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The Problem of Indoctrination The world does not present itself to us in morally transparent terms. The moral thing to do is often a matter of disagreement even among people of good will. One and the same act is often morally praised by some, condemned by others. Furthermore, even when we do not face the morally conflicting claims of others, we often have our own inner conflicts as to what, morally speaking, we should do in some particular situation. Considered another way, ethical persons, however strongly motivated to do what is morally right, can do so only if they know what that is. And this they cannot do if they systematically confuse their sense of what is morally right with their self-interest, personal desires, or what is commonly believed in their peer group or community. Because of complexities such as these, ethically motivated persons must learn the art of self-critique, of moral self-examination, to become attuned to the pervasive everyday pitfalls of moral judgment: moral intolerance, self-deception, and uncritical conformity. These human foibles cause pseudo-morality, the systematic misuse of moral terms and principles in the guise of moral action and righteousness. Unfortunately few have thought much about the complexity of everyday moral issues, can identify their own moral contradictions, or clearly distinguish their self-interest and egocentric desires from what is genuinely moral. Few have thought deeply about their own moral feelings and judgments, have tied these judgments together into a coherent moral perspective, or have mastered the complexities of moral reasoning. As a result, everyday moral judgments are often a subtle mixture of pseudo and genuine morality, moral insight and moral prejudice, moral truth and moral hypocrisy. Herein lies the danger of setting up ill-thought-out public school programs in moral education. Without scrupulous care, we merely pass on to students our own moral blindness, moral distortions, and close-mindedness. Certainly many who trumpet most loudly for ethics and morality in the schools merely want students to adopt their ethical beliefs and their ethical perspectives, regardless of the fusion of insight and prejudice those beliefs and perspectives doubtless represent. They take themselves to have the Truth in their pockets. They take their perspective to be exemplary of all morality rightly conceived. On the other hand, what these same people fear most is someone else’s moral perspective taught as the truth: conservatives afraid of liberals being in charge, liberals of conservatives, theists of non-theists, non-theists of theists. Now, if truth be told, all of these fears are justified. People, except in the most rare and exceptional cases, do have a strong tendency to confuse what they believe with the truth. It is always the others who do evil, who are deceived, self-interested, close-minded never us. Given this universal blind spot in human nature, the only safe and justified basis for ethical education in the public schools is one precisely designed to rule out bias in favor of the substantive beliefs and conclusions of any particular group, whether religious, political, communal, or national. Indeed since one of our most fundamental responsibilities as educators is to educate rather than indoctrinate our students to help them cultivate skills, insights, knowledge, and traits of mind and character that transcend narrow party and religious affiliations and help them to think beyond biased representations of the world we must put special safeguards into moral education that prevent indoctrination. The world needs not more close-minded zealots, eager to remake the world in their image, but more morally committed rational persons with respect for and insight into the moral judgments and perspectives of others, those least likely to confuse pseudo with genuine morality. But how is this to be done? How can we cultivate morality and character in our students without indoctrinating them, without systematically rewarding them merely because they express our moral beliefs and espouse our moral perspective? This is not an unreasonable demand, for, ethics aside, skill in the art of drawing important intellectual discriminations is crucial to education in any subject or domain, and proficiency in the art of teaching critically — encouraging students to question, think for themselves, develop rational standards of judgment — is the responsibility of all classroom teachers. Any subject, after all, can be taught merely to indoctrinate students and so to inadvertently stultify rather than develop their ability to think within it. Unfortunately, we have all been subjected to a good deal of indoctrination in the name of education and retain to this day some of the intellectual disabilities that such scholastic straight-jacketing produces. To allow ethics to be taught in the public schools this narrowly is unconscionable. It is to betray our ethical responsibility as educators in the name of ethics. Integrating Critical Thinking and Ethics Any particular moral judgment arises from someone conceptualizing the facts of a situation from some moral perspective or standpoint. Every moral perspective in some way embodies the same general moral principles. The integration of principles with