Book reviews

Happiness and education

Nel Noddings, 2003

Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

$22.99 (pbk), 308 pp.

ISBN 0‐521‐61472‐4

Critical lessons: what our schools should teach

Nel Noddings, 2006

Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

$30.00 (hbk), 319 pp.

ISBN 0‐521‐85188‐2

Recently I was privileged to hear a lecture by Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, in which she described curiosity and especially imagination, the powers behind literature and the arts generally, as socially and existentially ‘insubordinate’. If that is indeed the case, then Nel Noddings's two most recent books suggest she may be one of the most insubordinate educational thinkers around. There is simply little of importance in the universe of pedagogy which Noddings fails to address with probing curiosity, lively imagination and broad learning.

Gratefully, her intellectual ‘insubordination’, however visionary at times, is always humane and practically grounded. She believes schools can be and should be happy places where students and teachers explore together what it means to be happy and where they examine critically what Alfred North Whitehead described as the ‘one subject‐matter of education, …Life in all its manifestations’ (cited in Noddings, 2003, p. 83). It is an encompassing curriculum and, given Noddings's characterisation of public schools today as generally failing in these and other ways, a daunting agenda. But to read these books in tandem is something of a liberal education, in the best sense of that term, in itself, and an inspiring one, at that.

Nel Noddings is Lee J. Jacks Professor of Education, Emerita, at Stanford University in California. That ‘Emerita’ status (roughly, distinguished retirement from institutional responsibilities) perhaps explains her recent surge in productivity. Besides the two books under review, she also published, in 2002, Starting at home: caring and social policy (University of California Press) and Educating moral people: a caring alternative to character education (Teachers College Press). These books, as their titles suggest, build on her earlier volumes, the foundational Caring: a feminine approach to ethics and moral education (University of California Press, 1984/2003) and The challenge to care in schools: an alternative approach to education (Teachers College Press, 1992). Themes from two other works, both of which deserve to be better known, Women and evil (University of California Press, 1989) and Educating for intelligent belief or unbelief (Teachers College Press, 1993), also make appearances in the two new books. The impressive, even magisterial analytic history, Philosophy of education (Westview Press), appeared in 1995. One can only wonder how she has found time to co‐author or edit several other books and author some 200 articles as well as to have served as president of the Philosophy of Education Society and of the John Dewey Society. In short, Nel Noddings is an estimable figure in philosophy of education, especially appreciated for her articulation of a moral education centred on care. What is she up to in her most recent books?

It has helped me to understand Noddings's Happiness and education by seeing it through the lens of Alasdair MacIntyre's Aristotelian‐Thomistic critique of contemporary American education:

…where for Aquinas what the individual is to be measured by, in education as elsewhere, is her or his success or failure in directing her‐ or himself towards the human good, the dominant culture of the American present takes it for granted that there is no such thing as the human good, but that each individual must at some point choose for her‐ or himself among a variety of different and rival conceptions of the good. A good education is then an education that prepares individuals for making such choices. (1988, p. 107, emphasis in original)

What for MacIntyre is a state of near barbarity in which genuine virtue is unlikely if not impossible (because it depends on a determinate and shared understanding of the good), for Noddings is (besides being an apt description of life in a pluralist, liberal democracy) an exciting context in which to practise education. It goes without saying that it also the context in which most of our children learn to be good people—or not.

But, with MacIntyre, Noddings argues that there can be no sound educational practice without sound educational theory, in the sense of purpose, goal or aim. And, like Aristotle, Noddings proposes that the aim of education, as of life itself, is eudaimonia, happiness or human flourishing, to which virtue is essential. But in what does this happiness consist and how is it to be achieved? Is it in god‐like contemplation of eternal truths, as Aristotle seems to prefer, or is it in action, the practical life of human relationships in community, where the virtues are daily put to the test? Although Noddings is not unsympathetic to the former view, she clearly sides with the latter. Or better yet, she wants the meaning of happiness itself, in all its theoretical and practical ramifications, to form the curriculum, to found pedagogical decisions, to permeate the ambience of our public schools and classrooms.

In Noddings's educational universe, although there would still be a place for the memorisation of multiplication tables and map reading skills and such, the emphasis clearly would be less on finding determinative answers than on asking heuristic questions: What does it mean to be happy? To be good? What is the relationship of my happiness to your suffering, to the suffering of children in other parts of the city, the country, the world? Can an unkind person be happy? Can a poor person be happy? Does happiness depend on the meeting of needs or of wants? Who decides what in fact is a need and what a want? If the teacher or school board infers needs the student doesn't acknowledge, might coercion have a place in the classroom if persuasion doesn't work? How should a caring teacher approach such challenges?

Dare the teacher talk about such issues with her students themselves? What are the proper aims of education, and what does it mean to be an educated person? Is the best education for the best students really the best education for all? Or should schools be instruments of socialisation geared to national competitiveness in the global marketplace? Is the reason we go to school to pass this test, to advance to the next grade, to earn a degree, to make a living—and how much of a living is or should be enough to make us happy? Are rich people happier than those who have their basic needs met? If not, as many studies suggest, what does that tell us about what it means to be happy, and what are the implications for schooling?

In Noddings's educational universe, such seemingly abstract but actually very practical questions would be the very stuff of classroom discussion (at appropriate levels). In today's pluralist societies there is no settled definition of the human good, as MacIntyre laments; Noddings, however, comes close to celebrating this opportunity to do something very like philosophy on an everyday basis. It is also the stuff of democracy, which John Dewey described as a form of associated living to be learned in the classroom. As she says, ‘it is hard to exaggerate the importance of genuine conversation in a liberal democratic society’ (2006, p. 123). Where will we learn this art of talking with one another and practice its virtues if not in our public schools? Whereas many educators take cultural heterogeneity as a potential maelstrom to be avoided at all costs, Noddings embraces that indeterminateness as an opportunity for a humane and caring insubordination.

Along the way, Noddings insists, the methods and bodies of knowledge of the traditional academic disciplines would be encountered and utilised, not as in the conventional curriculum in which each discipline exists in its own world unrelated to the others or to the real interests and questions of the students and the genuine needs of a just and compassionate society, but as ways of knowing the human world in all its dimensions and in its relations to the world of nature. Here again, her Deweyan convictions come clearly to the fore. For example, as befitting a thinker who believes ‘the best homes’ have much to tell us about how to create the best schools and even the best social policies, Noddings argues that homes seem to be universally essential to happiness—more essential than, for example, learning how to manipulate polynomials (which she herself still enjoys doing and teaching) or the names of poetic techniques (are they necessary to learning to take happiness from poetry?). But which is given more attention in schools: polynomials or parenting, iambic pentameter or the meaning and making of a home?

