Virtue as a response to pandemic and crisis

ABSTRACT

One response to the coronavirus pandemic has been for educators, public health experts and politicians to emphasise the importance of empathy, compassion, care, or similar human qualities in tackling the crisis. We explore these claims philosophically in regard to education. What moral attributes are relevant to a crisis such as a pandemic? How should they be conceptualised? And, how may they be cultivated? We argue that conceptions of education that aim to promote virtue could make a valuable contribution in responding to global crises. However, revision is needed to ensure that any appeal to virtue also adequately considers issues of social justice. We begin our discussion by offering a critique of the ‘turn to character’ – a heterogenous and wide-ranging movement in public policy and the academy that had considerable impact on educational discourse prior to the pandemic. We then consider how character education may be reconceptualised to address issues of collective action and social justice that inevitably arise from crises such as the pandemic. We conclude virtue is an appropriate response to pandemic, but only insofar as virtues are understood reciprocally and inherently related to practices that are mutually beneficial, as opposed to being conceptualised primarily as the traits of individuals.

KEYWORDS:

• Education
• pandemic
• ethics
• virtue
• care
• justice

Introduction

Along with the development of vaccines and therapeutic treatments, moral attributes, or ‘virtues’ have often been appealed to as a response to the coronavirus pandemic. For example, The Queen of England, in addition to the ‘advances of science’, stated that ‘quiet good-humoured resolve’, ‘fellow-feeling’ and ‘instinctive compassion’ should form the requisite responses to the pandemic (HM The Queen, 2020, np). Qualities such as these are not just referred to in leaders’ rhetoric, however. They have also been identified by transnational agencies. The World Health Organisation (WHO, 2020) identified ‘solidarity’, ‘cooperation’, and the fostering of, ‘Equity, fairness, trust, and benefit sharing’ as research gaps to be urgently addressed in order to tackle the pandemic (WHO, 2020, pp. 53–54). Cultivating ‘mutual caring’, ‘solidarity’ and ‘empathy’ through public education are likewise identified by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s International Commission on Futures of Education in their response (UNESCO, 2020, np). In the burgeoning academic research literatures relating to the pandemic, similar appeals to virtue and moral character have been made across the social and medical sciences (e.g. Bellazzi & Von Boyneburgk, 2020; Galang et al., 2021; Larkin, 2021).

This article reconsiders such appeals to virtue in the field of education. While we focus on responses to the current pandemic, our argument is intended to be relevant to any global threat or crisis which will require collective action, such as the impending crises that will result from climate change. We argue that responding to and preparing for crises necessitate a strong commitment to some kind of ‘character education’ – that is a conception of education which draws on the tradition of virtue ethics and aims to promote individual and societal flourishing. However, we offer some modifications and caveats to the prevalent view among character educators that virtues are to be understood as individuals’ traits. This is because what could be called ‘individualist’ approaches to virtue – which in the field of education have been influenced by positive psychology – neglect some salient features of virtues concerning reciprocity and the common good, which are essential for anyone’s flourishing. As by their very nature crises such as the coronavirus pandemic and climate change pose threats that require collective actions, we argue it makes sense to refocus character education on the collective rather than the individual. While individuals’ efforts and excellences are necessary to sustain such collective responses, we suggest that virtues – as commonly conceived in the field of education and positive psychology – require some critical revision if they are to be considered as appropriate educational aims that promote the common good.

Our argument draws upon the resources offered by communitarian (MacIntyre, 1981) and feminist (Tessman, 2001, 2002) virtue ethicists who have sought to modify conservative interpretations of the virtue ethics tradition. We first introduce the ‘turn to character’ (Allen & Bull, 2018) – the renewed interest in virtue ethics in public and international policy, including education that gained momentum immediately prior to the pandemic. After offering some preliminary critique of this movement, we go on to consider one response to the pandemic (Fowers et al., 2021) that gives a contemporary perspective of the virtues in the context of the pandemic. This discussion allows us to reconsider MacIntyre’s (1981) understanding of virtues as excellences relating to reciprocal practices. Building on this argument and drawing on modifications in critical care theory, we then advance a reformed ‘critical character education’ and suggest how it may begin to respond to the pandemic.