purported facts within a particular perspective produces the judgment that this or that act is morally right or wrong. Precisely because we often differ about the facts or about the proper perspective on the facts, we come to differing moral judgments. The problem is not at the level of general moral principles. No people in the world, as far as I know, take themselves to oppose human rights or stand for injustice, slavery, exploitation, deception, dishonesty, theft, greed, starvation, ignorance, falsehood, and human suffering. In turn, no nation or group has special ownership over any general moral principle. Students, then, need skill and practice in moral reasoning, not indoctrination into the view that one nation rather than another is special in enunciating these moral principles. Students certainly need opportunities to explicitly learn basic moral principles, but more importantly they need opportunities to apply them to real and imagined cases, and to develop insight into both genuine and pseudo morality. They especially need to come to terms with the pitfalls of human moralizing, to recognize the ease with which we mask self-interest or egocentric desires with high-sounding moral language. In any case, for any particular instance of moral judgment or reasoning, students should learn the art of distinguishing principles (which tell us in a general way what we ought or ought not to do) from perspectives (which characterize the world in ways which lead to an organized way of interpreting it) and facts (which provide the specific information for a particular moral judgment). In learning to discriminate these dimensions of moral reasoning, we learn how to focus on the appropriate questions at issue. Sometimes the dispute will depend on the facts: (Did John actually take the watch?) But, more often, they will be a matter of perspective (If you look at it this way, Jack did not take advantage of her, but if you look at it that way, he did. Which is more plausible given the facts?) Sometimes they will be a matter of both the facts and how to interpret them. (Do most people on welfare deserve the money they get? Should white collar crime be punished more severely?). As people, students have an undeniable right to develop their own moral perspective — whether conservative, liberal, theistic, or non-theistic — but they should be able to analyze the perspective they do use, compare it accurately with other perspectives, and scrutinize the facts they conceptualize and judge as carefully as in any other domain of knowledge. They should, in other words, become as adept in using critical thinking principles in the moral domain as we expect them to be in scientific and social domains of learning. To help students gain these skills, teachers need to see how one adapts the principles of critical thinking to the domain of ethical judgment and reasoning (see figure #1). Teachers also need insight into the intimate interconnection of intellectual and moral virtues. They need to see that being moral is something more than abstract good-heartedness, that our basic ways of knowing are inseparable from our basic ways of being, that how we think and judge in our daily life reflects who we are, morally and intellectually. To cultivate the kind of moral independence implied in being an educated moral person, we must foster in students moral humility, moral courage, moral integrity, moral perseverance, moral empathy, and moral fairmindedness (see figure #2). These moral traits are compatible with all moral perspectives (whether conservative, liberal, theistic, non-theistic, etc.). Students who learn to think critically about moral issues and so develop moral virtues, can then develop their moral thinking within any tradition they choose. Critical thinking does not compel or coerce students to come to any particular substantive moral conclusions or to adopt any particular substantive moral point of view. Neither does it imply moral relativism, for it emphasizes the need for the same high intellectual standards in moral reasoning and judgment at the foundation of any bona fide domain of knowledge. Since moral judgment and reasoning presupposes and is subject to the same intellectual principles and standards that educated people use in all domains of learning, one can integrate consideration of moral issues into diverse subject areas, certainly into literature, science, history, civics, and society. Let us consider each of these areas very briefly. Ethics and Literature Who am I? What kind of person am I? What is the world really like? What are my parents, my friends, and other people really like? How have I become the way I am? What should I believe in? Why should I believe in it? What real options do I have? Who are my real friends? Who should I trust? Who are my enemies? Need they be my enemies? How did the world become the way it is? How do people become the way they are? Are there any really bad people in the world? Are there any really good people in the world? What is good and bad? What is right and wrong? How should I decide? How can I decide what is fair and what is unfair? How can I be fair to others? Do I have to be fair to my enemies? How should I live my life? What rights do I have? What responsibilities? Stimulating students to reflect upon questions like these in relationship to story