If a teacher, for example, were to take the theme of home and homemaking as a focus for classroom investigation, what discipline could not contribute? As Noddings observes, ‘John Dewey described geography as “an account of the earth as the home of man”, and thus suggests a careful study of the relation between the physical characteristics of a region and human‐made environments’ (2006, p. 66). What is the history of the idea of home? The teacher can refer to insights from Witold Rybczynski's Home: a short history of an idea. Why are homes so important to us? The teacher can refer to Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of space, where he suggests that a home is a place that ‘shelters daydreaming, [and that] the house protects the dreamer’ (2006, p. 67). And then she might ask her students why a philosopher would think daydreaming worth protecting, and do they ever daydream in the privacy of their own homes?

What makes a home physically beautiful and pleasing to be in? The teacher might move the classroom discussion toward consideration of the Golden Ratio, 1.618, ‘that fascinating number—phi (Φ) [which] appears in an amazing number of natural phenomena, and…has long been considered most pleasing to the eye’ (2006, p. 65). And why, Noddings asks, are students required to take geometry but seldom given the opportunity to learn about the Golden Ratio and its possible relevance to their own homemaking or other activities? And what is the relation of that major human activity, work, making a living, to happiness? Can a sanitation worker be happy? What education is appropriate for the millions of citizens who will not become ‘professionals’ but who do essential work? Can education address and foster their happiness? Can they become critical thinkers, even without going to college?

The Noddings‐inspired teacher will necessarily have to be well‐educated Noddings‐style, if not to the exalted level of Noddings herself. She assures us this pedagogy does not require every teacher to become a walking encyclopaedia, just resourceful. He or she will have to be curious about everything human, imaginative in how all things human are presented and related one to another in the classroom, and courageous in the range of questions she or he asks. Noddings frequently insists that the teacher must never impose an answer, much less denigrate the beliefs or practices of any child, family, religion or culture.

The task always at hand is to explore ‘Life in all its manifestations’, even the ones some parents, fellow citizens or nervous school boards may want to place out of bounds. Although Happiness and education constantly utilises the heuristic or Socratic style I have tried to portray above, it is especially in Critical lessons that Noddings tackles such conflicted and controversial topics as the psychology of war, human relationships with animals, socialization, advertising, and propaganda, gender and religion.

As this list of curricular topics suggests, Noddings's pedagogical vision is not for the faint of heart. Reading her latest books, the image of Socrates, surely a contender for the title of greatest teacher in the history of Western civilization, frequently comes to mind. It stretches things only slightly to suggest that for Noddings, the public school classroom, especially at the secondary level, becomes something of an agora, the public commons where the events of the day, the life of the community and the meaning and means of happiness are vigorously and critically discussed. In that context, the responsibility of the teacher‐philosopher is, in MacIntyre's words, but with an entirely different attitude, to help ‘each individual…choose for her‐ or himself among a variety of different and rival conceptions of the good. A good education is then an education that prepares individuals for making such choices’.

Nel Noddings may be our best philosopher of everyday life in a heterogeneous society and liberal democracy. In such a context schools play an essential part, where the depth and breadth of that everyday life in all its manifestations can be and should be examined with humane curiosity and imagination, which may give the appearance (to the barbarians?) of insubordination.

Dr Roger Bergman, Director, Justice and Peace Studies Program, Creighton University, Omaha, NE, 68178, USA. Email: [email protected]

© 2007, Roger Bergman

Conflict, contradiction, and contrarian elements in moral development and education

Larry P. Nucci (Ed.), 2005

Mahwah, NJ, Laurence Erlbaum

$27.50 (hbk), 223 pp.

ISBN 0‐8058‐4848‐7

This collection responds to two concerns. The first is that moral development theorists have tended to see moral development as a process of moral improvement, either through an accumulation of moral virtues, or through increasing socialization into the norms of a society, or through movement through a sequence of stages of increasingly mature moral reasoning. The second concern is that contemporary conservative culture critics tend to see resistance to adult authority by contemporary youth as a sign of moral decay and decline.

The thesis of this collection is that resistance and conflict are ‘essential to moral growth at an individual level and moral progress at the societal level’. At an individual level, children and adolescents resist adult control over their lives in ways that help define their own proper autonomy in relationship to adult authority. At the societal level, individuals and groups resist the dominant social order in ways that may disrupt or subvert oppressive and other unjust practices. The claim is not only that conflict does occur and we should expect it. Rather, conflict is necessary for development.

The essays in the collection are divided into three groups, focusing on conflict at the societal level, at the individual level and in the convergence of the two. In the first section, Turiel shows that resistance to and subversion of unjust uses of dominance are part of everyday life. Baumrind argues that the dialectical interchange between obedience and resistance to authority is an ongoing theme in adult‐child interactions, and moral education best occurs through authoritative (rather than authoritarian or permissive) teaching and guidance.

In the middle section of essays, Ayers asserts that there is an implied moral contract between teacher and student; the best teachers show students that their orientation to the world will change, and their understandings of themselves will change, and Ayers recommends that teachers take adequate time and care in reflecting on these changes. Adolescent‐parent conflicts are common, according to Smetana, but adolescents do not typically reject parental authority over either moral or conventional matters; adolescents increasingly assert autonomy with respect to issues of personal discretion, and when adults respond appropriately, adolescent resistance can be functional for their development. Lightfoot shows how risk‐taking activity provides adolescents with a context outside and against adult authority in which their resistance is participatory and self‐defining.

Through research on adolescent social organization, Horn argues that adolescents develop a broader understanding of social systems and explore and construct their personal identity through participation in peer groups with normative expectations for conduct and personal appearance; her research reveals that those adolescents who are more invested in their peer group as a matter of their personal identity, and those whose peer group has a higher or more central status in popular school and youth culture, are more likely to believe it is appropriate to exclude others who do not conform to the expectations of their group. In the final essay in the second section, Oser shows how one's own moral mistakes, and one's understanding of those of others, foster development of negative moral knowledge, which plays an essential role in moral development both cognitively and motivationally; negative moral knowledge about what can occur in the absence of just practices is instrumental in motivating and informing the creation of moral practices.