The turn to character

Meet Barbara Gordon, the new commissioner of Gotham City … She cleaned up the streets of Gotham’s nearby sister city, Blüdhaven using statistics and compassion! (Lego Batman Movie (2017))

The accolade above attributed to the fictional crime commissioner Barbara Gordon serves as a good introduction to what Allen and Bull (2018) have dubbed ‘the turn to character’ – a moral and political mood that became pervasive in public policy in many places around the world in the decade prior to the pandemic. In this light-hearted but paradigmatic example, the otherwise utilitarian use of ‘statistics’ in the neo-liberal task of ‘reward by results’ in public policy is tempered by an appeal to the virtue compassion. Importantly, Barbara has also been personally successful on account of the instrumental use of this virtue. It is precisely this emphasis on the personal strengths an individual needs in order to compete well in society, such as in the capacity of leadership, which has been one hallmark of the contemporary turn to character. Another is the assumption that such virtues either comprise or yield measurable outcomes and are therefore amenable to utilitarian cost/benefit analyses. In our present discussion it is important to keep in mind the importance of the beneficial outcomes of virtues in this regard. This was well understood by utilitarians such as Mill in whose account virtues may play a role both as an end, and as a means to what is good for the greatest number (Mill & Bentham, 1987).

The turn to character is important to consider in the context of the pandemic for two reasons. Firstly, the appeal to ‘empathy’ or ‘compassion’ endorses a widely held assumption that the qualities of moral agents, virtues, are crucial in response to it. Secondly, the pandemic has occurred at a time when virtue ethics had already received unprecedented interest and traction in intellectual, scientific and public life as one approach of an acknowledged wider ‘ethical turn’ in the social and medical sciences. As the above epigraph illustrates, in the last two decades this has found its way deep into popular culture as well as public policy globally. It is of note that private philanthropy supporting research and promotion of the virtues has been influential along with public funding (Allen & Bull, 2018). It is highly germane to our argument that influential philanthropic actors that have financed the turn to virtue in the last two decades have argued since the outset of the pandemic that ‘pandemic virtues’ such as compassion have a big part to play in protecting humanity during the coronavirus crisis (Serazin, 2020).

In the UK, recourse to virtue has also had a pivotal role in the last decade in politics, as lauded in the ‘Red Tory’ (Blond, 2010) or ‘Blue Labour’ (Williams, 2015) movements, for example. One good example of the multi-faceted and influential discourse of character is the work of the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues (2020) which has engaged numerous sectors with a neo-Aristotelian model of virtues, not limited to nursing, business, education and the military. This renewed interest in virtue has become incorporated in a wider discourse about education futures internationally. It is argued that because of anticipated technological advances, the desired educational outcomes of the near future will not be confined to the traditional priorities of literacy, numeracy and scientific knowledge alone. Instead, dispositions, values or personal attributes are of increased import in order to secure economic prosperity and social stability (OECD, 2019). In the character education movement, these qualities are conceived as ‘virtues’ – positive and stable character traits which have cognitive, affective and behavioural aspects (Berkowitz, 2011). This definition reflects the influence of personality theory and positive psychology on research and practice, which we argue presents some problems when evaluating the potential contribution of character education in responding to the crisis, and the calls of the international education community to promote education responsive to the needs of the 21^st century.

