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The School as Moral Instructor: Deliberate Efforts and Unintentional Consequences
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14561 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1988 |
6,166 Words |
| Author
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Philip W. Jackson
Philip Jackson is the David Lee Shillinglaw Distinguished
Service Professor in the Department of Education and
Behavioral Sciences at the University of Chicago and director
of the Benton Center for Curriculum and Instruction. He is
author of Life in Classrooms and co-author with J.W. Getzels
of Creativity and Intelligence. His most recent book is The
Practice of Teaching. |
The moral dimension of education, its contribution to personal qualities like character and virtue, commands far more attention these days than it has for quite some time. Part of the reason for this change lies within our society at large. Crime, corruption, and a host of other moral ills have become such recurrent features of everyday life that we can scarcely pick up our daily paper or turn on the television set without holding our breath in anticipation of more bad news. Hardly a day goes by, it seems, it seems, that we do not witness yet another of our cultural heroes biting the dust. Yesterday a sports figure, today a high public official, tomorrow goodness knows who--each a sorry spectacle whose well-publicized downfall makes us wonder what is happening to our country.
And it is not just the moral turpitude of adults that we hear and read about. Our cause for concern extends to what we observe happening to our nation's youth. Suicides among high schoolers send shock waves through our coziest suburbs, their grim numbers mounting to the point of alarm. Teenage pregnancies are now commonplace in families that already have more mouths to feed than they can manage. School dropout rates are on the rise again after a long period of decline. Vandalism and petty crime have become almost a way of life for the youthful gang members of our inner cities. Drug abuse among youngsters who are barely old enough to ride bikes is no longer even newsworthy.
Given these conditions, it is no wonder that school personnel and other concerned citizens around the country are beginning to pay increasing attention to what our schools are doing and might do as agents of moral reform. Indeed, the so-called reform movement in education, which has created such a stir in recent years through its efforts to upgrade intellectual standards and to improve the professional status of teachers, has already begun to turn to the question of how to make today's youth not only better students but also better future employees, better neighbors, better citizens--in short, better persons--than they might have been without the school's intervention. The recent popularity of conferences on moral development and the prominence of the topic in professional journals further attest to the heightened level of concern now evident on many fronts.
What will come of all this attention has yet to be seen, of course, but it is not too early to predict a rash of new programs and procedures designed to remedy the situation. Indeed, a few of them have already begun to appear. More are bound to follow. Because most of these newly adopted practices usually turn out not to be
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