Chapter 8

Moral Education

F. Clark Power and Ann Marie R. Power

For laypeople as well as scholars, the terms moral education, character education, and prosocial education appear to be largely synonymous. They loosely refer to teaching children how to grow up to be good people, treat others well, and contribute to society. Berkowitz and Bier (2005) and Lapsley and Narvaez (2006) believe that moral and character education are largely synonymous and ought to be based on a “big tent” approach—prosocial education, in our view—that embraces a wide range of psychological theories. Lapsley and Narvaez, moreover, challenge the usefulness of the distinctions that we have been using over the past thirty years to describe what morality is, how it develops, and how it can and should be taught. In fact, they have argued that some of these distinctions belong to a bygone era and are largely irrelevant, given recent breakthroughs in neuropsychology, positive psychology, and cognitive science more generally. While acknowledging the value of drawing on a wide array of theoretical and empirical constructs to help children to become happy, self-disciplined, and socially adjusted individuals, we claim that moral education has a distinctive identity that involves social as well as individual transformation and thus requires specific pedagogical methods and assessment. To become a moral person is to take up an outlook on one’s relationships to other people and to society as a whole that involves generalizable obligations and responsibilities that supersede self-interest (Frankena, 1973). Responsible approaches to moral education and its assessment must take into account that moral development is a slow and complex process, which must be studied over time using measures designed to mark longitudinal change.

Prosocial and Moral Education

The most fundamental challenge of moral education is to foster a concern for those other than the self. Perhaps this is why moral and prosocial education are so often intermingled. Eisenberg and Mussen (1989) describe prosocial behavior simply as “voluntary behavior intended to benefit another” (p. 3). Clearly moral education is concerned with behavior that benefits the other, particularly when benefiting the other may require altruistic self-sacrifice. Yet helping others may not necessarily be moral, as it can be prompted by all kinds of motives, from self-interest (“If I help another, I may well get a reward”) to justice (“I should help others because they have a right to my help”) and everything in between, such as empathy, social standing, and generosity.

In our view, prosocial education is the bedrock of moral education insofar as prosocial education fosters a concern for others for their own sake. There are two kinds of egocentrism that children must overcome in order to develop morally. The first is what Piaget (1932/1965) called egocentrism, which is simply the inability to take the perspective of relevant others in social interactions. As Piaget and others (e.g., Eisenberg, 1992; Hoffman, 1982; Selman, 2003) have shown, children develop in their capacity to put themselves in the shoes of another and to take this information into account in deciding how to be a friend or what to do in a social conflict. This kind of cognitive egocentrism is different from what we colloquially call “selfishness,” which is a refusal to take the interests or needs of others into account. Classrooms that emphasize grading and individual awards and honors can inadvertently promote an egocentrism of the second sort. Schools typically reward self-seeking and individual success. With the exception of those who use cooperative learning approaches and peer tutoring, teachers generally do not ask students to look after each other or the class as a whole.

In our view, prosocial development is a broad term that can encompass what we mean by moral development insofar as prosocial development involves a concern for and responsiveness to others. What is distinctive about moral development is that it defines our obligations to others and prescribes how conflicting claims should be resolved. Morality involves more than an altruistic concern for others. Parents may, for example, make extraordinary sacrifices to promote the welfare of their children but do little or nothing to promote the welfare of other children in dire need of care. Citizens may pay high taxes to ensure the safety and well-being of their own schools and neighborhoods but show little concern for those in the wider society or abroad. Acting morally requires that we balance and prioritize among competing claims for our resources. Morality entails justice, which is the giving to each person her or his due.

Deliberate Moral Education

Moral education rarely constitutes a separate course of studies or subject matter area, like language arts or social studies. When teachers and administrators undertake moral education, they do it along with other activities. Unlike social scientists whose research demands that they isolate variables to identify causal relationships, classroom teachers adopt economical means to achieve multiple objectives at once. A teacher’s goals in any class may likely include imparting information, posing conceptual problems, and maintaining order while keeping students engaged. Teachers’ moral- or character-related goals may be less explicit than their academic goals but embedded, nevertheless, within their classroom practices. Teachers want their students to work hard, to think carefully and responsibly, to exercise self-control, and to treat others with respect and kindness. They often model these characteristics themselves and help to establish and maintain classroom and school atmospheres.