According to critics of the character education movement, appealing to individuals’ virtues can be merely a rationale to justify inequality. While the tradition of virtue ethics has evolved in the last two millennia, it is of note here that the inspiration of much of present-day character education draws on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (c.350BCE/2009) rather than more contemporary accounts. This ancient text was written of, and for, the ancient Athenian elite and so champions the virtues required of male, militaristic, slave-owning aristocrats (Brown, 2009). While attempts to reconcile virtue ethics with social justice have been made philosophically, such as Tessman’s notion of feminist ‘critical virtue ethics’ (Tessman, 2001, 2002), these ideas have seldom found their way into educational and policy discourses. Rather, in the context of the UK today, it is argued the new recourse to character parallels Victorian notions of the deserving poor because appeals to character locate responsibility for success or failure in the traits of an individual and their own efforts to develop them (Taylor, 2018). Internationally, character education programmes have also been criticised on the same grounds (Burman, 2018; Camfield, 2015; Kirchgasler, 2018). To these criticisms made before the pandemic, we may add some preliminary observations about the pandemic that expose some potential challenges for character education as a response to it.

Whereas the social, medical and economic harms of coronavirus disproportionately affect rich and poor, the primary and secondary harms also relate to the actions or inactions of others. Therefore, the harm of the pandemic may only be ameliorated by collective action – be it through social distancing, social and economic support including education, or widespread immunisation, for example. No one’s personal excellence is sufficient to respond to the crisis in the short-, medium- or long-term. Social distancing, mask wearing, regular testing, for example, all require social cooperation. As we have learnt through the pandemic, responding to it has largely necessitated wholescale changes in social norms as opposed to individual action. Future crises such as climate change are likely to bear the same collective burdens and duties. To this rather obvious point, character educators may respond that without the requisite virtues, cooperation is not possible. Therefore, education should cultivate the right virtues for individuals to contribute to societal flourishing. However, the pandemic has further exposed some of the problems already noted by critics of the character education movement. Appeals to virtue can be used to excuse inequality and also to put expectation on certain social roles or groups. This problem can be readily understood by the example of care workers and front-line medical staff. Their dangerous work during a pandemic is often justified on a ‘contractarian’ or ‘reciprocal’ basis (Malm et al., 2008). They are to act with character on account of their commitment to a social contract in which they benefit from training and employment in return for their service, even in the case they are endangered. It is because of this implicit reciprocity that mass rituals of hand clapping in support of medical and critical workers are enacted, as they have been in the current pandemic. (And by which calls for improved working conditions are made and settled – such as the UK government’s U-turn on health care surcharges for migrant medical workers in 2020). This example begins to suggest the importance of reciprocity in any viable virtue-based account of response to crisis. For when failing to fairly enact the appropriate reciprocal arrangements for health, and other front-line workers, merely appealing to the compassion or courage of front-line workers would be unjust. Without considering justice, appeals to virtues may smack of Orwellian ‘double-speak’ in the sense that the moral ideal of virtue can merely be a ploy to cover up systemic injustice.

Reconsidering virtue in the context of the pandemic

Fowers et al. (2021) have advanced the most systematic conceptual framework for virtue as a response to the pandemic, focusing on how three specific virtues can address the difficulties of risk, injustice, and complexity exacerbated by the pandemic. Their account stresses the need to move through frailty and human limitations on the pathway to human flourishing. In this regard they argue courage is essential to medical workers responding to the medical emergency; justice is necessary for individuals and officials when dealing with the secondary social and economic harms caused by the pandemic; and, practical wisdom (phronesis), is necessary for everyone when making decisions. These virtues are conceptualised using a framework that integrates Aristotelian principles and positive psychology, summarised as having the following 10 characteristics:

Virtues (1) are acquired traits that (2) vary in strength across individuals, (3) are responsive to social roles, (4) are sensitive to the specifics of the situation, (5) facilitate the pursuit of valued aims, (6) make it possible to live well, (7) show up in behavior, (8) are based on knowledge, (9) are fully and properly motivated, and (10) are guided by practical wisdom. (Fowers et al., 2021, p. 4)

Fowers et al. suggest that a society formed of individuals exhibiting these virtues, so conceived, is necessary to uphold any measures contributing to public safety, and to correct historical and systemic injustices worsened by the pandemic. The meta-virtue of practical wisdom is essential in this role as it allows for reasoned, context-specific personal action that upholds the common good in the circumstances of crisis, and regulates the application of the other virtues. Attaining these virtues is the path to flourishing during the pandemic. Building on the critique of the turn to character introduced above, we question some of the basic assumptions of Fowers et al.’s framework. This critique provides more general insights into the potential problems of appealing to virtue in times of crisis and therefore how a crisis-responsive and socially critical character education may begin to be reconceptualised. We emphasise here that Fowers et al. are aiming to present a model of virtues that can respond to the pandemic and promote justice and social change for the common good. Our contention is that their conception of virtues as traits is not adequate for this task and thus requires further caveats to be made to their 10-point model.

