Moral education and liberal democracy: Spirituality, community, and character in an open society

Educational Theory

Volumn 53, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 367-387

  Alexander, Hanan A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF HAIFA   (Israel)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 14644392764     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2003.00367.x     Document Type: Article

References (108)

1. Hanan A. Alexander, Reclaiming Goodness: Education and the Spiritual Quest (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001). This book will be cited as RG in the text for all subsequent references.
2. The term "learning community" is a popular phrase that often refers to a particular sort of reflective and inquisitive environment in classrooms (see, for example, Lee Shulman, Communities of Learning and Communities of Teaching, Mandel Institute Monographs no. 3 [Jerusalem: The Mandel Institute, 19971).
3. I use the term in a wider sense, however, to denote communities in whch studying a vision of the good is an integral part of their way of life. In traditional Jewish communities, for example, study of sacred texts is a form of worship and worship a form of study (see Max Kadushin, Worship and Ethics [Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 19781).
4. In ThePeople oftheBook, SamuelHeilman draws on theYiddish Learnen to depict the sort of learning and teaching that becomes a driving force of life in the traditional Talmudic academy (Samuel Heilman, 'The People of The Book [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 19871;
5. see also Moshe Halbertal and Tova Hartman Halbertal, "The Yeshiva," in Philosophers on Education, ed. Amelie 0. Rorty [London: Routledge, 19981,458469).
6. Also, following Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig discusses how Lehrnstofi or learning of subject matter can be transformed into Lehre or teaching that transforms life [see Franz Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning [New York: Schocken, 1965],20-22).
7. Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994).
8. The term "liberal communitarian" can be confusing in that communitarians are often critical of political liberalism. The designation is intended to denote the sort of communitarianism that seeks to bolster liberal democracy by replacing extreme individualism with persons tied to expansive communities. The term should be contrasted with "conservative communitarianism" that supports nonexpansive communities that can undermine open society. Liberal communitarianism has much in common with what Kevin McDonough and Walter Feinberg have called "affiliated liberalism" [see Kevin McDonough and Walter Feinberg, "Liberalism and the Dilemma of Public Education inMulticultura1 Societies," in Citizenship and Education in Liberal Democratic Societies: Teaching for Cosmopolitan Values and Collective Identities, eds. Kevin McDonough and Walter Feinberg [Oxford Oxford University Press, 20031, 1-22). However, the former tends to emphasize the democratic need for robust authenticity grounded in affiliation whle the latterfocusesonthe tensions between group and individual rights in liberal societies.Liberal communitarians may authenticate fewer thical affiliations than affiliated liberals, therefore, in line with the extent to which these affiliations embrace such notions as human agency and responsibility.
9. Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge (New York: Basic Books, 1983), chapter 2.
10. William K. Frankena, Ethics, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1973),49.
11. Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 198.51, 1.
12. Frankena, Ethics, 9-10.
13. Jan Steutel and David Carr, eds., Virtue Ethics and Moral Education (London: Routledge, 19991, 7. Consequentialist theories like utilitarianism are not usually designated as deontological since they justify duties on the basis of outcomes rather than according to the nature of duties themselves. Frankena calls utilitarianism a teleological theory which moves it closer to the virtue ethics, although some would question whether maximizing utility could be counted as a genuine purpose or good, since it entails nothmg other than an aggregate of individually chosen goods. Some refer to consequentialist theories as instrumental rather than teleological: the relation between means and ends in the former is mechanical and quantitative, and in the latter qualitative or essential -having to do with the very meaning of values. However, it is not altogether clear that the distinction between instrumentalism and teleology can be maintained.
14. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, chapter 1.
15. Michael J. Sandel, ed., Liberalism and Its Critics (Oxford Basil Blackwell, 19841, 1. This book will be cited as LC in the text for all subsequent references.
16. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).
17. Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 3-5.
18. Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 28-29.
19. Ibid., 40-41.
20. See also Charles Taylor, Varieties of Religion Today: William lames Revisited (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002).
21. Kenneth Strike raises a number of important questions about the price of "thick" identity in liberal democracy (see Kenneth Strike, "Pluralism, Personal Identity, and Freedom of Conscience," in Citizenship Education in Liberal Democratic Societies, eds. McDonough and Feinherg, 76-95). His main concern seems to be that identity language privileges the demands of association over those of principle in the process of self-definition. This can lead to a new tribalism that subjugates freedom of conscience to the politics of group recognition and that does not adequately describe many people, includmg Strike himself, who define themselves according to a variety of principles and ideals drawn from many sources. Ishare Strike's concern that an overemphasis on group solidarity can undermine important democratic values, but I am concerned that his version of individualism threatens democracy no less. This is one reason why goodness as intelligent spirituality tempers the subjective and collective strands of identity formation with a concern for ideals that transcend self and community. I will develop this point further later in this paperj for more on this point, also see RG, 139-169.
