Does classic school curriculum contribute to morality? Integrating school curriculum with moral and intellectual education

Abstract

Phillip Cam recently published a study on the separation between the teaching and learning of classic school curriculum (CSC) on the one hand and morality on the other. He suggests an approach to integrate them. The goal of this article was to suggest a complementary alternative approach, to Cam’s. Based on a MacIntyrean paradigm, I argue that seeing the CSC (such as math, biology, literature and history) as ‘practices’ would also enable that integration. This approach differs from the one proposed by Cam, since it preserves the structure of the CSC. Nevertheless, I will demonstrate how this approach leads to a number of changes in the formation, teaching and learning of school curriculum. As background, I will briefly describe R.S. Peters’ attempt to find an internal justification for the teaching and learning of school curriculum and point to some weaknesses it contains. My proposal can be understood as deriving from the same principle, of another famous educational initiative, Mortimer Adler’s ‘Great Book Project’. Toward the end of the article, I will demonstrate why Adler’s project differs from mine, and why it does not meet the goal of integrating learning school curriculum with moral education.

Keywords:

• School curriculum
• morality
• philosophy
• Alasdair MacIntyre
• liberalism

Acknowledgement

This article is dedicated to the loving memory of my father Shlomo Segev (1930–2016).

Notes

1. Later on, MacIntyre adds another essential virtue, which he calls ‘the virtue of having an adequate sense of the traditions to which one belongs or which confront one’ (MacIntyre, 2007, p. 223). I discuss this additional virtue below.