Moral Education is Not Good Enough Because Education is Not Moral Enough

Abstract

For education to be moral enough, its goal is defined not as to help individuals to learn the life ideals of church or state (which means centuries of practice whereby a group of individuals is trying to impose these ideals upon another group) but to create moral individuals‐‐people who are willing and able to treat each other as equals, and who are willing and able to feel compassion towards one another. Consideration is given to lessons from psychotherapy about the potential of autonomous human individual development for programmes of social change, in order for these programmes to be carried out without government and education resorting to imposition of the life ideals presupposed by them. In conclusion recognition is given to a trend of ethical thought, revitalising the moral significance of responsiveness to the reality of other people, grounded in the virtue of care for particular people. Adding the virtues of care and compassion to the virtues of impartiality and fairness offers a much deeper understanding of the moral grounds of society in its communitarian aspects, as evidenced by Solidarity as the social movement of the early 1980s in Poland.