In a national survey, Ryan and Bohlin (1999) found that in spite of wide support for character education, less than 15 percent of those responsible for teacher preparation programs reported being satisfied with their institution’s efforts to prepare teachers as character educators (see also Schwartz, 2008). We suspect that this reflects not so much a lack of commitment to character education as it does a lack of clarity about what the moral dimension of character education really entails. There is an ever-widening gap between scholarly approaches to character education and popular, user-friendly resources. For example, Character Counts!, which claims to be the “biggest character education program in the nation,” provides a storehouse of resources for immediate classroom use. There are teachers’ guides, videos, balloons, posters, and bumper stickers. The key to the success of Character Counts! seems to be its appeal to commonsense virtue and its ease of implementation.

There is also the presumption encouraged by the rising tide of user-friendly approaches that the methods of character and moral education require little more than common sense and that schools themselves already teach values through what Jackson (1968/1990), Giroux and Purpel (1983), Kohlberg (1985), and Nucci (2001) have described as the hidden curriculum of moral education. The hidden curriculum presents itself in the beliefs, values, and procedures that inform classroom management, awards ceremonies, grading systems, and school governance. In our view, the hidden curriculum is not completely “hidden” because its value system is not so much concealed as it is accepted as if no other alternative were possible. For this reason, we prefer to call it the default curriculum. The default curriculum expresses the moral values of the wider culture in highly visible ways that make intuitive moral sense to administrators and teachers. The default curriculum places a high value on individual achievement and following the rules. Moreover, it sometimes fosters the interests of the strong at the expense of the weak, as can be seen in the endorsement of bell-curve grading systems that reward high-performing students at the cost of discouraging poor-performing students.

The default curriculum teaches students to adapt to the value systems of their classrooms and schools and to the wider culture that gives rise to them. It demands little more of teachers than to exhort students to practice the virtues of self-control, honesty, hard work, and respect; to enforce the rules swiftly and consistently; and to model these virtues themselves. Given the pervasive commonsense notion of what constitutes moral education, it should not be surprising to find that despite endorsing character education, teacher educators do very little to prepare teachers for that role.

Kohlberg (1970) challenged what we are calling the default curriculum of moral education by putting forth a cognitive developmental approach that combined constructivist educational principles with a commitment to social transformation. He attacked the moral relativism inherent in the predominant psychological theories of socialization and internalization during his time (Brown & Herrnstein, 1975). If morality is nothing more than a code of a particular culture or society, then how, he asked, is moral opposition to state-sponsored genocide justifiable (Kohlberg, 1980)? Kohlberg (1981) raised the same question about the civil rights protests led by Martin Luther King Jr. He argued that the point of moral education was not to socialize students to accept the status quo but to bring about a just society.

Kohlberg challenged the prevailing view of the social scientists of his day, that the cultural standards of each society defined what was moral. Although controversial, his stance was hardly new. In the Apology, Plato (trans., 1998) describes Socrates as a “gadfly” stirring the citizens of Athens to moral self-examination. Socrates was charged with corrupting the youth of Athens because he taught them to question the taken-for-granted norms and way of life in the city. Those who prosecuted him believed that to be moral was to uphold the social order by conforming to the expectations of the leading citizens of the city. Common belief held that these leading citizens constituted the role models for the moral life. Their success confirmed their moral authority. When Socrates questioned their assumptions about the good, they recoiled. They disagreed not only with his views but with the idea of questioning itself. Like some of the character educators today, they took the commonsense view that right and wrong were self-evident and that to educate was to pass on the mores of their society.

Standing in a long tradition of moral philosophy going back to Socrates, Kohlberg and the cognitive developmentalists have argued that morality is based on a higher moral law grounded on reason. A growing body of research on moral judgment supports that contention. Kohlberg’s longitudinal study spanning two decades indicated that, indeed, individuals make judgments on the basis of moral reasoning, which develops in stages, culminating in universal principles of justice (Colby & Kohlberg, 1987). Damon (1977) found that children as young as four years old give reasons to support their claims in conflict situations and that those reasons develop to become more objective, or seen as fair from all different perspectives. Further research substantiates that young children understand the importance of backing up their moral judgments with articulated reasons (Arsenio, Gold, & Adams 2006; Nucci & Turiel, 1978; Tisak, Tisak, & Goldstein, 2006; Turiel, 2006).