Sumner (1998) makes the distinction between ‘self-regarding’ and ‘other-regarding’ virtues. The former tend to be beneficial primarily for the agent, the latter beneficial for others. This dichotomy is employed by Tessman (2001) as a means of identifying weaknesses in traditional accounts of virtue ethics when taking into account matters of social justice. It is of note that while Fowers et al. argue their conception is aimed at societal as well as individual flourishing, their conceptualisation of courage, justice and practical wisdom appear to be principally self-regarding. For example, Fowers et al., employing a distinction made by Aristotle, focus on justice as the quality of an individual as opposed to justice as a law or social structure. While it can be upheld along with Fowers et al. that without individuals manifesting the virtue of justice, no just social order could be sustained, it is also pertinent to note that when justice is conceptualised as an individual’s acquired trait, it does not adequately address the moral problem that virtues often apply to a privileged group who have a vested interest in an unjust social order (Tessman, 2002). Indeed, it is the invisibility of the call to reform an unjust social order, and the suggestion we should transfer responsibility for justice to an individual’s capacity for virtue, that is the crux of the problem, and forms the backbone of any critical theory of virtue. For instance, we find it problematic when Fowers et al. point to the internalisation of oppression among marginalised groups in the context of the vice of deficiency or believing that one deserves less. While internalised oppression can become inseparable from people’s perceived sense of self, stigma studies have shown that it is discriminatory and prejudiced social, community and educational responses that in large part mediate and compound the trauma of oppression in people’s lives. For example, as social isolation has seen rises to risks of domestic violence, it may not be justice sensitive or effective to appeal to women’s courage to manage risks or to merely point out that some women have acquired personal beliefs that they do not deserve help. A more integral discussion of the integration of courage with justice will expose the deep-rooted issues of social inequalities and the need to examine collective beliefs of oppression (Ruderman et al., 2021). This means Fowers et al.'s contention that ‘justice is enacted when an individual actively, knowingly, and with proper motivation contributes to an equitable distribution burdens and benefits’ (Fowers et al., 2021, p. 6) is not only incomplete but also requires greater sensitivity.

A comparable weakness can be identified in Fowers et al.’s appeal to courage. As we have seen, according to critics, appeals to virtue have been identified as a neo-liberal justification for inequality. Without further caveats incorporated in the conceptualisation of virtues as traits, it is easy to imagine a virtue-based appeal that foregrounded the ‘courage’ of low-paid medical staff and other essential workers, such as factory workers in the latex glove industry, to continue working without proper safety equipment, social distancing or the possibility of testing. What might otherwise be considered as due responsibilities towards others’ wellbeing are abnegated on account of the importance of potentially deceptive and misleading virtue-ideals. Indeed, we have seen such a criticism levied at the aforementioned mass-ritual of hand clapping in support of the sacrifice of low-paid medical workers in the UK (Einboden, 2020). In circumstances like these – which clearly have manifested during the course of the pandemic worldwide – ethical responsibility is shifted towards individuals rather than all, to the detriment of some and the benefit of others. We suggest such problems are not adequately accounted for in Fowers et al.’s systematisation. The ‘responsive to social role’ criterion seems to suggest that some roles may demand particular sacrifices with no additional criterion for reciprocity. If the meta-virtue of phronesis or the virtue of justice is to temper and ameliorate for all these issues, further caveats are also required. For if the telos of these virtues is flourishing, how can the tension between individual and collective flourishing be reconciled?