22. Lawrence Kohlberg, The Philosophyof Moral Development (New York: HarperCollins 1981 );
23. Sidney B. Simon, Leland W. Howe, and Howard Kirschenbaum, Values Clarification (New York Hart Publishing, 1972);
24. and Emile Durkheim, Moral Education (New York: Free Press, 1961).
25. Donald R.C. Reed is hesitant to view Kohlberg as so thoroughly Kantian, and he understands Kohlberg's enduring contribution as the development of the notion of just community discussed briefly later in ths paper. Given the heavy influence of Rawls and Piaget on the early Kohlberg, however, it is difficult to discount the concomitant impact of Kant. Nevertheless, I agree with Reed that the notion of democratic community in the later Kohlberg indicates his awareness of some of the dfficulties with Kantian liberalism raised by the communitarians. See Donald R.C. Reed, Following Kohlberg: Liberalism and the Practice of Democratic Community (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998).
26. Jean Piaget, The Child and Reality (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1973).
27. Sohan Modgil and Celia Modgil, eds., Lawrence Kohlberg: Consensus and Controversy (Philadelphia: Falmer, 1986);
28. Jiirgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Cambridge: MIT Press, 19901, 116-194;
29. and Denis C. Phiilips and Jennie Nicolayev, "Kohlbergian Moral Development: A Progressing or Degenerating Research Program?" Educational Theory 28, no. 4 (1978): 286301.
30. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge: HarvardUniversity Press, 1982);
31. Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984);
32. and Martin Buber, I and Thou lNew York Scribner's, 1970).
33. Noddmgs, Curing, 73-74;
34. and Buber, I and Thou, 59.
35. Terence H. McLaughlin and Mark J. Halstead, "Education in Character and Virtue," in Education in Morality, eds., Terence H. McLaughlin and Mark J. Halstead (London: Routledge, 1999), 134-135.
36. Nel Noddings, Educating Moral People: A Caring Alternative to Character Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 2002).
37. Michael Apple, Ideology and Curriculum (London: Routledge, 1979);
38. Peter McLaren, Life in Schools [New York: Longman, 1989);
39. and Ilan Gur-Ze'ev, Philosophy, Politics, and Education in Israel [Haifa: University of Haifa Press, 1999).
40. Walzer, Thick and Thin
41. William J. Bennett, "The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories (New York Simon and Shuster, 1993).
42. See also William J. Bennett, "Moral Literacy and the Formation of Character,'' in Moral Character and Civic Education in the Elementary School, ed. Jacques S. Benniga [New York: Teachers College Press, 1991)
43. Eamonn Callan, Educating Citizens: Political Education and Liberal Democracy (oxford: Clarendon, 1997);
44. David Carr, Educating the Virtues: An Essay on the Philosophy of Psychology, Moral Development, und Education (London: Routledge, 1991);
45. and Amy Gutmann, DemociaticEducation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).
46. McLaughlin and Halstead, "Education in Character and Virtue," 137-138
47. Buber's colleague Franz Rosenzweig makes a similar point in his essay "The Builders: Concerning the Law," in On Jewish Learning, Franz Rosenzweig (New York: Schocken, 1965), 72-94.
48. Martin Buber, Hassidism and Modern Man [New York Horizon Press, 1958);
49. and Noddings, Caring.
50. Michael Oakeshott delineates the distinction between ideological and traditional political education in "Political Education," Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, (London: Methuen, 1962).
51. See Charles Taylor, Human Agency and Language (Cambridge: Cambridgeuniversity Press, 1988),15- 44;
52. and Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making ofModern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 25-52.
53. Not all moral philosophers agree that fallibility is a consequence of freedom and intelligence. See, for example, Frankena, Ethics, 72, 76.
54. The admission of fallibility suggests that this is a eudaimonian, not a perfectionist, ethic; it recognizes the fragility of the human condtion, on the one hand, and the joy of learning from our mistakes, on the other (see Steutel and Carr, Virtue Ethics and Moral Education, 12-16). To recognize and learn from errors, we must accept and grow from criticism, and this is not possible in a perfect society. Moral education must necessarily engage students in criticism both from within and from without of particular and common traditions. Liberal democracies are imperfect, which means that they can get better or worse based on the decisions made by the citizens who populate them.
55. Williams, Ethics and the Limits o/ Philosophy, 4-5.
56. Walzer, Thick and Thin, 1-39.
57. 'See Ferdinand Tonnies, Community and Society (New York: Harper and Row, 1957);
58. and Ernile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society [New York: Macmillan, 1984).
