What Makes an Effective Moral Education Program?

H3- Honor the classroom/school community as a milieu for learning

In reading through Taking Sides-issue 18 regarding moral education, I tended to agree with the “yes” side of the argument, which gives eleven principles of an effective moral education approach (Evans, 2008). I feel that moral education in school is important but it needs to be done well. A well-designed moral education is one that is not “in your face”. It is subtle and based more in acting and exemplifying morally sound behavior. It takes a school-wide effort to incorporate this kind of education but in the end, it only serves to produce better-suited members of society.

An important aspect of a strong moral education is being able to define and expect good value traits. Not only does the definition need to be discussed but the traits should also be defined in terms of what they would look like in certain settings. A classroom can define what kind of rules and expectations they want to see but it is not until these broad and abstract traits are incorporated into the specific classroom setting will they take effect. Respect and politeness for example, are valuable traits to expect during a class session. The teacher and students together though, must break down the characteristics into tangible actions that reflect these traits. Respect can involve listening and not speaking when others are speaking, disagreeing with someone’s opinion or thoughts in a polite manner (perhaps give examples of ways to do this), and also politely agreeing with someone’s opinion. Setting these guidelines and providing concrete evidence of them promotes a caring school community, which will radiate throughout the school and further into the community. Students need to be shown and experience empathy, caring relationships and community building in order to be able to act in similar ways (Evans, 2008). Additionally, having these experiences at school is the closest thing to “society” that students may experience therefore creating a realistic environment is necessary.

In my classroom, I intend to have class discussions in order to set what moral expectations will be upheld and I will take it a step further in laying out those concrete examples of what each moral characteristic looks like. This will serve as a solid baseline of what the expectations are and it will also serve as a resource to look back on if someone is not upholding the standards that the class set for themselves. Overall, moral education is a touchy subject with much controversy attached to it, but I feel that we should leave out the politics and focus on creating well suited members of society on an individual basis.

Evans, D. (2008). Issue 18. Are Character/Moral Education Programs Effective? In Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Teaching and Educational Practice (Third ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies.