Ulisses F. Araújo, Josep María Puig & Valéria Amorim Arantes, 2007
São Paulo, Summus
R$38, US$16 (pbk), 164 pp.
ISBN 978‐85‐323‐0335‐6
How does the process of constructing and appropriating values happen? What is the role of education in this process? Is it possible to have an education in values? Which values should be transmitted to new generations? How can we conceive of moral education?
The relation between education, values and morality is complex. Perhaps it is this complexity which generates new contemporary questions among professionals concerned with ideas and practices about individual ethical development and the building of more just societies and which, in turn, sustains ongoing publishing in philosophy, sociology, psychology and education.
With the aim of exploring this complexity, Valéria Amorim Arantes and Ulisses Araújo, both professors of São Paulo University, Brazil, and Josep María Puig, Professor of Barcelona University, Spain, have, in Educação e valores: pontos e contrapontos [Education and values: points and counterpoints], engaged in a deep discussion about several elements which are involved in the process of moral education.
The book is organised in three parts. In the first part Ulisses Araújo and Josep María Puig set out, in separate chapters, their ideas about the theme. In the second part these authors, after a critical reading of their interlocutor’s chapter, start a dialogue pertinent to some fundamental points of the moral education context. In the third part, Valéria Amorin Arantes, the book’s editor and mediator of the dialogue between the two authors, asks each of the interlocutors the same questions, with the intention of making them reflect further on contemporary issues related to morality, values and moral education.
In the first chapter, ‘The social construction and psychology of values’, Ulisses Araújo explores psychological aspects involved in the process of the construction of values. In both psychological and educational dimensions he seeks to find a way through complexities so as to permit a more open and comprehensive discussion. Then he suggests strategies and ways to proceed in engaging in an education through values. Conceiving of knowledge as a ‘net’, he values cross‐curricular approaches and defends the ideas of teachers working with researchers and the necessity of the school joining with the community. The idea of scholars’ assemblies is very important for the author as a way to solve institutional problems, and they are of three kinds: first, class meetings with students and one teacher; second, school assembly with the delegates of all categories of school; and third a meeting among the teachers.
In the second chapter, ‘Learning to live’, Josep María Puig begins by focusing on aspects referring to the origin of morality and he concludes with concrete proposals for implementing and making evident in the school context various aspects that an educational project should include in a plural, multicultural and globalised society. In this context, he asks about the appropriateness, or not, of having shared values.
One point of agreement between the authors in these chapters is about the goal of moral education: that it is only acceptable to aim at the development of autonomous subjects who think, who are creative, who develop critical judgement and who become conscious about the reality in which they live. The authors admit this profile of autonomous subjects without denying social and cultural reality as constituent of the complexity of human morality.
In the second part of the book Ulisses Araújo sets out his position and instigates Josep Puig to reflect about the psychological aspects that should be considered in educative proposals. Conversely, Josep Puig provokes Ulisses Araújo to clarify and expand his psychological conceptions, particularly when he refers to affective aspects involved in the elaboration of his theory. This dialogue becomes even more interesting when the authors further explore questions related to school. Whilst Puig suggests that Araújo should reflect on the risks of transferring a theory of complexity to an educational context, Araújo suggests that Puig should explore questions related to approaches to and the distance between laic moral education and religious moral education inside public schools.
However, the most stimulating part of the book is reserved for the end. Valéria Amorin Arantes comments on the dialogue of the two authors and invites them to reflect on the similarities and differences between them in the proposals they make for a project on education and values. Thus she raises points and counterpoints concerning moral universalism and relativism, the affective and cognitive dimensions of the values construction process, the crises of values in contemporary societies and about the relations between theories of complexity, chaos theory and education in values. Through such reflections it becomes clear that the book transcends a discussion centred on the possibilities of an education in values. As the book’s editor says, the initial intention was to title the book Education in values, however the title Education and values is more appropriate because the outcome of the dialogue among the authors, comprehensively set out and then further explored, allows the reader to see many aspects of the ‘construction of an education that aims at an ethical and moral formation of future generations’.
In respect of all the issues debated by the authors there can be no doubt that it is worth reading this book. So, even in this time of postmodernity and globalisation, discussion of morality is far from dead and societies, people and values, will always be changing.
© 2009, Mário Sérgio Vasconcelos