We identify the root of these problems as the limiting conceptualisation of virtue as an individual’s ‘trait’. The use of ‘trait’, although common in empirical studies in this field, is problematic as it is usually used to identify stable characteristics that are inherited, such as height, eye colour or personality. Virtue, traditionally conceived, however, differs from traits scientifically understood, in the respect that virtues are not individual characteristics like eye colour, but rather dispositions that require social cooperation. According to Aristotle (2009) and other virtue ethicists, they arise from activities that take place around the individual who then becomes habituated to them. So much is acknowledged by Fowers et al. However, because virtues require social role, performance, habituation, etc. to manifest, they are therefore, to some extent, socially located and constructed as opposed to being solely the property of individuals (Moulin‐Stożek, 2019). Any model of virtues therefore must take into account their social ontology.

MacIntyre’s (1981) understanding of virtues as excellences arising from socially embedded practices is useful here. According to MacIntyre, virtues always relate to a preceding concept of the good. It is the telos of the good life as understood by the elite of ancient Athens that is the lynch-pin to the working-out of the Aristotelian virtues in the Nicomachean ethics, for example. MacIntyre considers the virtues extolled by Benjamin Franklin to make two further distinctions useful to us in further evaluating virtue as a response to pandemic. The first is between virtues as ‘internal means’ to an end as opposed to virtues used as an ‘external means’ to an end. What MacIntyre means by this distinction is whether a given virtue is encapsulated by its relating telos, or whether a virtue is only instrumental to a related end. This is more nuanced than just a ‘fake’ virtue performed for ulterior motive. According to MacIntyre, Franklin’s emphasis on the importance of thrift, for example, is not ‘internally’ related to the prosperity valued in eighteenth century New England. It was only virtuous to the extent it would bring prosperity. The second related and crucial point made by MacIntyre is how virtues are related to cooperative activities whereby goods internally relatable to the telos of that activity are produced. Practices so conceived are not only part and parcel of a virtue enacted on behalf its practitioner, they also yield demonstrable goods to others. In other words, virtues, by definition, help the virtuous agent and those others involved in its practice. Virtue on this account therefore, to use MacIntyre’s own analogy, would be akin to the excellence of painting a beautiful and accurate portrait. Its excellence is internal to its purpose (a portrait of no likeness would be no portrait at all), but that excellence is not just a legitimate benefit to its painter on account of her worldly success or reputation as an artist, but to all onlookers.

MacIntyre’s distinctions reveal the radical social implications of virtue ethics so conceived. Many of the neo-liberal virtues advocated in the contemporary ‘turn to character’ are rooted in competitive practices that have their basis in unequal social relationships. However, it is not necessary to view virtues this way. Indeed, by their very nature, crises such as the pandemic show that ‘self-regarding’ and ‘other-regarding’ virtues cannot be so easily separated. Another person’s infection or incapacitation is readily going to impact one’s own (for example, if arguments about variants of concern evolving in unvaccinated populations are to be considered). Indeed, virtues defined as having ‘internal excellences’ are necessarily mutually beneficial. This subtle distinction avoids the problems of appeals to virtue previously observed. It also has substantial impact on the application of virtues in the pandemic. ‘Caring’, for example, can be conceived on a continuum from either end of these distinctions. It can refer to the instrumental use of the care of migrant care workers imported for that purpose by means of a differential in currency value. Or it can mean a mutually-practiced virtue whereby carers are in turn cared-for as part of an all-encapsulating vision of the good life whereby care is treated as an ‘internal’ excellence. Thus to Fowers et al.’s 10-point model we may wish to add that virtues should be conceptualised as being: a) related to social practices and values, that are b) reciprocal and mutually beneficial, and c) committed to social justice. With such caveats, we can see how courage, justice and practical wisdom may be an appropriate response to a crisis such as the pandemic. For character education, modifications such as these have considerable ramifications. Character educators have typically maintained that the virtue of the individual should be the starting point for character education because this is more pragmatic than whole scale change of social structures (Kristjánsson, 2015). However, the pandemic has both demonstrated the need and potential for collective action in the form of changed social norms and exposed the inequalities of existing social structures. We can therefore see in UNESCO’s and the WHO’s announcements the explicit appeal to reciprocity and social justice with their recommendations for ‘mutual caring’, ‘solidarity’, ‘empathy’, ‘cooperation’, and the fostering of, ‘Equity, fairness, trust, and benefit sharing’. If character education is to address these issues, to which it seems otherwise well-suited, some revision is necessary to avoid the problems identified by critics of the ‘turn to character’.