Moral Education and Character Education

Over the past several decades, the scholarly field of moral education has become contested ground beginning with the rise of traditionalist character education in the 1980s and continuing with a growing disenchantment with Kohlberg’s Kantian moral philosophy and his cognitive developmental stage theory. Claiming to retrieve Aristotle’s understanding of virtue based on habituation, traditionalist character educators advocate the simple and direct approach of virtue inculcation through the strong assertion of authority (Bennett, 1993; Bennett & Delattre, 1978; Kilpatrick, 1993; Ryan, 1989; Wynne, 1989). They challenge Kohlberg’s child-centered pedagogy with its emphasis on problem solving through moral reasoning and democratic deliberation as being too permissive and even relativistic. Finally, they oppose Kohlberg’s view that individual moral development and social transformation must go hand in hand (Nucci, 1989). Wynne, for example, sides with the conservative Edmund Burke (1966) in upholding order and respect for “pre-existing principles and traditional wisdom” (Wynne, 1989, p. 23). The traditionalists regard moral education as the creation of liberal intellectuals who prefer novelty to social order. The traditionalist fears that moral discussion and Just Community approaches based in cognitive developmental research will fail to develop the self-discipline and spirit of sacrifice needed to carry on adult life.

Mainstream character educators, such as Berkowitz (Berkowitz & Bier, 2005), Lickona and Davidson (2005), and Vincent (1994) seek to find common ground between the traditionalists and the cognitive developmentalists. Rather than labeling character education as a “conservative” response to “liberal” moral education, they put forth a broad vision of character education, which draws on multiple philosophical and psychological sources. “Neo-Kohlbergian” character educators follow suit in maintaining that moral functioning is not all that different from other kinds of social functioning (Lapsley & Narvaez, 2006). Kohlberg and his followers may well have underestimated the significance of the broad domain of psychosocial processes in focusing on the distinctive features of the moral domain. As we note in this chapter and as others discuss in this volume, the moral domain is part of a wider “prosocial” domain and thus depends on a multitude of biological, psychological, and social processes, many of which are noncognitive. Breaking down the walls that separate moral psychology from the larger field of social cognitive psychology will, in their view, lead to new understandings of moral functioning, new and exciting research programs, and new insights into education. Yet by redefining moral functioning to include largely unconscious, social cognitive processes, the “neo-Kohlbergian” approach risks losing sight of the rational and critical dimension of morality.

In our view, an authentic approach to moral education must foster moral reasoning or moral understanding that takes into account the claims of all persons, particularly those of the poor and the weak. In a pluralistic society, such as our own, moral education in public schools would be possible only if one could transmit a “consensual morality” shared by all members of our society. Although character educators have attempted to identify lists of shared values and virtues, such as honesty, compassion, justice, and patriotism (e.g., Saterlie, 1988), values and virtues are nebulous in the abstract. When values and virtues are applied in moral disputes, differences quickly emerge. For example, many individuals in the United States appealed to the virtue of patriotism in attempting to silence opponents of the Vietnam and Iraq wars. Critics of these wars, on the other hand, appealed to the virtue of justice. Proponents and opponents of war accept both patriotism and justice as virtues, yet they see these virtues in very different ways. The debate over the U.S. federal government’s role in health care similarly appeals to different values, such as freedom and compassion. Simply valuing freedom and compassion in the abstract is not enough. Experience reveals that we understand and apply values differently. These differences may be rooted in religion, ethnicity, social class, economic perspective, or political affiliation. Moral education in a pluralistic society requires a critical appropriation and application of values and virtues through rational dialogue and deliberation.

For the sake of clarity, we define the moral domain as an essential part of but not the whole of what is meant by character. Davidson, Lickona, and Khmelkov (2008) distinguish two kinds of character: moral and performance. Within this framework, moral character includes relational virtues, such as justice, care, and benevolence, while performance character includes the pursuit of mastery or excellence. Although Davidson and colleagues claim that moral and performance character work synergistically, it is important to keep in mind that they are different. Students or athletes may practice the virtues of hard work and persistence in striving for excellence but still cheat. Bank robbers may exhibit great courage and self-control while stealing. Although Davidson, Lickona, and Khmelkov’s breakdown of character does not include other valuable competencies, such as gratitude and self-transcendence, it does make a helpful distinction among virtues most typically associated with character in sports (F. C. Power, 2010) as well as in school.

Moral Discussion

In our view, any approach to moral education must have at its core some form of reflection on right and wrong behavior, attitudes, beliefs, justifications, and ways of life. This does not mean that one must be a philosopher to be moral or that the moral life consists in resolving complicated moral problems. What it does mean is that the moral life demands intentional and sometimes critical action based on an understanding of right and wrong. Being moral does not mean subjecting each and every action to moral examination. Nevertheless, it does entail a tacit assumption that one’s actions could be rationally upheld if subjected to moral interrogation.

