Morality After Myth

Abstract

Traditional approaches to education presume that the child acquires moral maturity from contacts with established religions, plus an injection of religious ideas via parents and schools. Homo sapiens, for his/her part, has been thought to become moral through the acquisition of values, representing the will of God, via the teachings of inspired prophets. In this scenario, myth and truth were interwoven and confused. We now see things differently: social/moral values appear, rather, to have been generated as the inescapable foundations for communal life. These values were often sustained by myth but were not the outcome of the mythical explanations. In our era the myths are fading overall, in spite of bursts of regeneration, thereby weakening the hold of traditional religions, so that we now need to turn, as the secure basis for moral education, mainly to nourishing social/moral values through the experiences and relationships we offer to children and young adults. This greatly extends the role of home and school as assured sources of moral development, which have now to be secured, not by abstract inculcation, but through communal values, experienced within patterns of social action and interaction, reinforced by general curriculum content.