Learning moral judgement in higher education

ABSTRACT

The contemporary world is faced with many global problems, such as atmospheric pollution. The handling of these problems involves not only the assembling of established knowledge and technologies but diagnosing, and making due allowance for, powerful subjective influences. These latter involve subjective perceptions of the world around one and—especially—assumptions about values and about priorities among values, ‘values˚s being used in the sense of the driving motives of people's lives to which an element of obligation is attached. There would appear to be an urgent need, therefore, for education systems to include programmes which prepare students for recognising, and learning to think critically about, such subjective perceptions and value questions. To develop such insight, in a form which influences one's active professional judgement, the usual lecture courses are inadequate: the learning must have an experiential and indeed ‘existential˚s basis; it must be ‘felt in the bones˚s. The existential dimension required in the exploration and analysis of value issues will only be secured if students become personally involved in the study of the motivation and morality of human situations, whether in the humanities or elsewhere. Some account is given of various techniques for achieving these ends. A final section discusses the problem of indoctrination as it may arise in this context.