Ethics education seen through the lens of Habermas’s conception of practical reason: the Québec Education Program

Abstract

This paper examines the Québec Education Program (QEP), particularly the new course in ethics and religious culture (ERC), in the light of Habermas’s conception of the moral and ethical uses of practical reason. Habermas’s discursive theory of morality is used to assess the program’s understanding of what it means to be competent in moral matters. Specifically, the paper considers whether or not the program limits the exercise of practical reason to its purely pragmatic form, and the extent to which the program takes into account the intersection between the subjective and social world of learners. The Québec program serves as a context for thinking about the level(s) of practical reason an ethics education program ought to cultivate in learners.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for financial support.

Notes

1. On 2 October 2009 McGill University hosted an international symposium entitled ‘Why is religious literacy important in today’s world?’ (http://www.mcgill.ca/aoc/node/18628.) The religion component of the ERC program was a focal point of the symposium. The ERC program was the subject of a special panel of The American Academy of Religion Annual Conference, held in Montreal, 5–10 November 2009 (http://www.aarweb.org).

2. We do not agree, however, that an individual only assumes a critical distance from his or her own story by taking a position on the life shared with others.

3. For the sake of brevity the abbreviation Q. G du Q. MELS is used to indicate the Québec, Gouvernement du Québec, Ministère de l’Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport.

4. The focus of the paper is secondary education given that this level is considered the end point of the students’ academic journey. In the second cycle students’ ages range from 14 to 17 years.

5. Consider the 1999 Commission on Bill 118: 254 petitions and 13 days of consultations; the 2005 Commission on Law 95: three days of consultations followed by a final decision (Québec, Gouvernement du Québec, Groupe de Travail sur la Place de la Religion à l’École, 1999).

6. Working document presented at the first national Forum on Ethics and Religious Culture: 29 November 2006 (Q. G du Q. MELS, 2006c, version dated 1 September 2006).