episodes and their own experience enables them to draw upon their own developing moral feelings and ideas, to reason about them systematically, to tie them together and see where they lead. Careful reflection on episodes in literature — characters making sound or unsound moral judgments, sometimes ignoring basic moral principles or twisting them to serve their vested interests, sometimes displaying moral courage or cowardice, often caught in the throes of a moral dilemma — helps students develop a basic moral outlook on life. Furthermore, since moral issues are deeply embedded in everyday life, they often appear in literature. One need not unnaturally force discussion of literature into a moral framework. Moral issues are inevitably implicit there for the raising. However, it is important to realize that moral issues in literature, like the moral issues of everyday life, are rarely simplistic, and involved students will typically generate opposing viewpoints about how to respond to them. This, too, reflects the nature of the real world with its variety of moral outlooks vying for our allegiance. As teachers of literature we should not impose authoritative interpretations upon the student; we should help them develop a reasoned, reflective, and coherent approach of their own. Each perspective, of course, should be respected; however, to be considered, each perspective must be reasoned out, not simply dogmatically asserted. In discussion, each student must learn the art of appealing to experience and reason, not merely to authority. Each student must therefore learn to reflect upon the grounds of his or her beliefs, to clarify ideas, support them with reasons and evidence, explore their implications, and so forth. Each student must also learn how to sympathetically enter into the moral perspectives of the others, not with the view that all moral perspectives are equally sound, but rather with the sense that we cannot judge another person’s perspective until we genuinely understand it. Everyone is due the respect of at least being understood. And just as students will feel that they have something worth saying about the moral issues facing characters in stories and want their views to be understood, so they must learn to give that same respect to the others. Students then learn the art of reasoned dialogue, how to use moral reasoning skills to articulate their concerns about rights, justice, and the common good, from whatever moral viewpoint their experience and background predisposes them. Essay writing is an excellent means of helping students organize their thinking on moral issues in literature. It provides the impetus to formulate moral principles explicitly, to carefully conceptualize and interpret facts, and to give and consider reasons in support of their own and contending moral conclusions. Needless to say we must grade students’ moral writing, not on the basis of their substantive perspectives or conclusions, but rather on grounds of clarity, coherence, and sound reasoning. A clearly thought out, well-reasoned, well-illustrated piece of “moral” writing is what we are after. Such writing need not be long and complicated. Indeed it can begin in the early years with one-sentence “essays” such as “I think Jack (in “Jack and the Bean Stalk”) was greedy because he didn’t need to take all the golden eggs and the golden harp, too.” Ethics and Science In their daily lives students, like the rest of us, are bombarded with scientific information of every kind, typically in relation to some kind of advocacy. And they, like the rest of us, need to make decisions about the implications of that information. What are the real dangers of air pollution? Do people have a right to clean air and water? If so, how clean? What are the consequences of developing nuclear rather than solar power? To what extent should scientists be able to use animals in their experiments? Do animals have moral rights? To what extent should scientists be allowed to experiment with new viruses that might generate new diseases? Under what conditions should people be artificially kept alive? What life and death decisions should be left to doctors? What special moral responsibilities, if any, do scientists have to the broader society? These are but a few of the many weighty moral and scientific issues with which all of us as educated people are faced. Whether we develop an informed viewpoint or not, practical decisions are made every day in each of these areas, and the public good is served or abused as a result of the rationality or irrationality of those decisions. Although many of these issues are ignored in traditional science instruction, there are good reasons not only to include but to emphasize them. First, they are more interesting and useful to most students than the more traditional “pure-science” emphasis. Second, they help students develop a more unified perspective on their values and personal beliefs and on the moral issues that science inevitably generates when applied to the real world. Ethics and History Issues arise among historians when they have conflicting accounts of events. Each major moral standpoint tends to read history differently and comes to importantly different moral conclusions as a result. The moral and the historical come together again and again in questions such as these: Morally