The third set of essays explores the convergence of adolescent and societal conflict. Edelstein observes that right‐wing extremist youth culture in the former East Germany is a form of rebellion in response to humiliation for economic and academic failure, absence of hope for success within traditional structures, and the lack of moral purpose and meaning found in weak social institutions; the solidarity of the deprived and the need for personal success contribute to a feeling of racial superiority and the resort to anomic means to vindication. In the USA, according to Watkins, an ideology of race and morality was formed through four historical periods, joining notions of genetic inferiority and immorality in justifications of inequality with the American cultural myth and public policy. The acquisitive individualistic orientation to morality, according to Jagers, is associated with a victim complex among economically disadvantaged people, whereas a communal orientation to morality is associated with practices which are more likely to develop the social skills that lead to moral competence and a sense of collective efficacy.

The essays in this collection are quite different in style and substance. They support the thesis of the collection in varying degrees. Nonetheless, some of the essays report significant research findings and offer insightful analyses of the social systems that shape moral development. The following might be said by way of synthesis.

Children and adolescents do not fundamentally disagree with their parents or adult authorities over prototypical moral rules or even uniform social conventions. They do disagree and experience conflict over issues of personal discretion. In the struggles—at the individual level—over body piercing or curfews, relationships and autonomy may be negotiated and renegotiated in ways that foster development (Smetana).

During the years of these adolescent‐parent conflicts, adolescents are also engaging in identity‐defining and norm‐generating relationships within peer groups in their schools and neighbourhoods. Some of the norms of these peer groups seem like matters of personal preference relative to adolescent‐parent conflicts, but they function as constitutive social conventions in the social world of school and neighbourhood. Identity‐invested members of high‐status peer groups tend to be willing to enforce conventions of personal appearance and conduct by socially excluding non‐conforming peers (Horn).

The norm‐preserving, status‐protecting exclusion conduct of high‐status adolescent peer groups prefigures the protection of economic and social privilege by high‐status groups in the broader social order, and one version of this conduct is found in societies with a well‐defined sex role hierarchy. Resistance and subversion of these oppressive hierarchies—at the societal level—are features of everyday life in some societies (Turiel).

Members of low‐status groups who feel humiliated and/or lack a sense of hope and meaning for their lives, normally provided by healthy social institutions, may, in some settings, opt for a model of racial superiority which is identity‐defining and status‐elevating but which also is used to justify violence (Edelstein). In different circumstances, members of low‐status groups may follow a trajectory of anger at their victimisation into alliances with deviant peers for protection, leading to increasingly lethal street justice and to activity in the street economy which is unconventional if not also immoral (Jagers).

Those protecting privilege and those resisting the disadvantaging effects of that privilege cannot resolve their tensions in the abstract. Actions within these tensions are always informed by judgements influenced by partial and non‐universalisable factors. Furthermore, in real conflicts if not in ideal discourse, participants bring to bear the advantages they can muster to effect compromises favourable to them. But because people take different perspectives that make salient different perceptions and values, and knowing the limitations of our own standpoints, we should emphasise tolerance of diversity in our moral judgements. In moral education we should encourage not only reliability but also critical thought, not only duty but also integrity (Baumrind).

At the individual level, we learn as much or more from our and others' mistakes as from injunctions and positive models. We learn from being short‐changed, from being excluded and from arbitrarily excluding, from feeling the consequences of protesting the norms of the group, and from not having the courage to stand against the group. Our practices of moral education should not seek to eliminate negative experiences but to optimise their potential for fruitful negative moral knowledge (Oser).

As Nucci states in his Editor's preface, we learn in the essays in this collection that moral life is not a straight forward journey, but rather a series of challenges, setbacks, detours, and successes'.

Dr Don Collins Reed, Professor and Chair, Department of Philosophy, Wittenberg University, Springfield, Ohio, 45501‐0720, USA. Email: [email protected]

© 2007, Don Collins Reed

Moral development, self, and identity

Daniel K. Lapsley and Darcia Narvaez (Eds.), 2004

Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum

$110.00 (hbk), 358 pp.

ISBN 0‐8058‐4286‐1

As undergraduates we were told that any theory should be thought of as the starting point for the research process. A valuable theory might be thought of as one that poses the right questions at the right time. In the area of developmental psychology our understanding of moral development has been enhanced by the questions posed by the work of Augusto Blasi. This book demonstrates the quality and impact of his work by bringing together contributions from leading researchers in this field. Adopting the form of a Festschrift in honour of Augusto Blasi, each chapter explores specific aspects of his theory and subsequent writings.

Blasi's contribution to the field of moral development centres on his argument that we cannot investigate morality as an isolated domain, rather we must acknowledge that morality is one part of a larger integrated system. For Blasi this means that we need to explore the link between moral behaviour and personality. Our moral identity reflects the extent to which our ideas of self are organised around moral commitments; as such we need to accept that morality has to be considered as a motivating force for behaviour.

The early chapters provide the reader with an overview of central themes of Blasi's theory while developing and exploring specific issues. For example, Bergman in addressing the question ‘why be moral?’ places Blasi's theory in the context of the moral developmental theories of Piaget, Kohlberg, Damon and Colby. In doing so he provides the reader with a clear sense of the central issues that psychologists face in exploring moral development. Similarly Walker's chapter focuses on Blasi's view that we need to understand morality from the perspective of ordinary everyday conceptualisations of morality. In exploring this idea, Walker identifies key gaps between our understanding of morality and behaviour, such as the influence of practical realities in our moral deliberations.

One might anticipate that a book published in honour of an individual might adopt a rather reverential tone towards that person's body of work. A particular strength of this text is that it avoids this by offering the reader an insight into the debates taking place between researchers in this area. Four chapters in the middle of the book encapsulate this in that they set out to question or challenge central ideas within Blasi's theory. Mosham and Nucci, in their respective chapters, raise questions about the central tenets of moral identity and the relationship between notions of the self and moral behaviour.

Drawing on case study evidence Mosham argues that the idea of moral identity needs to be reconsidered. He questions whether we can have an accurate understanding of our own moral identity and sets out to show us the extent to which we may distort our behaviour or rationalise immoral behaviour. How do we square this with the importance that self knowledge has within Blasi's theory? Nucci develops this theme by questioning the link between our moral self and our behaviour. In doing so he returns to a central question in personality research, the issue of context and our ideas of self consistency. For Nucci, a central concern is the implied static nature of moral identity and he questions whether Blasi's theory has the capacity to handle the dynamic aspect of our moral behaviour. As such the chapter indirectly raises the wider issue of our understanding of our moral identity across the lifespan. Much is written about the development of moral understanding in childhood but little attention is paid to potential change during adulthood.

This critical voice within the context of the book is valuable in that it poses the reader, whether in sympathy with Blasi's views or not, with a range of questions and issues that any theory of moral development needs to be able to address. Thankfully we are not left to ponder on how Blasi might address these questions and criticisms. The final chapter of the book provides Blasi with the opportunity to not only reflect on his own work but to offer answers to the issues raised by these authors.

