Activist Environmental Education and Moral Philosophy

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Notes

1. For the sake of convenience we will refer to the environmental activist proposals in SMTE simply as activist SMTE.

2. We will frequently use the terms value, moral education, and ethics in our discussion. Value is used here to indicate those characteristics of human life to which we attribute moral worth (such as honesty). Moral education is used to denote the field of pedagogical inquiry focused on questions regarding the good life. Ethics is used to denote the broader philosophical field dedicated to questions of morality.

3. To fully develop Harding's (1991) concept of objectivity would take us too far afield of our topic, and so we restrict ourselves here to a few focused comments. It is important to note, however, that Harding does not take up a conventional or superficial notion of objectivity. Her goal, rather, is to come to a better understanding of what this important value requires of us. Interested readers should direct themselves to Harding's discussion of hard and weak objectivity.

4. We advanced our own argument regarding the ethical practice of science (in education) in Burns, Piquette, and Norris (2009).

5. Simpson (1986) importantly noted that values clarification could be said to have lived on in certain classroom practices, despite its apparent failure among philosophers of education.

6. The central normative rivals in moral education are typically identified as care ethics, virtue ethics, and cognitive developmentalism (see Carr, 2007; Noddings, 2002). Cognitive developmentalism involves a substantial empirical element and, given our focus on the philosophical nature of this discussion, we have chosen here to focus on care and virtue.