speaking, what does the past teach us? What were the long-term effects of this kind of action as opposed to that? What kind of a world are we living in? What moral ideals can we actually live by and in what way? Is pacifism, for example, realistic? Are we justified in engaging in “unethical” practices in our own defense because our enemies use them to attack or harm us? What does it mean for countries to be “friendly” toward each other? How are friendships between countries like and unlike those between individuals? To what extent have we as a nation (and I as an individual) lived in accordance with the moral ideals we have set for ourselves? For example, was the historical treatment accorded Native Americans and other ethnic groups, has our foreign policy in general, been in keeping with our traditional espoused moral values? Morally speaking, how could our founding fathers justify slavery? Should they be morally criticized for accepting this violation of human rights or are there historical reasons why our criticism should be tempered with “understanding”? If our founding fathers, who eloquently formulated universal moral principles, were capable of violating them, are we now different from them, are we morally better, or are we also, without recognizing it, violating basic moral values we verbally espouse? Once we grasp the moral significance of history, as well as the historical significance of morality, and recognize that historical judgment, like ethical judgment, is necessarily selective, that facts are conceptualized from some point of view, then we are well on our way toward constructing an unlimited variety of assignments in which history is no longer an abstraction from present and immediate concerns but rather an exciting, living, thought-provoking subject. Once students truly see themselves constructing history on a daily basis and, in doing so, coming to conclusions that directly affect the well-being of themselves and others, they will have taken a giant step toward becoming historically sensitive, ethical persons. As Carl Becker said in his presidential address to the American Historical Association over 50 years ago, every person, like it or not, “is his own historian”. We must make sure that our students grasp the moral significance of that fact. Ethics, Civics, and the Study of Society We have to recognize, as every sociologist since William Graham Sumner has pointed out, that most human behavior is a result of unanalyzed habit and routine based on unconsciously held standards and values. These embedded standards and values often differ from, even oppose, the ideals we express, and yet the conformist thinking which socialization tends to produce resists critical analysis. This resistance was recognized even from the early days of sociology as a discipline: Even patriotism, Sumner points out, “may degenerate into a vice ... chauvinism”: Ironically, true patriots in a democratic society serve their country by using their critical powers to ensure governmental honesty. Intelligent distrust rather than uncritical trust is the foundation necessary to keep officials acting ethically and in the public good. It was Jefferson who said: It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights. Confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism — free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence. What students need in civic education, then, is precisely what they need in moral education: not indoctrination into abstracted ideals, with the tacit implication that the ideals are generally practiced, not slogans and empty moralizing, but assignments that challenge their ability to use civic ideals to assess actual political behavior. Such assignments will, of course, produce divergent conclusions by students depending on their present political leanings. But, again, their thinking, speaking, and writing should be graded on the clarity, cogency, and intellectual rigor of their work, not on the substance of their answers. All students should learn the art of political analysis, the art of subjecting political behavior to critical assessment based on civic and moral ideals, on an analysis of important relevant facts, and on consideration of alternative political viewpoints. Virtually no students graduate today with this art in hand. This means that words like “conservatism” and “liberalism”, the “right” and “left”, must become more than vague jargon; they must be recognized as names of different ways of thinking about human behavior. Students need experience actually thinking within diverse political perspectives. No perspective, not even one called “moderate”, should be presented as the correct one. By the same token, we should be careful not to lead the students to believe that all perspectives are equally justified or that important insights are equally found in all points of view. We should continually encourage and stimulate our students to think and never do their thinking for them. We should, above all, be teachers and not preachers. |
Implementation Philosophy
Bringing ethics into the curriculum is essential but difficult. Many teachers are deeply committed to didactic lectorial modes of teaching. If ethics is taught in this way, indoctrination results, and we have lost rather than gained ground. Better no ethics than dogmatic moralizing.