Towards a critical character education

It is possible to revise prevalent assumptions about the nature of virtue and apply these insights to inform the role of education in response to the pandemic. The starting place for moving towards such a conception of ‘critical character education’ is the astute criticism levelled by Tessman (2001) and other critical virtue ethicists, that to pursue flourishing or well-being through the attainment of requisite virtues cannot be moral if it relies upon a systemic inequality that limits another’s possibility of flourishing. As we have suggested, it is neither expedient nor morally adequate to think primarily at the level of the individual when conceptualising virtues in response to the pandemic. Virtues, including ‘pandemic virtues’ cannot be detached from wider values. In the context of the pandemic, avoidance of harm (as an end and corresponding value of the pandemic virtues) requires collective action and a changing of social norms and practices. Furthermore, as harms are disproportionately distributed, attention must be directed at the existing social structures that result in inequitable risks of the crisis. In the context of the pandemic merely applying practical wisdom to one’s own well-being while not simultaneously considering others’ misfortune could not be upheld, for example. Nor would it be virtuous to rely on the courage and compassion of others without reciprocating.

We suggest that character education could be reformed in a similar way as care ethics has been to become ‘critical care ethics’. Care is an example of a ‘pandemic virtue’ that received considerable philosophical attention in the fields of health and education for almost four decades before the pandemic. First advanced in the seminal work of Carol Gilligan (1982) and Noddings, 2013, the modification of care ethics in recent years supports our argument as it shows how an appeal to a moral agent’s dispositions requires the added consideration of justice, social relations and social context. Noddings emphasised her conception of care went beyond that of merely the virtuous disposition possessed by a care-giver. According to Noddings, although it is a virtue to care, care can only take place as part of a relationship between the caring and the cared-for. If care is enacted for the sake of virtue, and not for the cared-for as part of a caring relationship, hypocrisy and reification of virtue can soon set in – an argument analogous to concern of ‘virtue-signalling ’ during the pandemic.

In stressing the relational aspect of care, Noddings made an important move away from the individualist assumptions of traditional character education. The ontology of care is more than just the cognitive, affective and behavioural dispositions of an actor – rather it is a relationship between at least two persons. We concur with this socially-situated and relational premise, but note that Nodding’s position – in which there is an asymmetrical relationship between care-giver and cared-for – does not go far enough to give an account of care as a mutual, socially embedded practice that can work for social justice. Tronto (1993), however, has explored these larger democratic concerns and pioneered a fresh dimension of care theory called ‘caring-with’. Caring-with transcends the caregiver-recipient dyad to identify that care is co-constructed by both parties. The giver works with (not for) others through practices of communal solidarity and shared trust. Less paternalistic and more equitable than the original conceptualisation, ‘caring-with’ seems fitting for our focus on justice. We also expand beyond Tronto’s purview, however, in order to highlight scholarship by historically marginalised communities. In the last two decades, Black and Latino educationists have sought to build a more inclusive philosophy of care that may work for social justice (Antrop‐González & De Jesús, 2006; Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2002; Rolón-Dow, 2005; Valenzuela, 1999). This body of ‘difference scholarship’ (McKamey, 2011) – exposes societal inequity. Perhaps the most well-known call for ‘difference scholarship’ emanates from Audrey Thompson, a philosopher of critical race feminism who appeals for care theory to address its ‘ahistoricism, cultural bias, and obliviousness to systemic power relations’ (Thompson, 1998, p. 527). As noted of the ethics of care, if not obvious before, the pandemic has made clear the importance of revising conceptions of character education to take into account issues of social difference, if any appeal to character is to remain ethically viable and educationally justifiable.