A key challenge in psychology is how to address the question of context. Nucci's chapter raises this issue at the level of individual consistency across different contexts, however, in developmental psychology there is the wider issue of the influence of culture.

A number of the contributors deal with this issue implicitly or explicitly. For example, Atkins and Hart consider the influence of social relationships and institutions in the development of our moral identity, while Power reflects upon the role of community norms. The final set of chapters tackle the issue of context from cross‐cultural and socio‐historical perspectives. Keller and Nunner‐Winkler in their respective chapters remind us of the potential impact of cultural systems on moral development, our ideas of self and moral understanding. Clearly any theoretical explanation of moral behaviour must be able to accommodate such findings.

This book has a number of strengths one of which is its breadth and ability to capture the ongoing debate around Blasi's work. Each reader will tend to focus on different elements within any book. From my perspective the text gained a great deal from the new empirical work that a number of authors included in their chapters. Through reading this material we are also encouraged to think about the methodological challenges that researchers face in exploring moral behaviour.

Lapsley and Narvaez have managed to bring together an impressive set of contributions that will interest anyone who wishes to gain an understanding of moral behaviour. The range and quality of the contributions results in a text that will stimulate debate and generate further research in this area and, in doing so, it is a fitting tribute to the work of Augusto Blasi.

Dr Jim McKechnie, Psychology Division, School of Social Sciences, University of Paisley, Paisley, PA1 2BE, UK. Email: [email protected]

© 2007, Jim McKechnie

Rousseau

Nicholas Dent, 2005

London, Routledge

£55.00 (hbk), £13.99 (pbk), 272 pp.

ISBN 0‐415‐28349‐6 (hbk), ISBN 0‐415‐28350‐2 (pbk)

It is rare for a book on a major European philosopher to be both introductory and innovative at the same time. Bookshops and libraries abound with textbooks (many of them of high quality) introducing the Google‐era undergraduate or Masters degree student to key ideas of important thinkers whose works figure in the syllabuses of mainstream humanities programmes. Nicholas Dent's Rousseau will certainly and justly assume its place in the roll call of such volumes. The reader who engages with the book for essay‐writing or course revision purposes will soon find her‐ or himself, however, in the company of one of the best guides to Jean‐Jacques Rousseau in the English‐speaking world, enriched by an account of Rousseau that is both comprehensive and highly original.

Nicholas Dent is the author of Rousseau: an introduction to his psychological, social and political theory (1988) and A Rousseau dictionary (1992). The presence of both these earlier, ground‐breaking studies is felt throughout his new book, as is the quite compelling interpretation of Rousseau pursued by him in a series of related academic papers, some composed in a kind of extended dialogue with the philosopher Timothy O'Hagan. Central to Dent's continuing assessment of Rousseau is his account of the concept of amour propre and its place in the particular theory of the person, which, Dent believes, underpins almost all of Rousseau's thought. Consideration of the ‘role of the sentiments of amour de soi and amour‐propre’ (p. 4) is described by Dent in the Chapter 1 prospectus of his book as the fourth of seven themes he intends to examine in Rousseau's work, but it is clear that Dent considers Rousseau's investments in the principles of amour propre to be in some sense the key to his wider social and political programme. In an era preoccupied (and sometimes plagued) by therapeutic definitions of self‐esteem, and a questionable educational industry fuelled by its development, it is tempting to align amour propre to the elements of Rousseau's psychologism that several of his English contemporaries regarded as typical of his narcissism and depravity. In Chapter 3 of Rousseau, however, Dent takes forward an analysis of amour propre—and the disorders associated with its more ‘damaging’ expressions—which proposes it as one of Rousseau's most sophisticated and prescient insights into the existential demands of modern selfhood. Defined as ‘a desire or need to secure recognition from others, for an acknowledgement of oneself in their eyes and actions’ (p. 40), amour propre is, in fact, anti‐therapeutic in its concern for the complex tissue of relationships and connections through which the person is brought into full individual and social being. That this experience frequently takes confrontational forms reveals the role that introspective obsessions with distinction and degree play in the reproduction of hierarchical social relations and institutional injustice within already corrupted societies.

In Emile—to which Dent devotes one of his best and most original chapters—much more positive constructions of amour propre figure prominently in the retrieval of the natural from the constraints of artifice. The nurturance of networks of sentiment and affiliation consolidate the fabric of the moral order between human beings, repudiating the dialectic of ‘mastery and subservience’ (p. 91) and rejecting the coercion implied in all attempts ‘to regulate human conduct by means of appeals to moral obligation where there is no palpable sense otherwise in doing that thing is to engender more evils than were intended to be eradicated’. (p. 93). The cultivation of ‘natural’ emotions, such as compassion (surely Rousseau's chief bequest to Romanticism), prompts recognition of the dignity and value of all agents, which then creates the necessary conditions for a mutually reinforcing sense of intrinsic self‐worth. The ‘struggle for recognition’ characteristic of disordered, competitive and fearfully isolated selfhoods is ‘resolved through mutual acknowledgment and esteem’ (p. 149). Dent's argument establishes important elements of continuity between Emile and The Social Contract, because the characteristically Rousseauesque concept of ‘moral liberty, which lies at the heart of the contract, derives from precisely the same virtues communicated in Emile's ‘natural relations’ of attachment and identification (pp. 144–152). That is not to say that ‘moral liberty’ is simply a socialised form of the state of nature. ‘Moral liberty’ is an intersubjective negotiation by which agents achieve release from systems of subordination into a state of mutual recognition and concerted action (hence the ‘contract’). It does not, however, emerge in a vacuum. Dent's perceptive discussion of culture and religion in Chapter 6 of his study amplifies Rousseau's emphasis on the parts played by shared social, religious and voluntaristic practices in the making of a civil society where recognition can be realised. Bonds of intersubjective affirmation and respect can only be expressed within a cohesive social fabric, another name for which is the state. Critics of Rousseau have frequently shrunk from the dangers latent in his explanation of the alignment of the private will with the general will, especially when this is read in the context of the contract and its state‐sponsored manifestations. Dent brings welcome discrimination to the debate in the distinction he draws between various degrees of identification that might exist between the individual and the collective. He is also honest, here as elsewhere, about the inconsistencies in Rousseau's shifting positions and the need to look beyond philosophical abstraction to some of the practical political projects with which Rousseau was associated in his lifetime.

