Moral education in a time of human ecological devastation

ABSTRACT

Stories of civilization and progress tell us that humans cannot help being destructive, selfish, and aggressive, which are side effects of progress requiring sanctions and engineering. It can be argued that this approach has brought about the ecological collapse we face today. The older, more widespread view—that human personality and behavior are shaped by social support—respects the dignity of the individual and of other than humans, disallows coercion and expects high autonomy and communalism. The latter we can call the indigenous worldview and is apparent among sustainable societies. To ensure the development of human beings who live cooperatively with one another and in concert with ecological systems, moral education approaches should restore the non-civilized, ancient practices of raising good children. This paper examines what moral education should look like in light of children’s basic needs and the degraded developmental systems children often experience today.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous worldview
• evolved nest
• nature connection
• apprenticeship
• virtue
• ethical skills
• self-authorship

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Templeton Religion Trust for support during the preparation of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. There are many (conservative) reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, among other scientific reports and warnings. See also Kolbert (2014).

2. Unless otherwise noted, most of the information presented is from the reviews in these publications.

3. The problems I describe are from data in the USA where wellbeing has deteriorated among all ages. The USA tends to export its ways to other countries and so it may be important for all readers to have a sense of what has happened in the USA, an experiment in action.

4. Civilization likes to tout itself as solving longstanding human problems (e.g., Pinker, 2011). But any knowledge of our deep history shows the opposite to be true. Civilization brought about decreased health (e.g., decreased height), epidemics, war, slavery, colonization, toxification of the planet, overpopulation, species extermination, etc. (e.g., Narvaez, 2019; Small, 2008). All these problems still plague the world. When civilized humans invent something to counteract some part of these challenges, it is treated as showing the superiority of civilization, with no understanding that civilization itself brought about the problem in the first place.

5. Initiated under the Minnesota Community Voices and Character Education project funded by USDE OERI Grant # R215V980001. Most aspects of the model are reviewed in Narvaez & Bock (2014); Narvaez et al. (2003, 2004).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Templeton Religion Trust [No number].

Notes on contributors

Darcia Narvaez

Darcia Narvaez is Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame who focuses on moral development and flourishing from an interdisciplinary perspective, integrating anthropology, neuroscience, clinical, developmental and educational sciences. Dr. Narvaez’s current research explores how early life experience influences wellbeing and moral character in children and adults. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Educational Research Association and is former editor of the Journal of Moral Education She has published more than 20 books, including Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom: First Nation Know-how for Global Flourishing; Basic Needs, Wellbeing and Morality: Fulfilling Human Potential and Embodied Morality: Protectionism, Engagement and Imagination. A recent book, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom won the 2015 William James Book Award from the American Psychological Association and the 2017 Expanded Reason Award. She writes a blog for Psychology Today (“Moral Landscapes”) and hosts the webpage EvolvedNest.org.