A key philosophical problem presents itself with care, which is relevant when applied to other virtues too. How might we refine a philosophy of caring that did not, at its inception, recognise the different needs and vulnerabilities shaping what it means to care? Gilligan and Noddings explored the particularistic and affective nature of lived experience, aiming to break away from the abstract universalism of utilitarianism and deontological ethics. Hence, care ethics, in its earliest form, did not speak of ‘justice’ as justice was then associated with abstract universalism (for example, Kant’s categorical imperative, which prescribed the correct course of action in all situations). Ignoring race, class, ethnicity and other structures of marginalisation, care theory was personal without being political. However, the ethic of care has subsequently been reformed to take into account inequalities, and a justice criterion reintroduced. For example, it has been suggested that during lockdown, people with gardens could offer neighbours without gardens some access to green spaces to sit and relax (O’Grady, 2020). This awareness of inequality could also avoid the trap of misleading and deceptive virtue-based interventions, which we previously cautioned against in the example of misguidedly praising the courage of essential workers working without safety equipment, COVID-19 tests or adequate pay. The social justice criterion – defined broadly as an awareness of inequality and power relationships – may transform concepts of education. In other work, we suggest that when an ethic of care does attend to power relations, it becomes the ‘lifeblood’ of education (Culshaw & Kurian, 2021). That is, when care is keenly attuned to the social systems influencing individual wellbeing, then it becomes a vital, life-affirming and potentially transformative foundation for education, rather than a tokenistic ‘add-on’ to the curriculum (Culshaw & Kurian, 2021).

A kaleidoscope of factors influences a school’s capacity to cultivate virtues, including local and national governance, socio-cultural norms, and economic resources. While it is not possible to address all these complexities here, we advocate for character education that heeds the ‘complex affective and socio-political struggles’ embedded within pupils’ social worlds (Cremin et al., 2021, p. 2). This builds on Tronto’s (2013) communal notion of caring-with: not only supporting individual pupils, but also advocating for broader themes of inclusion and justice. For example, marginalised identities can render students more vulnerable in times of crisis. The National Teachers’ Union has urged the Education Secretary to help stop the ‘incidences of abuse, prejudice, xenophobia and racism as a result of the coronavirus, particularly against Chinese and other East Asian ethnicities and those perceived to be from these communities’ (NASUWT, 2020, np). Character education in a pandemic might therefore include anti-bullying interventions that tackle racism. Context-sensitive character education could also heed how difficult the pandemic prescription to ‘stay at home’ may be for pupils who do not find home a safe space. Youth wellbeing has been impacted by the rise in domestic violence during lockdown (Bradbury-Jones & Isham, 2020). Stigma can also make home unwelcoming; LGBT+ youth cite family rejection as a reason why they make up almost 25% of the UK’s homeless 16–25 year-olds (Albert Kennedy Trust, 2015). Charities have even advised young people against coming out during lockdown, as parents may be unusually stressed and react unpredictably (Mathers, 2020). Teacher training courses and school policies may thus need to take into account how some pupils are navigating a tumultuous social world and facing intensified risks and pressures on their capacity to feel safe to learn and develop. For how can we speak of virtues like compassion ‘if we do not understand what it means to be struggling?’ (Culshaw & Kurian, 2021, p. 5). Context-sensitive curricula and pedagogy might thus embody Tronto’s (2013) notion of caring-with; that is, not only supporting the welfare of individual pupils, but also ‘listening, understanding and standing in solidarity’ against structural and social injustice (Cremin et al., 2021, p. 21). This would elevate character education towards the broader vision of a community of shared trust and solidarity. We note, however, that without institutional support, care for the vulnerable can fragment (Tronto, 1993) or erode altogether (Kurian, 2020). Care theorists point out that the emotional labour of ‘low-status’ caregivers (such as teachers, nurses and social workers) has historically been ignored or delegitimised because care evokes stereotypes of ‘women’s work’ and refuses to sit comfortably with discourses of rationalism, individualism and autonomy (Gilligan, 1982; Noddings, 2013). As Tronto (1993) observes, ‘since our society treats public accomplishment, rationality, and autonomy as worthy qualities, care is devalued insofar as it embodies their opposites … privacy, emotion, and need’ (p. 117). Virtue-based interventions can only be sustainable if the whole-school ethos and infrastructure appropriately recognises, supports and compensates educators’ moral and affective labour. This may require a MacIntyrean commitment to valuing character education as a reciprocal practice.

