Probing moral education and pursuing social justice: Review of Nucci, L., & Ilten-Gee, R., Moral education for social justice

ABSTRACT

In this extended book review, Winston C. Thompson engages with Larry Nucci’s and Robyn Ilten-Gee’s Moral education for social justice. Following summary of a few conceptual foundations of the project, Thompson offers areas of attention for further explorations of moral education in a socially unjust world. This focus on elements of the project’s foundation endeavors to demonstrate abiding potential for future work, with the specificity and nuance characteristic of the book, especially as related to the foundational theoretical analyses and practical guidance on offer.

KEYWORDS:

• Social justice
• moral development
• critical pedagogy
• systemic injustice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. An example of such a case might be the usage of the phrase ‘All Lives Matter’ in the US in recent years. The phrase itself seemingly communicates nothing that is morally objectionable. However, the context in which the phrase is used (i.e., against the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter [BLM] movement, highlighting forms of systemic violence against Black bodies) transforms many instances of such usage into a morally objectionable rejection of broader social justice efforts.

2. For example, consider a student who has long and strongly held an extreme view on the moral status of persons born on a specific date of the year (perhaps owed to some astrological beliefs?). With considerable confidence, an educator need not treat this relatively fringe view as a matter open for moral deliberation.

3. For example, consider the case of students who have divergent but not at all strongly held intuitions about their moral obligations to persons experiencing poverty in other countries, relative to their obligations to relatively less impoverished persons within their own country. An educator might have a considered position on this but might nonetheless create space for students to explore many of the relevant views.

4. Nucci and Ilten-Gee draw on Anthony Laden’s (2012) account of reasoning as a social practice. This serves them well even as it encourages quite generative questions regarding the quality and caliber of dialogue they seek.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Winston C. Thompson

Winston C. Thompson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Studies and Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy (by courtesy) at The Ohio State University. Thompson’s scholarship explores ethical/political dimensions of educational policy and practice. His recent work examines issues of justice in school punishment.