To successfully establish a solid framework of ethical reasoning throughout the curriculum, we need excellent supplemental resources and well-designed in-service. Whenever possible, teachers should have access to books and materials that demonstrate how ethical and critical thinking principles can be integrated into subject matter instruction. They also need opportunities to air whatever misgivings they have about the paradigm shift this model represents for many of them. Above all, one should conceive of a move such as this as part of a long-term strategy in which implementation is achieved progressively over an extended time.
Just as educators should respect the autonomy of students, so in-service design should respect the autonomy of teachers. Teachers can and should be helped to integrate a critical approach to ethics into their everyday teaching. But they must actively think their way to this integration. It should not be imposed on them.
The model I suggest is one I have used successfully in in-service for both elementary and secondary teachers on numerous occasions. I call it the “Lesson Plan Remodeling Strategy” and have written three handbooks and an article explaining it in depth.
The basic idea is simple. Every practicing teacher works daily with lesson plans of one kind or another. To remodel lesson plans is to critique one or more lesson plans and formulate one or more new lesson plans based on that critical process. Thus, a group of teachers or staff development leaders with a reasonable number of exemplary remodels with accompanying explanatory principles can design practice sessions that enable teachers to develop new teaching skills as a result of experience in lesson remodeling.
Lesson plan remodeling can become a powerful tool in staff development for several reasons. It is action oriented and puts an immediate emphasis on close examination and critical assessment of what is taught on a day-to-day basis. It makes the problem of infusion more manageable by paring it down to the critique of particular lesson plans and the progressive infusion of particular principles. It is developmental in that, over time, more and more lesson plans are remodeled, and what has been remodeled can be remodeled again.
Inservice Design
The idea behind inservice on this model is to take teachers step-by-step through specific stages of implementation. First of all, teachers must have an opportunity to become familiar with the basic concepts of critical thinking and ethical reasoning. They should first have an opportunity to formulate and discuss various general principles of morality and then to discuss how people with differing moral perspectives sometimes come to different moral conclusions when they apply these principles to actual events. Questions like “Is abortion morally justified?” or “Under what conditions do people have a right to welfare support?” or “Is capital punishment ever morally justified?” etc., can be used as examples to demonstrate this point.
Working together, the teachers should then construct examples of how they might encourage their students to apply one or more of the moral reasoning skills listed in figure #1. One table might focus on devising ways to help students clarify moral issues and claims (S-8). Another table may discuss assignments that would help students develop their moral perspective (S-7). A third might focus on ways to encourage one of the essential moral virtues, say, moral integrity. Of course teachers should have examples for each of the moral reasoning skills, as well as model classroom activities that foster them. Teachers should not be expected to work with nothing more than a list of abstract labels. The subsequent examples developed by the teachers working together should be written up and shared with all participants. There should be ample opportunity for constructive feedback.
Once teachers get some confidence in devising examples of activities they can use to help students develop various individual moral reasoning skills, they should try their hands at developing a full remodel. For this, each table has an actual lesson plan and they collectively develop a critique and remodel that embodies moral reasoning skills explicitly set out as objectives of the lesson. As before, exemplary remodels should be available for teachers to compare with their remodels. The following components should be spelled out explicitly:
Eventually school-wide or district-wide handbooks of lesson remodels can be put together and disseminated. These can be updated yearly. At least one consultant with unquestionable credentials in critical thinking should be hired to provide outside feedback on the process and its products.
For a fuller explanation of this inservice process and a wide selection of examples, I refer the reader to either Critical Thinking Handbook: 4th-6th Grades, or Critical Thinking Handbook: K-3, both are subtitled A Guide for Remodeling Lesson Plans in Language Arts, Social Studies & Science. Both integrate an emphasis on ethical reasoning into critical thinking infusion, though they do not explicitly express the component critical thinking skills with a moral reasoning emphasis (as I have in figure #1).