Rousseau concludes with a skilful, if necessarily abbreviated, survey of Rousseau's influence. This is timely, because there is some evidence, especially in educational circles, of a reaction against Rousseau in recent years. In those areas of educational thought heavily penetrated by critical theory—and given forceful and eloquent expression in the work of Bernadette Baker—Rousseau is viewed with grave suspicion as an early architect of the surveillance society, the subtle disciplinary codes of which habitually conceal themselves behind the rhetoric of liberty and empowerment. In charting Rousseau's influence, Dent operates firmly within the analytic traditions of modern political and moral philosophy, offering us a figure whose ideas remain of central significance to the task of building viable democratic institutions validated by a coherent understanding of human nature. Dent's study emerges from this task as a book that will serve both experts and novices in the appreciation of Rousseau for years to come.

Dr Bob Davis, Department of Religious Education, University of Glasgow, St Andrew's Building, 11 Eldon Street, G3 6NH, UK. Email: [email protected]

© 2007, Bob Davis

Soul searching: the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers

Christian Smith with Melinda Lundquist Denton, 2005

New York, Oxford University Press

$25.00 (hbk), 346 pp.

ISBN 0‐1951‐8095‐4

In Soul searching, Christian Smith, with Melinda Lundquist Denton, explore the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers. Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect is that the book has been written at all. As Smith points out, and as is clear to most who are interested in teenage spirituality, ‘very few efforts to better understand American adolescents take seriously their religious faith and spiritual practices’ (p. 4). The dearth of research in this area is all the more surprising when one realises that, according to Smith, 84% of all American teenagers self‐identify as religious. Smith and Denton's findings compel further examination of the impact of this religiousness on the significant number of young people who are actively involved in religious and spiritual activities and practices, especially as it occurs during a particularly important developmental transition from childhood to adulthood. The hope of the authors is to foster discussions in all the realms that engage teenagers about how cultural and religious institutions and practices may better serve them. Whether that happens or not, this work provides an in‐depth look at the spirituality of teenagers and should be of considerable interest to parents, moral educators, particularly those of us in faith‐based institutional contexts, and to civic, educational and religious leaders.

Soul searching reports on the work of the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR), conducted at the University of North Carolina. This exhaustive sociological study lays out the complexity of studying and reporting on teenage spirituality in both its content and structure. The work, even with the challenges of such a massive undertaking, makes a considerable contribution to the study of the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers, and is especially welcome in the light of the relative lack of such research. The reporting provides both the intricate and intimate details of an extensive interview protocol of teenagers from 45 states, as well as in‐depth analysis of a national, random‐digit‐dial telephone survey of American households containing at least one teenager. Care is taken to address the larger social context within which teenagers encounter faith in the USA. The claim is that any understanding of the religious and spiritual lives of contemporary American teenagers demands consideration of the institutional contexts of therapeutic individualism, mass‐consumer capitalism, the digital communication revolution, residual positivism and empiricism and the structural disconnect of teenagers from the world of adults.

The findings of the NSYR provide the bulk of the statistical detail in the book, beginning with a descriptive map of ‘the world of contemporary U.S. adolescent religion and spirituality’ (p. 30). Beginning with Chapter 2 and running through Chapter 5, the authors explain the context and explore, in remarkable detail, the nuances and complexities of the adolescent encounter with religion and spirituality in the USA. Some will find the detail in the middle chapters (and the appendices) particularly interesting, others equally tedious. In either case, the information is fascinating, and can be quickly perused if so desired. Each chapter is well encapsulated in the summary conclusions. While the breadth and depth of their findings cannot be adequately provided here, several of their findings are worthy of note: while the stereotype is that of teenagers rebelling against the religion of their parents, 75% of them consider their own religious beliefs to be somewhat or very similar to their parents, with few American teens (2.8%) affiliating with more than one religion. Only 6% consider their religious beliefs very different from those of their parents. Conceptualised as a matter of retention, conservative Protestant and Mormon parents' teens are particularly high in identifying with their religion (86%), whereas others fall behind: Catholics (83%), black Protestants (81%), Jewish (78%) and mainline Protestant (68%) teens. The authors wisely distinguish between identification with a faith and faith practice; an array of details is provided in this latter regard as well.

In Chapter 6 the authors examine Catholic teenagers in particular, apart from other traditions. Catholic teens appear fairly weak on most measures of religious faith, belief, experience and practice, compared both to the expectations of their tradition, but also by comparison to other types of Christian teens. While undoubtedly discouraging to some to see the state of Catholic teens and that they should be singled out for special attention largely because of their apparent lack of attention to and engagement in their religious tradition, it sheds light on the Catholic teenage experience in the USA generally. The authors make clear in their analysis that the religious laxity that is apparent in Catholic teens is evident in other Christian traditions as well; those differences being a matter of degree, not kind. Ideally, each religious affiliation might have been as carefully examined by the caretakers of their respective traditions.

Soul searching offers an extraordinarily comprehensive account of American teenage spirituality. If anything is lacking it may be that it is so clearly an analysis of teens in the USA and does not address a wider international experience of religion and spirituality by teenagers the world over. It is a testimony to the authors' efforts that one is left wanting for more. The observations with which the authors conclude their considerable undertaking make the book worth its purchase price, especially for those who are in any way responsible for the moral, character and religious development of youth. Parents might be most surprised by the impact they are having (or not) on their children's faith formation and development, and may be best aided by this effort; but pastors, educators and concerned adults would be equally well served to read and absorb the lessons learned and carefully articulated in this work.

Dr Jim Lies, C.S.C., Assistant Professor, University of Portland, 5000 North Willamette Boulevard, Portland, Oregon 97203, USA. Email: [email protected]

© 2007, Jim Lies

Éduquer le sujet éthique: par des pratiques novatrices en enseignement et en animation [Teaching the ethical subject: innovative practices for teachers and animators]

Nancy Bouchard, in collaboration with Raymond Laprée (Eds.), 2004

Sainte‐Foy, Presses de l' Université du Québec

$25.00 (pbk), 175 pp.

ISBN 2‐7605‐1270‐3

Those of us who work in the area of moral education often yearn for pragmatic guidance in shaping classroom lessons. Nancy Bouchard has collaborated with Raymond Laprée to offer activities that attempt to respond to this very challenge. Éduquer le sujet éthique is a follow‐up to Bouchard's 2002 publication that dealt with Six contemporary approaches to renewing the practice of moral education. While the 2002 publication deals with differing theories of moral education in the contemporary context, this new publication provides the practical foundations for teachers and animators.

