A Place for Shame in Religious Education

Abstract

An 18th-century parable based on the Adam story offers a model of moral education rooted in communitarianism. Individual conscience arises from social norms, with a vital role for shame and pride. Emphasizing the nobility of being created in the divine image, this model overcomes shortcomings of rationalist, Enlightenment education. Moreover, the parable reads the political setting of Exodus as an antidote to the individualist failings of Genesis. The social framework enables mechanisms like conscience and cognitive dissonance to function. The model challenges some current conceptions of moral education, seeing empathy as the result, rather than the cause, of moral behavior.

Notes

The original setting of the parable explains the traditional feast on the eve of the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 23).

While Pinker (2012) gives religion a mixed report card for its role in controlling violence, he sees the decline of honor (especially in some of its most ludicrous forms, like dueling) as a positive development in that regard. He identifies “the moral sense” as an essential part of the human equipment which “sanctifies a set of norms and taboos that govern the interactions among people in a culture, sometimes in ways that decrease violence … though often in ways that increase it” (xxv)—another mixed report. In this context, my terse response is that any value (like honor) can be corrupted or misapplied. In the parable, recovering honor was what enabled the lad to strive for a higher standard of behavior, thereby ameliorating the social situation.

A detailed taxonomy of the moral emotions is beyond the scope of this work, to which the book-length works of Taylor, Morris, and Prinz testify. One could easily add Williams (1993) and others. In this specific context, the words of Prinz (2007, 77) show the challenge of such an undertaking: “The model that I have been proposing predicts that people who transgress against community will feel a blend of guilt and shame. We have no word for that emotion, but I suspect it exists.”

An exasperated parent or teacher may scold a child with “You should be ashamed!” but that utterance is only invoked when the offending child has not felt shame on his own. The breakdown in the child's self-judgment system may arise from a number of reasons (e.g., failure to internalize/share a norm, the breach of which would cause shame; failure to feel part of a group in whose eyes one is dishonored, etc.). That contemporary parents/educators so seldom use that phrase has much to say about the role of honor/shame in our society. “Embarrassment serves an important good. … Arising from sensitivity to what others think, embarrassment provides painful notice that one has crossed certain bounds while at the same time providing others with a kind of apology. It keeps us in good standing in the world” (Gawande 2002,150).

⁵I deal more extensively with the tension between obedience and autonomy in my article “Can Autonomy Counteract Extremism in Traditional Education?” (Resnick 2008) from which this section is adapted.

It is noteworthy that Kohlberg retained his “hypothetical, non-Piagetian Stage 7 which embodies a ‘religio-cosmic perspective’” (Reed 1997, 84) even after he jettisoned his Stage 6. Without Stage 7, it is difficult to respond to the question “Why be moral in an immoral world?”

Court (2012, 251) provides guidelines for religious educators in the role of helping students toward “a direct experience of the Divine.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Resnick

David Resnick was Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, Bar Ilan University, Israel. E-mail: [email protected]