Moshe Blatt, a doctoral student of Kohlberg’s, was the first to apply Kohlberg’s theory to moral education. He led sixth-grade children in weekly discussions of Kohlberg’s hypothetical dilemmas and found that they advanced significantly over a control group, who did not participate in moral discussions (Blatt & Kohlberg, 1975). Over time, Kohlberg and his colleagues developed an approach to leading discussions derived almost directly from the research method Kohlberg used with his longitudinal sample to describe the stages of moral reasoning. The key to the discussion approach was the moral dilemma itself, which could not be resolved by any simple appeal to the civil law, tradition, or consensually held virtues or values. For example, Kohlberg’s most famous dilemma, the Heinz dilemma, asked whether Heinz should steal a drug to save his wife’s life. Although stealing is generally wrong, so is letting others die when there is an available means to save them. This dilemma pits the values of respecting the law and upholding property rights against the value of upholding human life and of caring for the vulnerable. Moral dilemmas are a powerful means of evoking deliberation about what is fair. But their value lies less in providing practice in making difficult moral decisions than in inducing a state of cognitive conflict or cognitive disequilibrium. Dilemmas cannot be resolved simply by referring to the law or to conventional norms and virtues. The Heinz dilemma and others like it force one to consider the reasons that underlie the moral rules of thumb that regulate everyday moral behavior. The method used to classify and score moral reasoning makes clear that children and adolescents refer to values such as care, trust, obedience, and upholding respect for life, law, and property in very different ways according to a hierarchical sequence of stages. The primary effect of moral dilemma discussions is to raise the level of the reasoning that employs these value referents. This point is often lost by those who attack the stage theory for not attending to the virtues.

What does discussion add to solitary moral reflection? Good moral dilemmas usually lead to disagreement and challenge those disagreeing to resolve their conflict through reasonable argument. Because the discussion interlocutors all make reference to the same set of values, they have to explain why some values take precedence over others in the dilemma. This leads to a deeper and more complex understanding of the meaning of those values themselves. When discussions go well, the interlocutors wrestle with different moral conceptions and make distinctions and integrations that lead to new understandings and insights. The purpose of the moral discussion leader is to facilitate moral reasoning and argument by challenging the discussion participants to justify their positions by asking “why questions” and calling attention to conflicting points of view.

As the popularity of the moral discussion approach grew, Kohlberg and his colleagues sought to formalize a method for leading discussions most likely to lead to moral change. They had learned through experience some of the ways in which the discussion process broke down. Perhaps the most common mistake that moral discussion leaders made was to use the discussion as a guessing game to prepare the participants to receive the correct answer from the discussion leader. Other common mistakes included dodging the moral dilemma itself by looking for a way out, such as recommending that Heinz could organize a fund-raiser to raise money. In the 1970s, Kohlberg joined forces with Ted Fenton at Carnegie Mellon University, who had become the leader of the “New Social Studies” movement in the 1960s by advocating a curricular revolution based on the inquiry method (Cude, 2010). Fenton brought a wealth of experience in curriculum development and teacher education to Kohlberg’s Harvard Center for Moral Development and Education, and their collaboration produced a carefully constructed guide for implementing the dilemma discussion approach. In the well-known Stone Study, Kohlberg and Fenton then trained social studies teachers to lead moral discussions in their classrooms and tested the effectiveness of those discussions (Colby, Kohlberg, Fenton, Lieberman, & Speicher-Dubin, 1977). The results were more complicated than anticipated. Although they found significant stage change between the experimental and control groups, the magnitude of the change (a fifth of a stage) was not as significant as that reported in the early Blatt study (Blatt & Kohlberg, 1977). Further analysis showed that the experimental classrooms differed in effect sizes, and these differences related to the extent to which the teachers faithfully implemented the approach. Perhaps the most stunning effect of the Stone Study came the year following the implementation when the research team found that the teachers had by and large abandoned the discussion method in their social studies teaching. Kohlberg concluded, “The operation was a success, but the patient died” (as cited in F. C. Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg, 1989, p. 38).

This finding took Kohlberg and Fenton by surprise but did not derail the moral education enterprise. Undeterred, Kohlberg, Fenton, and their colleagues at Harvard and Carnegie Mellon continued to train teachers and refine their teacher training materials. Yet those of us who participated in that work in the 1980s recognized that the challenge of preparing teachers to be moral educators could not be met by taking a “cookbook” approach. Leading moral discussions was demanding on a number of levels. First and most importantly, teachers had to be so convinced of the value of moral discussions that they were willing to commit precious curriculum time to them. Second, teachers had to commit to a Socratic style of teaching by asking questions rather than giving answers. Finally, teachers had to use moral stage theory to help them to interpret students’ reasoning and guide them to new levels of understanding.