The genesis of the book came in response to the educational reforms of the Quebec government. The new reforms have seen a significant change in religious and moral education, changes which require a redefining of what takes place in the classroom. Bouchard has taken the initiative of bringing together lesson plans and activities that have both an individual and a communal focus.

The book itself is divided into two separate parts, each dealing with a distinct and practical challenge of educating the ethical subject within the Quebec context. The first section led by the Editor in Chief, Nancy Bouchard, works towards the objectives of moral and religious education classes, yet is also intended for any educator in the field who has an interest in educating for the personal development of the student. The strength of this section lies in its accessibility and its commitment to encouraging the reader to adapt and work with the material presented in the book.

The first chapter is perhaps the strongest contribution the book makes in tying moral education theory to realistic applications in the classroom. Geneviève Rocray, Marie‐Ève Pedneault and Nancy Bouchard present a lesson entitled ‘Assessing my emotional force’. This lesson takes Noddings's ethic of care and places it at the centre of a seven‐section lesson plan. The explanations provided in the lessons include step‐by‐step suggestions and are accompanied by the necessary lesson plan material. Moral dialogues in the classroom are difficult to manage in a practical fashion and, as a result, are intimidating for teachers outside the field. Bouchard successfully bridges the gap between theory and practice showing how one can practice moral dialogues in the classroom. This is true even for the reader who might not possess the necessary philosophical background to readily apply the theory.

The second part of the book is led by Bouchard's collaborator, Raymond Laprée. Laprée begins by looking at the spiritual and community involvement programs initiated by the Quebec reform in the 2001–2002 school year. Laprée offers a look at the Quebec situation, which is in a state of post‐modern redefinition of what spiritual animation and community means in the face of increasing secularisation and diversity. For those working in the Quebec context, Laprée's section on ‘Nurturing your inner life and your place’ should be mandatory reading. For those outside of Quebec, it will provide an interesting localised account of the political and philosophical dialogues that are in the process of reconstructing the spiritual and moral dimensions of Quebec's education system.

Laprée's most insightful contribution is the way in which he takes value clarification as a starting point and proceeds to offer several different types of educational initiatives that significantly expand and develop clarification exercises. Laprée, working with Julie Lacroix, provides three examples of how using value clarification in the classroom can begin to draw out the students' narratives as well as help to find place for a shared dialogue of experiences and values. It is an important section that addresses the complexities of moral dialogues in a cultural diverse learning environment. The critique and resistance to moral education has often been that it cannot be practically applied in the classroom without isolating or marginalising some students. With this lesson, Laprée and Lacroix circumvent the problems of marginalisation by showing how values clarification can be used to begin an inclusive conversation in the classroom.

Currently the potential audience for this guidebook of practical applications is a Francophone audience. The strength of the book lies with the way the authors engage with teachers. The material provides guidance and challenges teachers in the field to use this book to begin to examine how they can practically confront moral issues in the classroom. Perhaps the most important contribution of this book is the ways in which it opens the door to new conversations between theorists and practitioners in moral education.

Kassandra Churcher, Doctoral Student, Department of Integrated Studies, McGill University, 3700 McTavish Street, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 1Y2, Canada. Email: [email protected]

© 2007, Kassandra Churcher

Moral education: a teacher‐centered approach

Joan F. Goodman and Howard Lesnick, 2004

Boston, MA, Pearson Education

$41.20 (pbk), 210 pp.

ISBN 0‐321‐09359‐3

For those of us who emphasise the ethical practice of teachers as the defining feature of any moral education initiative, Joan Goodman and Howard Lesnick's creative and engaging book provides an excellent affirmation of the professional teacher's moral agency and its inseparability from the ethical dimensions of schooling generally, as well as both the implicit and explicit aims of moral education specifically. The centrality of the teacher is captured well in the book's title and sustained throughout its nine highly readable chapters that weave related themes of practical and philosophical significance in a way that highlights the complexities of moral education and challenges readers to re‐visit a range of competing and compatible beliefs about the essence of morality.

Clearly, when we consider the pervasiveness of moral issues that underpin much of the nuanced formal and informal life of classrooms in Kindergarten to Grade 12 schools, it is neither simple nor desirable to conceptualise moral education without first grappling with ancient moral questions that continue to provoke alternative perspectives on what is right and wrong, good and bad. Goodman and Lesnick describe, examine, question and support differing philosophical orientations in their argument that moral educators — and this means all teachers — in order to be effective and indeed professional, must not ignore the potential legitimacy of a range of interpretations. As a guiding recommendation, they state, ‘listening and balancing are not signs of “giving in” to all contending political constituencies in the field, but rather a genuine commitment to the complexity of morality, to the truth that all sides have some portion of the truth’ (p. 196).

Importantly, Moral education resists identifying all aspects of schooling as moral, ‘for to turn every situation into a matter of morality is, perversely, to deprecate morality’ (p. 20), although they recognise the potential for the non‐moral to evolve into the moral depending on actions and interpretations on the part of teachers, students, administrators, parents and others involved in schooling. The authors clearly demarcate the valuable distinction between acts that are moral, derivatively moral and non‐moral or conventional, thus avoiding a relativist trap in which all morality is reduced to valued preference or belief, trivialised by subjectivity and indefensible when promoted as the substantive basis of public education.

Yet, despite the accessibility of Goodman and Lesnick's theoretical analysis, the book's conceptual framework is, at least initially, tricky to nail down. This ambiguity, over whether, for example, they predominantly support variations of virtue ethics, consequentialism, the ethic of duty or deontological theory, or even a more situated and relative approach to ethics as providing guiding principles for moral education, is deliberate on the authors' part. They define a fundamental distinction between two broad positions identified as ‘conservative’, in which moral good is clear, universal, grounded in tradition and the authority of virtue, and ‘liberal’, in which moral good is unclear, suspicious of authority and tradition and more individually constructed. Within this framework, despite its obvious tensions, the book positions the examination of philosophical, psychological and pedagogical theories of morality and moral development and presents a defence of conceptual balance that ultimately promotes the pursuit of moral pluralism, as distinct from relativism. It acknowledges ‘considerable common ground’ (p. 24) between seemingly opposing perspectives and, while advocating balance and tolerance for alternative perspectives that do not necessarily share this common ground, nonetheless is clear that tolerance is not unbounded, and that ‘pluralism, if it is to remain distinct from relativism, must police its boundaries … some moral choices are not acceptable’ (p.153).

These ideas are not presented in a discretely sequenced way in Moral education, but rather embedded throughout the book and woven in recurring patterns by the ongoing discussion of moral concepts and themes that are introduced, re‐visited, analysed and then re‐assessed, often in chapters at some distance from one another. The structural method that the authors use to sustain such an undulating flow of text is innovative and compelling.