59. Taylor sums up the characteristics of these sorts of communities in his own interpretation of Hegel that charts a middle way between better-known readings of the left and the right. The German word "Sittlichkeit, " he explains, "refers to the moral obligations I have to an ongoing community of which I am a part." It might be roughly translated as a mixture of ethics, goodness, and community, and Taylor contrasts the term with "Moralitat," which corresponds to a combination of morality and the notion of the Right. See Charles Taylor, Hegel [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975)' 376-377.
60. See also Allen W. Wood, "Hegel on Education," in Philosophers on Education, ed. Rorty, 300-317.
61. Alasdair MacIntyre's argument for the demise of common schools does not follow from liberal democracy's principled inability to adjudicate between conflicting conceptions of the good (see Alasdair MacIntyre, "How to Seem Virtuous Without Actually Being So," in Educa tion in Morality, eds. McLaughlin and Halstead, 118-131).
62. What follows is an increased emphasis in the common school on particularity as proposed by Steven Macedo in Liberal Virtues: Citizenship and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism (Oxford Clarendon Press, 2000), as well as enhanced emphases on the commons in separate schooling. For a discussion of the burdens and dilemmas of common schooling in relation to spiritual, moral, and citizenship education, see Terence H. McLaughlin, "Education, Spirituality, and the Common School," in Spirituality, Philosophy, and Education, eds. David Carr and John Haldane (London: Routledge, 2003);
63. and Terence H. McLaughlin, "The Burdens and Dilemmas of Common Schooling," in Citizenship Education in Liberal Democratic Societies, eds. McDonough and Feinberg. FOK more on the problems of pubiic schooling in relation to cultural diversity, see Walter Feinberg, Common Schools, Uncommon Identities: National Unity and Cultural Difference (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
64. In Reclaiming Goodness I used the term "pragmatic" to denote this characteristic of goodness, which has consequentialist or instrumentalist connotations that do not apply to the view Iam developing (see RG, 41-43). However, this view does share Dewey's commitment to such notions as communities of inquiry, the common faith of democratic societies, and the importance of balancing tensions between communal and individual interests as well as between authority and freedom. It also shares Dewey's view that philosophy should address problems of everyday life and find concrete expression in how we live and educate.
65. Hanan A. Alexander and Terence H. McLaughlin, "Education in Religion and Spirituality," in The Blackwell Guide in Philosophy of Education, eds. Nigel Blake, Paul Smeyers, Richard Smith, and Paul Standish [Oxford: Blackwell, 2003).
66. Simon Rawidowicz, "On Interpretation," in Studies in rewish Thought, ed. Nathaniel Glazer (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1974);
67. Hanan A. Alexander, "Science and Spirituality, Tradtion and Interpretation in Liberal Education," Curriculum Inquiry 22, no. 4 (1992): 383400;
68. and Terence H. McLaughlin, "Nicholas Burbules on Jesus as Teacher," in Spirituality and Ethics in Education, ed. Hanan A. Alexander (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2004).
69. In Educating Citizens, Callan suggests that the sort of juxtaposition of opposing positions required of "reasonable pluralism and liberal democracy shapes the self in profound and dmturbing ways," because it requires "serious imaginative engagement with rival views about good and evil, right and wrong" (13,40). I do not find this disturbing in the least. To reap the benefits of liberal society, traditions must engage in the sort of ongoingreinterpretation that such a society requires. It is this dialectical process that tempers extremism by calling upon members of particular communities to consider their obligations as citizens in a common community that protects the right of all citizens to publicly celebrate distinctiveness. The traditions that are most threatened by this process are likely to be those that pose the greatest threat to liberal democracy and, thus, in greatest need of in terpretatio.
70. 1 mean here "objective" in the sense developed by Paul Tillicli, according to which there is an "object" of "ultimate concern." Faith, on this view, must be in something that has moral contcnt and ontological substance (see Paul Tillich, The Dynamics of Faith [New York: HarperCollins, 19861, 1-11).
71. For more on this point, see Roger Trigg Rationality and Religion (Oxford Blackwell, 1998), 59-69;
72. Simon Blackbum, Essays in Quasi-Realism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 3-1 1;
73. and Alexander, Reclaiming Goodness, 50-53.
74. Philip Phenix, "Transcendence and the Curriculum," Teachers College Record 73, no. 2 (1971): 271- 283;
75. andDwayneHuebner, The Lure ofthe Transcendent (Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1999).
76. Robert M. Adams, Finiteand Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (Oxford: OxfordUniversity ress, 1999), 1;
77. and Alexander, Reclaiming Goodness, 145-150.
78. It is valid to ask at this point what the language of spirituality adds to this dlscussion? First, it is descriptive. The increased concern regarding what people today call spirituality is a result of these modem dynamics, and intelligent spirituality offers a framework for quenching this thirst, for a way of life without damaging the democratic society that makes it possible. On this view, spiritual education is inexorably linked to moral and democratic education. Additionally, it constitutes a covering category that indicates how both religious and nonreligious ways of life can fulfill democracy's need for "thick" identity.