Does the moral education approach make unreasonable demands on teachers? Leming (2008) concludes that it does. We believe that the problem has less to do with the competence of teachers than it does with the way we approach teacher education in the United States. Darling-Hammond (2010) notes that the factory model has dominated teaching practices since the early twentieth century. This model relies on direct instruction and memorization, and unlike the constructivist model, it makes very few demands on teachers. In our experience, teachers with a strong preparation in cognitive development and constructivist teaching practices find that the moral discussion approach complements what they have been learning.

The most formidable challenge to preparing teachers to lead moral discussions comes, we believe, from a lack of commitment to a coordinated approach to moral education across the curriculum as well at the institutional level. Moral education is a serious enterprise, and it requires time and preparation to be effective (Schaefli, Rest, & Thoma, 1985). In a review of the moral discussion literature, Higgins (1980) found that attempts to integrate the moral discussion approach into different curricula sometimes failed or were not as effective as they could have been because teachers did not focus specifically on discussing the moral issues in their units as moral problems. For example, literature teachers often ask students to explain why characters resolved moral conflicts the way they did rather than asking students to think about how the conflict should be resolved from a moral point of view. Higgins found, on the other hand, that moral discussions were the most reliable when there was a specific course devoted to discussing moral dilemmas and when the moral dilemmas related to real-life moral problems.

Case Study: Reading for Life

The Reading for Life (RFL) program included as a case study for this chapter offers a promising new direction for the moral discussion approach (Seroczynski, this volume). Seroczynski bases RFL in “virtue theory,” and she draws on Aristotle and Aquinas for the cardinal and theological virtues that inform the RFL approach. Like Carr (2008), Seroczynski believes that these virtues are essential to human flourishing and not simply the constructions of particular cultures. This is not the bag of virtue approach, which Kohlberg (1981) criticized as being relativistic and “wishy washy” (p. 35). The virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, faith, hope, and charity are interdependent and constitute the dispositions of a moral person. Prudence and justice are the virtues of rational deliberation; they determine what is right and good in particular situations. Fortitude and temperance are the virtues that strengthen individuals to overcome obstacles and distractions that would prevent them from acting on their judgment. In the Christian tradition, the theological virtues are understood as gifts from God, which must be practiced in order to be developed. In a secular, psychological context, these virtues retain a foundational moral quality insofar as they are experienced as conditions for the possibility of leading a moral life. For example, although it cannot be rationally proved, a faith in the basic goodness of oneself and others seems necessary if one is to act faithfully. Similarly, a rational or empirical foundation for hope can be demonstrated, but moral action presupposes that we can make the world better. Finally, charity, the selfless love for others, comes out of the experience of first being loved. RFL uses these virtues to provide a structure for discussing novels and for reflecting on the moral implications that the novels have for the students.

Through their reading and discussions, the RFL participants, who are first-time juvenile offenders, attend to and reflect upon the way in which the virtues inform the lives of the protagonists. As Seroczynski points out, the RFL participants, with help from their mentors, find that their reading provides both inspiration and guidance. We believe that they develop not only their moral judgment but a moral resolve to become virtuous selves. We also find that the RFL experience provides participants with a supportive community that can help them overcome discouragement and develop a sense of moral agency.

Character and the Moral Self

There is a growing body of empirical evidence that suggests that the concept of moral character is crucial for understanding how individuals develop as moral agents (Bergman, 2004; Blasi, 2005; Higgins-D’Alessandro & Power, 2005; Lapsley, 2008). By moral character, we mean a global sense of the self as moral. Having the ability to make sound moral decisions is only part of functioning as a moral person. We may have the ability to reason morally but not care about being a moral person. Even more basically, we may fail to develop our moral reasoning because we do not put moral concerns at the core of our identity. Research shows that individuals’ moral behavior varies to the extent that moral concerns are at the core of their self-descriptions (Arnold, 1993; Blasi, 1984; Colby & Damon, 1993; F. C. Power & Khmelkov, 1997). Our own research goes a step further in indicating that the kind as well as the extent of civic participation depends on one’s moral self-understanding (F. C. Power & Power, 2008). Prosocial and moral educators agree that students need experiences that develop their empathy and active concern for others. Although we maintain that individuals with a moral sense of self are more likely to engage in prosocial and moral behavior, we also recognize that individuals develop a sense of themselves as moral by acting in ways that help others and promote the common good.

Moral Education: From Reasoning to Action

Reviewers routinely fault the moral discussion approach for failing to influence moral action (e.g., Leming, 2008; Lockwood, 1978; Schaefli et al., 1985). Kohlberg (1970) acknowledged this limitation even as he worked with Fenton and others to refine the dilemma discussion method. The problem, as Kohlberg saw it, was not that moral discussions were irrelevant to students’ behavior but that discussions of hypothetical, historical, and literature-based dilemmas were unlikely to have any immediate influence on classroom behavior. Although there is a significant theoretical as well as empirical relationship between moral reasoning and moral action (Arnold, 1993; Blasi 1980), the relationship between moral reasoning and moral action is complex and is mediated by a number of person- and context-related variables in addition to moral reasoning. For example, Rest (1983) developed the four-component model for conceptualizing a wide array of psychological processes that culminate in moral behavior: (1) sensitivity, (2) reasoning and judgment, (3) motivation, and (4) the execution of the action itself. Narvaez has amplified this model with more recent research and based her Integrated Ethical Education (IEE) approach on it (Narvaez, 2005; Narvaez, Endicott, & Bock, 2003). In our view, the IEE and related character education approaches reviewed by Berkowitz and Bier (2005), Lapsley and Narvaez (2006), and Narvaez and Lapsley (2009) have relevance to moral education insofar as the psychologically related processes contributing to sensitivity, judgment, motivation, and execution are regulated by moral understanding. One’s moral understanding informs what one perceives to be the morally relevant features of a situation, what motivates one to take responsibility for action (or excuses one from taking responsibility), and the care with which one executes a moral course of action. Note that one’s moral understanding (which involves reasoning and judgment) is not just one among many components or “skills” employed for the sake of action. One’s moral understanding is implicated in all of the processes. This means both that a holistic approach to moral education is inescapable and that moral education must always be directed at developing moral understanding.

Reflection on the relationship between reasoning and action should lead not to a potpourri of moral educational approaches aimed at fostering discrete psychological skills and processes, but rather to the development of the individual as a moral agent acting in a community of moral agents. An unfortunate consequence of the priority given to moral behavior (often operationalized as conformity to classroom and school disciplinary codes) is that educators focus narrowly on behavior that has little, if any, moral significance from a developmental point of view. As Nucci (2001) notes, much of what constitutes good behavior in the classroom consists of adherence to conventional rules, such as not chewing gum, keeping one’s shirt tucked in, and not cross-talking. Although such behavior may be moralized as a way of showing respect for the teacher or for the class as a group, such behavior involves little more than conformity to the expectations set by the teacher. Bribes and threats actually undermine moral motivation. Extrinsic motivators encourage children to focus instrumentally on the outcomes of their action. Such motivators legitimize an immature stage 2 morality based on seeking rewards and avoiding punishment rather than appealing to higher-stage intrinsic moral motivations.

One of the most effective means of moral motivation is to provide children with opportunities to settle disputes and resolve conflicts. These opportunities invite children to role-take and coordinate different points of view. The reciprocity and social equilibrium established through the process of discussion and cooperation is itself motivating. As Piaget (1932/1965) found, children develop an understanding of rules and fairness through playing marbles and hopscotch with their peers. F. C. Power (2010) argues that youth sports, which engage more children than any other out-of-school activity, can foster moral development only if adults give control of these games back to children. Unfortunately, organized youth sports have become adults’ rather than children’s play.

Children can also receive motivating moral experiences by sharing responsibility for the classroom as a community by making and enforcing classroom rules. By deliberating and taking legislative action, children come to understand the virtue-based reasons for the rules they have as well as the function of rules in any kind of society. This practice is an exercise in civic and character education as well as moral education, as children come to understand the obligations of membership in a democratic society through solving problems in their classroom and school.

Transforming Classrooms and Schools into Just Communities

In his best-known educational essays, Kohlberg (1981) concluded that a serious approach to moral education would require a new approach to schooling itself: “The Platonic view I’ve been espousing suggests something still revolutionary and frightening to me if not to you, that the schools would be radically different places if they took seriously the teaching of real knowledge of the good” (p. 48). Kohlberg regarded classroom moral discussion as an artificial form of moral education because it abstracted moral deliberation from the social life of the school. Like Durkheim (1925/1973), he believed that classroom discipline can be a means of moral education by teaching students to become dedicated members of the school society. Kohlberg realized his radical vision of moral education by developing the Just Community approach (F. C. Power et al., 1989). The Just Community approach focuses on transforming the culture of the school through democratic deliberation and a commitment to building community. It has informed educational interventions throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia (Althof, 2003; Lee, 2004; Oser, Althof, & Higgins-D’Alessandro, 2008; F. C. Power & Power, 1992).

