The debate that rages around us about whether morality should be taught in schools is interesting, but in some ways irrelevant. The reason it is somewhat irrelevant is that what is taught in the home, in either the positive or the negative sense, can be far more influential on children than what is taught in school or in any other institution. For one thing parents have at least a five year head start on public schools. It is so and it ought to be so. The family is the basic institution.
Parents have the basic responsibility.
Some parents, well meaning and with undeniable love for their children, still make the mistake of taking the general contractor approach to parenting. Just as the general contractor creates houses by jobbing out the actual building to the carpenter, the plumber, the electrician, the mason, many parents expect the subcontractors of schoolteachers, scout leaders, ministers, summer camp staff, music instructors, and counselors to build the morality and value systems of their children. These subcontractors and the institutions and organizations they represent can supplement, support, and back up the parent but to ask or expect them to do more than that constitutes a default both of responsibility and of fulfillment. We have wrestled with these questions not as philosophers trying to create a universal value system but as parents who want to be clear about what matters to us and about what we hope matters to our children. As writers we have grappled with defining the word values, with separating values from mere attributes or skills, and with sorting out a list of inclusive values that other parents can agree with, understand, embrace, and teach.