By means of a serialised continuing scenario, Goodman and Lesnick introduce us to a series of fictitious characters (most notably four teachers who form a faculty committee to develop a moral education program for their elementary school, their principal, and a university‐based teacher educator with expertise in the field) who are faced with a number of morally charged situations, choices and challenges over the course of a school year. Unlike a case book in which unconnected and often brief vignettes are presented for moral analysis, the continuing scenario approach, that starts each chapter after the introductory one, follows the same characters grappling with the same core issue related to their task as a committee, yet through a rich and meandering journey fraught with multiple complexities of a diverse, albeit nonetheless moral, nature.

While not explicitly based on empirical research data, the characters and their daily professional experiences are recognisable to those who work in and study schools. The vivid practicality of their routine work and spontaneous problems is both interesting and highly illustrative of the conceptual issues and philosophical themes the book addresses, mostly through the subsequent part of each chapter subtitled, ‘A Deeper Look’. Seven of the chapters pursue the analytical reflection of the moral issues depicted by the scenario and subsequently examined by providing textbook‐type questions for the readers to consider under the subtitle, ‘Your Turn’.

As the central component of the book, the scenarios are lengthy and explicit. They portray a variety of school‐based situations involving such diverse issues as character education, service learning, democratic class meetings, discipline and classroom management, group rules versus individual freedom, grading, parental complaints and pressure, standardised testing and the importance of a moral school environment. They provide the substance for distinguishing among tensions, controversies, and differing philosophical and ideological orientations to morality and moral education. The characters, most notably two of the teachers (Maria and Hardie) articulate positions with consistency and clarity. Almost like ideal types, they represent contrasting and occasionally compatible points of view. They engage in strong, but civil, disagreements that highlight the authors' appeal for balance and recognition of alternative perspectives.

The final chapter cleverly summarises the practical and philosophical complexities of morality in the form of a report to the principal from the faculty committee on how best to develop moral education in their school. It articulates seven key recommendations designed to enhance ‘moral identity’ as ‘a process, a continuing search, the cultivation of a sensibility that … [makes one] alert to moral issues and dilemmas as they occur’ (p. 183). Once again, the important connection between ethical teaching and moral education is emphasised: ‘If they [children] are to engage in the search for their own answers, they must witness a teacher's own pursuit of them, both her moral doubts and her moral stability’ (p. 155). Moral education provides a significant and unique resource to enable teachers, teacher educators, and pre‐service teachers to achieve such a worthy and essential goal. Goodman and Lesnick state throughout the book that they support ‘moral friction’. Indeed, they have done very well in illustrating it, exploring it, and, I expect for many readers, causing it. And, for this, they have made a notable and welcome contribution to the field of moral education.

Dr Elizabeth Campbell, Associate Professor, Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, 252 Bloor Street West, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1V6, Canada. Email: [email protected]

© 2007, Elizabeth Campbell

Citizenship and language learning: international perspectives

Audrey Osler and Hugh Starkey (Eds.), 2005

Stoke on Trent, Trentham

£18.99 (pbk), 164 pp.

ISBN 1‐85856‐334‐3

This compilation of papers disseminates the ideas generated at the British Council seminar ‘Language Teaching and Citizenship Education in International Contexts’ held in 2003. The seminar was attended by teachers, lecturers, researchers and administrators from 20 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. As such, Osler and Starkey have acted as editors to some interesting pieces that provide an effective balance between theoretical debate and concrete, practical illustrations of language teaching dovetailing effectively with education for citizenship.

Part I provides a strong theoretical foundation through examining some of the debates relating to citizenship at the beginning of the twenty‐first Century. All three chapters here are of interest and relevance to scholars of both citizenship and language education. In Chapter One, Audrey Osler defines citizenship as being about belonging, security and exercising one's rights and responsibilities; consequently, she argues, education for citizenship must be about addressing learners' identities, and about promoting skills for communication and participation. In addition, her discussion about the need for global elements and democratic practice within such education raises important issues about the need to avoid studies based purely on local or national perspectives or engaging pupils in ineffective school councils. This is built upon in Chapter Two, where Hugh Starkey explores the relationship between citizenship education and human rights but also argues that language teachers need to encourage pupils to discuss controversial issues in the classroom and avoid the traditional tendency to focus purely on grammar rather than the discussion of human rights issues. Finally, Robin Richardson concludes Part I by reporting on an evaluation of the British Council's programmes and operations which represent the UK as a diverse society. A particularly interesting aspect of Richardson's work is the creation of a matrix depicting four orientations towards Britain and providing practical examples of the way in which the Council may be able to move towards creating an image of Britain as both creative and diverse, as opposed to traditional and uniform.

Following this initial exploration of the discussion and debate that has brought language teaching and education for citizenship together, the reader is then led through a series of case studies that form the basis of Part II. The international reports from teachers around the globe provide fascinating reading within Chapter Four to Ten. Particular highlights are the chapters provided by Vanessa Andreotti, Tuula Penttila, Margot Brown and Ruxandra Popovici and Christopher Palmer.

In Chapter Six, Andreotti describes how she managed to challenge a group of Brazilian language teachers to question the aims and purposes of language teaching by giving them a voice. By creating a ‘safe house’ approach to discussions, Andreotti managed to enable teachers to deconstruct their initial principles of English language learning being solely about preparation for the market, and look more widely at the way in which education can challenge current global principles. In contrast, Penttila's case study in Chapter Eight focuses on a Finnish initiative that gave pupils a voice through encouraging teenagers to participate in intercultural education projects using ICT. These projects ranged from short initiatives where pupils liaised with a global community of schools in order to create an international book of poems around the theme of ‘peace’, to longer projects where pupils worked with partner schools all over Europe to engage in video‐conferencing and the peer‐review of essays on diversity. Finally, Chapter Nine and Ten provide reports on innovative projects in Romania and Malaysia respectively. While Brown and Popovici describe the process of developing the ‘Rights In Deed’ textbook for teaching human rights in Romania, Palmer considers the use of task‐based learning for developing the thinking skills required for democratic citizenship, incorporating both language development and citizenship education.

