only supported the Nazi regime, they opposed it as well.  I certainly did
not meaen to suggest that Christianity inclines people to be evil; that was
not at all what I meant to suggest.  Rather, Jack precisely meakes my point:
religious beliefs do not entail moral stances in either direction.  To take
a striking example: American Catholic bishops may be taken to represent a
fairly narrow range of DOCTRINAL views, but the current flap in their
congress over the role of women in the church shows that this does not
entail a correspondingly narrow range of moral responses to real questions.
      To make the claim again, kowledge is socially situated.  This is not
a comment on the nature of the divine, but of the human; God's revelation
may be eternal, but our human understanding of it is temporal.  People who
read the same religious texts takje differeing positions on almost any
moral position you care to name - see the long history of casuistry, for
example, or look at the appeals for divinve intervention on behalf of
diametrically opposing goals.  As a guiode to moral action in the world,
religious texts are wonderfully ambiguous; it is why the devil can quote the
bible to his own ends; it is also why religious beliefs outlive the age in
which they were discovered (part of the reason, let us say).

So what doies this say about policy.  Again, let me begin with an empirical
claim: there are strong differences of opinion about matters of religious
belief.  WEe talk of Christianity as though it were monolithic, but we know
it is not; Rheinhold Neihbur (SP?) is not Billy Graham.  As mentioned earlier,
even the generic Protestantism that used to be the standard in American schools
was deeply offensive to Catholics, whose children were chastised, humiliated,
and on some occasions whipped for refusing to read the King James Version of
the Bible.  And this doesn't even begin to address the questions of all the
other religions and athiesms that people in this society espouse as deeply
nd sincerely as Frank does his Christianity.  The policy question then is:
Why should Christians of a certain sort be able to use public funds to
force all children to be exposed to schools where that specific form of
Christianity is taught as revealed truth, even to the sons and daughters
of people who believe in OTHER revealed truths or that there is no such
thing as revealed truth.

The justification, if there is to be one, must be in terms of compelling state
intrerest, something along the lines that instruction in this specific set of
religious doctrines is necessary if children are to become the sort of good
people who can live in a democratic society.  But that seems to me to be
precisely the proposition that is demonstrably false.  There are good
believers of all faiths, there are good athiests, there are bad beleivers
of all faiths, there are bad atheists (however we decide to cash out "good"
and "bad" unbless we make it circular: "good people have a certain set of
religious beliefs"; as argument, that does not go far).  So, if good and
bad people are represented across the doctrinal spectrum, we cannot claim that
there is compelling state interest ot impose one set of relisgious teachings
on all children.

But, and this is where I part company with Anne, this need not lead us into
the moral relativism or anarchy in which anything goes and we just should
let the kids figure social morality out all by themselves.  WEe need certain
virtues, not just to get into heaven, but to live in a democracy.  Schools
shoudl be involved in teaching those virtues. Indeed it is hard to thinnk of
what purpose shcools might serve that would be more important.  Anne is
right to raise the questions she raises; there is much danger that this
will become just the sort of religious indoctrination I argue against above;
but it need not be so.  Children can be helped to develop moral insight and
moral reasonsing skills as part of a secular education.

As for the claim that this grounds morality in thin air, that seems just wrong.
To ground morality in the social practices we can see and would preserve
seems quite the opposite.  I suggest Durkheim's MORAL EDUCATION and/or
Noddings's CARING as two quite different groundings for a social morality.

Sorry for the length.


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