The creative arts have a crucial role in leading a critical response to transnational, local and global challenges in this regard (Angeles & Pratt, 2017). For example, critical creative arts can deepen inclusion, and there is potential for artistic creativity to foster the cultivation of virtues, such as caring (Wilson, 2018). To illustrate the potential of the arts further, we highlight the impact of the Mother Tongue, Other Tongue (MTOT) project, a collaborative practice-led programme in which poet educators and English teachers guided young people to create multilingual poetry (Edwards et al., 2020). Poetry enabled young people to express care and compassion for the pandemic’s impact around the world and explore the meaning of grief in their lives. While further research is required to warrant contemporary poetry’s pedagogic potential for the practice of virtues, this implication is a promising line of inquiry. It can be argued that in the MacIntyrean sense of practices, critical creative arts unify in the telos to live as well as possible like the parrhesiastic value manifest in an artist’s focus on the internal good of aligning their actions with their values. Indeed, it could be argued that any educational intervention that brings people together and creates an awareness of togetherness, such as those offered by the arts, could begin to foster the prerequisite virtues for reciprocal cooperation.

Conclusion

Sceptics may scoff at the application of virtue as a response to the pandemic. Focusing on virtue as a panacea is a way of absolving responsibility for the material and medical investment needed to really solve issues, they may say. Yet the decade prior to the current coronavirus pandemic saw unprecedented interest among transnational bodies and national policy makers in equipping future global citizens with the necessary attitudes and values to tackle the challenges facing humanity in the 21^st century. According to this rationale, while globalisation and technological advancement are to yield great benefits in coming years, they also necessitate a renewed focus on ethics, and the cultivation of specific dispositions to solve or mitigate existing and unforeseen local and global problems. Frequently identified attributes include cooperation, resilience, care, empathy and compassion. As the first of the likely many 21^st century crises unfolds, it is pertinent to note that whereas technical solutions are in progress, the moral and political cooperation necessary for their effective use is oftentimes lacking, particularly when seen from the global perspective, or from the perspective of those most disadvantaged.

We suggest that it is the nature of virtues as common, intuitively understandable and mutually-beneficial qualities relatable to different kinds of social practices at all levels of society that makes them vital to engender in response to the current pandemic and future global crises. Our argument leads us to identify a philosophy of collective action that lays the conceptual foundation for educational interventions. In contrast to conceptions of virtue as individual strengths, virtues should be conceived as linked to certain kinds of practices that are mutually beneficial and institutionally-embedded. An important criterion of the telos of such virtues is that they function for social justice. This is important in crises such as a pandemic because of the interdependence of all humans and the necessity for collective action. We thus make a modest contribution to the character education tradition by advancing a social ontology of virtues that takes into account the ethical problems of social inequality and mutual need. Just as the pandemic has shown us that health can be construed as a collective moral practice, we suggest that along with responses to other predictable crises, it requires a certain kind of moral education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education Research and Development Grant (RD 201920).

Notes on contributors

Daniel Moulin-Stożek

Daniel Moulin-Stożek is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge.

Nomisha Kurian

Nomisha Kurian is a doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge.

Afrodita Nikolova

Afrodita Nikolova is a Senior Research Assistant for the Drug Policy Voices, Department of Sociology, Manchester Metropolitan University.