The real value of this book is perhaps summed up in the content of the final chapter itself, where Telma Gimenez reports on the many messages received from participants from around the world via an online discussion group set up as part of the Language Teaching and Citizenship Education seminar. The many views and opinions outlined here in relation to the role of language teaching for democratic citizenship will surely serve to stimulate further debate. This applies equally to the case studies presented in each of the chapters of Part II, all of which illustrate the enormous potential for language teachers to develop many aspects of democratic and global citizenship education. As such, the practical case studies combine well with the strong theoretical debate that permeates the book and the result is a timely and useful reference for teachers and scholars of both languages and citizenship. Additionally, at a time when future generations of teachers around the world need to develop a strong commitment towards implementing education for citizenship underpinned by democracy, diversity and human rights, I would view this book as a ‘must read’ for students in initial teacher education.

Dr Ross Deuchar, Room C117 (Crawfurd Complex), University of Strathclyde, Faculty of Education, Glasgow, G13 1PP, UK. Email: [email protected]

© 2007, Ross Deuchar

More if you had to choose, what would you do?

Sandra McLeod Humphrey, 2003

Amherst, NY, Prometheus Books

$13.00 (pbk), 131 pp.

ISBN 1‐59102‐077‐8

Developing children's critical moral thinking is the subject of Sandra McCleod Humphrey's More if you had to choose what would you do? It starts from the premise that, if the scene is set with a compelling story and followed‐up with a few key questions, young readers will readily take up the challenge. In her Author's Note Humphrey compares building strong ‘moral muscle’ with building physical muscle. Both require exercise. ‘Practice makes perfect’, she reminds readers: ‘So read through the twenty‐six stories in this book and exercise your “moral muscle” at the same time’. She also suggests that the stories be read and discussed with others. The aim is to get children to think about important life principles in difficult situations in which they are likely to find themselves.

Each of the stories gives us an inside picture of young children faced with tough choices. The stories are told from children's points of view, expressing their perplexity and inviting readers to project themselves imaginatively into these circumstances. Humphrey does not tell us what decisions are made by the characters, and she does not make any prescriptions herself. Instead, she poses a few questions at the end of each story to give readers more to think about. For example, after a story that raises issues of friendship, she asks: What is a real friend? Do you think a real friend accepts you just as you are? Why or why not? These questions take us beyond the story in question and invite us to think in more general terms about important ideas and values.

To emphasise different philosophies of teaching and learning moral values this book may be contrasted with Dan Barker's books, also still in print with Prometheus, which are more prescriptive. Maybe right, maybe wrong (Barker, 1992) is offered as a guide to thinking well about ethics. Maybe yes, maybe no (Barker, 1993) focuses on grounding beliefs. Both feature Andrea, thus inviting readers to connect the two books.

Maybe right, maybe wrong begins: ‘This is Andrea. Andrea has a good mind. She is learning the difference between right and wrong’. However, it is apparent that she already has some firm ideas about these matters. She believes that human beings are more important than anything else, she decides what is right by thinking about whether she might be helping or hurting others, and she believes that fighting is not right. In short, Andrea is not a moral beginner. We see Andrea thinking for herself for the first third of the book. The remaining two‐thirds, however, shifts to the heavily prescriptive voice of the narrator. Principles, readers are told, are more important than rules. A list of principles is given: life is valuable, respect, fairness, honesty, responsibility, kindness, knowledge, enjoy life. What is lost in this narrative is Andrea's voice. Are these principles new for her? Are they what she is now learning? Attractive as these principles might seem to adult readers, young readers are simply told that, when it comes to right and wrong, this is how it is.

Maybe yes, maybe no begins: ‘This is Andrea. Andrea is a skeptic. A skeptic is a thinking person. A skeptic is a person with an open mind’. Someone asserts that a statement is true (or false). Can you prove it? asks the sceptic. If not, a sceptical attitude is warranted. The first half of Maybe yes, maybe no shows Andrea's scepticism at work. It pivots around her friends's claim that a ghost was in their house. She challenges this by offering alternative explanations of the phenomena that her friends think confirm the presence of a ghost. The second half of the book shifts the focus from Andrea to a set of general prescriptions for the young sceptic. When you are trying to determine whether something is true or false, says the narrative voice, follow the rules of science. If you are a good sceptic, ‘you will know how to think for yourself’.

In its effort to give guidance to its young readers, Maybe right, maybe wrong runs into difficulties. Its narrative voice takes on an aura of authority. Rules are commands that tell us what to do. In contrast, a principle is said to be an idea, not a command. A principle may sometimes be broken—however, it does not tell you what to do; it only ‘tells you how to think about what to do’. Later, principles are couched in terms of trying to be (kind, honest, responsible, etc.). This seems to be a matter of telling us what to do, rather than simply telling us how to think about what to do.

Young readers who are puzzled by Maybe right, maybe wrong might be tempted to turn to Maybe yes, maybe no for help. Noticing that many of the claims in Maybe right, maybe wrong are unclear in one way or another, they might try Andrea's sceptical approach. Can these assertions be made clearer? And if they are, can they be proven true—by using principles of scientific inquiry? This is philosophical deep water. Unfortunately, the authoritative voice in neither book will be of much help in helping young readers navigate their way about.

An important difference between Barker's and Humphrey's books is that the former provide principles to guide the reader's thinking, but the latter elicits them from the reader. Both approaches take risks. In Barker's case, the risk is that young readers will sometimes find the prescriptions confusing, if not misguided. Of course, this can be instructive, too, if children exercise their critical thinking abilities and their ‘moral muscle’ in challenging the narrator. However, the tone of Barker's books does not suggest that they were written with this in mind.

In Humphrey's case, the risk is that young readers will be frustrated by not being given a set of clear guidelines for answering the challenges set before them. ‘Who's to say?’ they might ask. Humphrey's answer might be, ‘We all are, for in the end each of us must learn to think for ourselves’. To discourage young readers from concluding that one opinion is as good as any other, it might seem desirable to provide them with a set of prescriptions that make it clear that this simply will not do. But, as Barker's books illustrate, this is difficult to do well—especially if the reader has a good mind and is a good critical thinker.

Humphrey's book offers hope that reflection on stories of the sort she has written will elicit from her readers the sort of imaginative and critical thinking that will not settle for the view that one opinion is as good as any other. These stories about friendship, responsibility, honesty, fair play, teamwork, courage, empathy and perseverance invite the sort of self‐reflection that tries to sort out better from worse thinking and decision‐making. Whether young readers will be tempted to formulate their own set of general guidelines to place alongside Barker's is uncertain. But it seems likely that exercising their ‘moral muscle’ by wrestling with Humphrey's stories will help position them well for such a philosophical exercise should they eventually take it up.

Dr Michael S. Pritchard, Willard A. Brown Professor of Philosophy, and CoDirector, Center for the Study of Ethics in Society, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI 49008, USA. Email: [email protected]

© 2007, Michael S. Pritchard