Rodstein’s case study of the Scarsdale Alternative High School (SAS), which has operated as a Just Community school since 1977, testifies to the power of making moral education a priority. The small size of the school, the fully committed and well-prepared faculty, the democratic institutions (especially the schoolwide community meeting), and the shared ideal of living together in an academic community are essential features of the approach. Like any high school, SAS has its share of disciplinary infractions (e.g., cheating, bullying, lateness, drug use, and failure to meet deadlines). Unlike almost any other high school, students regard these infractions not simply as reflecting on the individuals involved but on the community as a whole. Members of a Just Community focus not only on developing self-discipline and moral fortitude but community responsibility. They regard themselves as their sisters’ and brothers’ keepers and believe that they can help each other to achieve their personal as well as shared aspirations through mutual support and cooperation.

The Child Development Project (CDP) demonstrated the effectiveness of creating community and involving children at the elementary school level in classroom moral discussions about disciplinary issues and rules (Battistich, 2008; Watson, 2008; Watson & Ecken, 2003; Watson, Solomon, Battistich, Schaps, & Solomon, 1989). More so than the Just Community approach, the CDP’s developmental discipline approach emphasizes the importance of teachers establishing a warm and nurturing relationship with each child (Watson, 2008). As Noddings (2008) rightly points out, we learn to care for others by being cared for first. In the elementary grades especially, children need the attention and support of demonstrative adults whom they can trust. Discipline, which comes from the same root as the word disciple, is a form of moral education in which children learn how to relate to the teacher and their classmates within the context of the classroom and school. In this sense, discipline is very different from classroom “management,” which has as its goal the maintenance of order. Bear (2005, 2010) incorporates this moral educational perspective on discipline within his magisterial approach to school discipline. Bear draws heavily on an arsenal of psychological literature on children’s social and emotional development to help teachers and other educational professionals give children the resources and support they need to be engaged and self-regulated members of their classrooms. Unfortunately, many educators equate discipline with punishment and seek to manage students through controlling them, by assuming a stern demeanor and establishing a clear and consistent hierarchy of punishments to deter deviance (Brophy, 2006). The management approach to discipline is part of the default curriculum of moral education, which can actually undermine children’s moral development by attempting to manipulate them rather than engage them. Children, even at the preschool level, are far more inclined to follow a rule if they have some understanding of its purpose (DeVries, Haney, & Zan, 1991).

However, for the most part, the content of rules matters less than the experience of making them. Nucci (2001) makes a strong case for differentiating between rules that are inherently conventional, such as raising one’s hand before one speaks, and rules that are inherently moral, such as not hitting others. Children recognize the difference between the conventional and moral domains, and teachers lose moral authority when they do not distinguish between the two. In her classic You Can’t Say You Can’t Play, Vivian Paley (1993) proposes a rule in the moral domain that, although phrased negatively as a prohibition, is actually a prescription for inclusion. Unfortunately, Paley’s bold proposal has not received the attention from moral educators that it deserves. Peer rejection in the elementary grades puts children at risk for a range of negative social and mental health problems in adolescence and adulthood, including delinquency and criminality (Waas, 2006). Yet, as Paley found, teachers are reluctant to mandate that students accept others into their play groups. Although teachers understand that peer rejection is unfortunate, many believe that the onus is on the rejected children to make themselves more pleasing to their popular peers. These teachers rightly point out that many of those who get rejected act aggressively or otherwise in socially inappropriate ways.

Those teachers who argue against the “you can’t say you can’t play rule” do not go so far as to say that those who are rejected deserve to be rejected. They argue that students have the right or liberty to play with whomever they wish, no matter what their reasons. But do they? The default curriculum of the school supports such an understanding, but is it fair, and is it consistent with the ideal of community? The default curriculum is deeply embedded within American culture and reflects a certain view of morality and political rights. The default curriculum upholds the negative right not to be subjected to physical or psychological harm, for example. Such a right is encoded in classroom rules against hitting and bullying. The default curriculum does not include a positive right to be included in group play or even to be treated with kindness. In fact, the default curriculum adopts a libertarian or privatistic (F. C. Power et al., 1989) perspective on relationships in which children are free to decide their playmates and how they will treat their peers as long as they do not harm them. In proposing the “You Can’t Say You Can’t Play” rule, Paley (1991) consciously opposes not only peer exclusion in the elementary grades but a libertarian “structure,” which by the fifth grade is “set in stone” (p. 3). This is a structure that gives the “ruling class” the prerogative to turn away the weak and to legitimate this use of power, as hurtful as it may be, as a part of human nature.

Paley (1991) does not impose her rule on children but invites them to discuss it. Not surprisingly, she finds that only the children who routinely experience rejection support such a rule, and they are a minority. What should a democratic moral educator do in such a situation? F. C. Power et al. (1989) have argued that while respecting the democratic process, teachers should at times act as advocates for an ideal of community, which challenges the individualism of the prevailing culture. Being an advocate for the values of community constrains teachers in three ways. First, they must appeal to values inherent in the ideals of fairness and community. Second, they must engage the students in honest and open deliberation about a specific proposal. Third, through respectful dialogue, they must seek to establish shared norms in which students understand that as members of a community, they are responsible for each other.

Durkheim (1925/1973) understood as well or better than any educator that belonging to a moral community is an indispensable source of moral motivation. He worried that the secularization and rationalization of morality would lead to a moral education “without prestige and without life” (p. 11). Durkheim believed that the classroom community could provide children with a cause worthy of their devotion. A vibrant classroom community can “instill in children a feeling of solidarity” (p. 245), which not only draws them to care about each other as individuals but to care about the community as a whole. In other words, the pursuit of the common good can give children a sense of purpose and meaning. As Damon’s (2008) research shows, having a sense of purpose by pursuing a noble goal gives young people a sense of direction and sustains them in the long run. We believe that the experience of being a vital member of a community can help young people to find purpose in the pursuit of the common good.

We believe that many well-conceived moral education programs fail to motivate young people for two reasons. First, they hold out what may appear to be rather commonplace moral goals, such as maintaining classroom order. Young people need what William James (1906/2011) once called “the moral equivalent of war” (p. 1) to draw them out of their individualism and to call them to discipline and sacrifice. Children and adolescents need communities that they are proud to belong to, communities that have worth not because they are strong but because they embody ideals of justice and love.

Service Learning

Service learning is a particularly powerful approach to moral as well as prosocial development (see chapter 10). By getting students out of the classroom and into the community, students encounter people in very different circumstances from their own, whether in a homeless shelter, a hospital, or a nursing home. Insofar as students get to know those they are helping and their circumstances, they can respond to their needs with greater sensitivity and effectiveness (Batchelder & Root, 1994). Through discussion and guidance, students can reflect on the social conditions that lead to poverty, stereotyping, social ostracism, and neglect as well as on ways of addressing suffering and injustice at the systemic as well as individual level (Youniss & Yates, 2000). A. M. R. Power and Khmelkov (1999) found that although service learning programs foster students’ commitment to help others, different kinds of service have different effects. For example, service that involves directly helping another, such as tutoring or visiting the sick, fosters a sense of interpersonal empathy. Service that involves addressing general social problems, such as racism or inequality, seems to foster a concern for reforming social structures.

Research on the effectiveness of the service learning approach suggests that it has an impact not only on the way students think about moral problems but on the way in which they see themselves (Hart, Matsuba, & Atkins, 2008; Lapsley, 2008; Youniss & Yates, 1997, 1999). Taking time to serve others in the community can, in our view, encourage an enlarged sense of self as connected to and engaged in society. It can also lead to a sense of identity not only as a prosocial, selfless self, but a responsible self, committed to working for a just society. We emphasize that the service experience can lead to the development of a moral self. Children and adolescents may regard service as fulfilling an external obligation, or they may regard service as an opportunity to help others and to grow themselves. Indeed, adolescents who participate in service repeatedly find that they receive more from helping others than they give.

Conclusion

Educators today worry about the capacity of our educational systems to equip young people to find productive employment in the emerging global economy (Darling-Hammond, 2010). Yet we have only begun to prepare young people to meet the moral challenges of participating in a global community. The future of moral education will require us to develop ever more effective ways of helping children to develop a sense of responsibility not only for themselves, their families, and their local communities, but for the world at large. We must confront stagnating individualism, which is so much a part of what we have called the “default curriculum” of moral education. The default curriculum prevents us from educating children to form bonds of solidarity that overcome the divides of social class, ethnicity, religion, and culture. Moreover, the default curriculum leads to a narrow and pedestrian conception of virtue when what we need is an expansive sense of justice and the common good. The moral education of the future must enlarge our moral understanding and invigorate our sense of moral purpose. Furthermore, the moral education of the future requires that we provide all those who work with young people with the preparation and the autonomy needed to transform educational settings into genuine moral communities that can nurture tomorrow’s leaders.

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