79. This is especially important because there are those on both sides of this divide that would exclude the other from consideration as a legitimate response to this need (for example, John White, Education and Per.Tona1 Well Being in a Secizlnr Universe London: London Institute of Education, 19951). Finally, it emphasizes Noddings' point that intelligent believers and unbelievers often have more in common with one another than with unintelligent believers and unbelievers (see Nel Noddings, Educating for Intelligent Belief and Unbelief New York: Teachers College Press, 19931, xiii). Surely, the conditions of ethical discourse and the civic virtues of democracy are central ingrehents of this commonality.
80. Thomas Green, Voices: The EducationalForrnation of Conscience (Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame University Press, 1999), 112-1 15.
81. Alexander and McLaughlin, "Education in Religion and Spirituality," 359-360.
82. However, psychological and sociological understanding is likely to be very useful in the cultivation of identity.
83. Elliot Eisner, Cognition and Curriculum Reconsidered (New York: Teachers College Press, 1994).
84. Richard S. Peters, Psychology and Ethical Development (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1974).
85. Jana Noel, "On Varieties of 'Phronesis,"' Educutional Philosophy and Theory31, no. 3 (1999): 273-289
86. Joseph Schwab, Science, Curriculum, and Liberal Education Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978);
87. and Joseph Schwab, "The Practical 4: Somethmg for Curriculum Professors to DO," Curriculum Inquiry 13, no. 3 (1983): 239-256.
88. Lee Shulman, "Those Who Understand Teach: Knowledge Growth in Teaching," Educational Researcher 15, no. 2 (1986): 4-14.
89. Philip W. Jackson, Life in Classrooms (New York: Holt, Reinhart, and Winston, 1968).
90. Philip W. Jackson, Robert E. Boostrom, and DavidT. Hansen, The Moral Life of Schools (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998 I.
91. Elliot Eisner, TheEducationalImagination,3 d ed., (EnglewoodCliffs, New rersey: Prentice-Hall, 1994).
92. I use the terms literature and the arts here to refer to the creation as well as the study of symbolic representation, history to refer to the critical study of the past as well as narrative records of personal and collective memory, philosophy in the analytic sense of clarifying the meaning of concepts and the logic of arguments, and theology in the natural (in contrast to revealed] sense as the study of hgher goods (not only of a Western God) and as the interpretation of narratives, rituals, and symbols that embody those goods. By "social science" I am referring mostly to qualitative inquiry that entails the interpretation of educational and communal practices expressed in thick description and grounded in participant observation, key informant interviews, and the examination of material culture.
93. Suzanne Langer, Problems in Art (New York: Scribner's, 1957).
94. David Hansen, The Call to Teach (New York: Teachers College Press, 1995).
95. Nicholas C. Burbules, "Jesus as Teacher," in Spirituality and Ethics in Education, ed. Alexander; McLaughlin, "Nicholas Burbules on Jesus as Teacher"; Hanan A. Alexander and Shmuel Glick, "The Judaic Tradition," in The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy of Education, ed. Randall Curran (Oxford Blackwell, 2003);
96. Hanan A. Alexander, "A Jewish View of Human Learning," International Iournal of Children's Spirituality 4, no. 2 (1999): 383-400;
97. and Hanan A. Alexander, "God as Teacher: Jewish Reflections on a Theology of Pedagogy," Jourrial of Beliefs and Values 22, no. 1 (2001): 5-17.
98. Lawrence Cremin, Public Education (New York: Basic Books, 1976],27-53.
99. Shulman, "Those Who Understand Teach."
100. My students at the University of Haifa are examining topics such as the construction of D u e identity in Israeli junior high schools, the role informal education plays in cultivating secular Jewish identity in Israel, the impact of music in school ceremonies on Israeli identity, and the tensions between religion and modernity in Israeli yeshiva high schools.
101. Bernard G. Glazer and Anselm Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory (Chicago: Aldine, 1967).
102. Hanan A. Alexander, "Aesthetic Inquiry in Education: Community, Transcendence, and the Meaning of Pedagogy," Journal ofAesthetic Education 37, no. 1 (2003): 1-18.
103. See Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzhak on Genesis 1:1, and Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir on Genesis 37:2
104. Frankena, Ethics, 27;
105. Abraham Heschel, God in Search of Man (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy, 19571,336337;
106. and David Bridges, Fiction Written Under Oath Essays in Philosophy and Educational Research (Dordecht am Main: Kluwer, 2003).
107. Elliot Eisner, The Enlightened Eye: Qualitative Inquiry and the Enhancement of EducationalPractice (New York: Merrill, 1997).
108. See also JohnDewey, Art as Experience (1934; reprint, New York: Perigee, 1980