The handbook examples are easily adaptable as illustrations for the upper grade levels. In any case, handbooks or not, what we should aim at is teacher practice in critiquing and revising standard lesson plans, based on a knowledgeable commitment to critical thinking and moral reasoning. We should not expect that teachers will begin with the knowledge base or even the commitment but only that with exposure, practice, and encouragement within a well planned long-term inservice implementation, proficiency and commitment will eventually emerge.
In my own experience in conducting inservices, I have found it easy to begin this process working with teachers. Though the early products of the teachers are of mixed quality, all of what is produced is workable as a basis for the development of further insights and teaching skills. The difficulty is not in getting the process started; it is in keeping it going. One new lesson plan does not by itself change an established style of teaching. Like all creatures of habit, teachers tend to revert on Monday to their established teaching practices. A real on-going effort is essential for lesson plan remodeling to become a way of life and not just an interesting inservice activity.
The Need for Leadership
I cannot overemphasize the need for leadership in this area. Teachers need to know that the administration is solidly behind them in this process, that the time and effort they put in will not only be appreciated but also visibly built upon. The school-wide or district-wide handbooks mentioned above are one kind of visible by-product that teachers should see. An excellent start is to have key administrators actively participate in the inservice along with the teachers. But the support should not end there. Administrators should facilitate on-going structures and activities to support this process: making and sharing video tapes, sending key personnel to conferences, establishing working committees, informal discussion groups, and opportunities for peer review.
These are some among the many possibilities. Administrators should also be articulate defenders of an educational rather than a doctrinaire approach to morality. They should be ready, willing, and able to explain why and how critical thinking and ethics are integrated throughout the curriculum. They should make the approach intelligible to the school board and community. They should engender enthusiasm for it. They should fight to preserve it if attacked by those good hearted but close-minded people who see morality personified in their particular moral perspectives and beliefs. Above all, they should make a critical and moral commitment to a moral and critical education for all students and do this in a way that demonstrates to teachers and parents alike moral courage, perseverance, and integrity.
References
Ralph W. Clark, Introduction to Moral Reasoning, West Publishing Company,
St. Paul: 1986.
Ronald N. Giere, Understanding Scientific Reasoning, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston;
New York: 1979.
Kuzirian and Madaras, Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in American History, Dushkin Publishing Group; Guilford, Conn.: 1985.
Richard Paul, “Critical Thinking: Fundamental to Education for a Free Society,” Educational Leadership 42, September, 1984.
Richard Paul, “Critical Thinking and the Critical Person,” Forthcoming in Thinking: Progress in Research and Teaching, by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Publishers; Perkins, et al. editors.
Richard Paul, Dialogical Thinking: Critical Thought Essential to the Acquisition of Rational Knowledge and Passions, Teaching Thinking Skills; Theory and Practice, by W.H. Freeman & Company, Publishers, Joan Baron and Robert Steinberg,
editors, 1987.
Richard Paul, Critical Thinking Staff Development: Lesson Plan Remodeling as the Strategy, The Journal of Staff Development, Fall 1987, Paul Burden, editor.
Paul, Binker, Jensen, and Kreklau, Critical Thinking Handbook: 4th–6th Grades, A Guide for Remodeling Lesson Plans in Language Arts, Social Studies and Science, Published by the Center for Critical Thinking and Moral Critique, (Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA 94928) 1987.
Paul, Binker, Charbonneau Critical Thinking Handbook: K–3, A Guide for Remodeling Lesson Plans in Language Arts, Social Studies and Science, Published by the Center for Critical Thinking and Moral Critique, 1987.
Harvey Siegel, Critical Thinking as an Education Ideal, The Educational Forum,
Nov. 1980.
William Graham Sumner, Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals, Dover Publications, Inc., New York: 1906.
{This article is taken from Paul, R. (1993). Critical Thinking: What Every Student Needs to Survive in A Rapidly Changing World, Dillon Beach, CA: Foundation For Critical Thinking).
