MORALITY, CIVICS, AND CITIZENSHIP: VALUES AND VIRTUES IN MODERN DEMOCRACIES

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MORALITY, CIVICS, AND CITIZENSHIP: VALUES AND VIRTUES IN MODERN DEMOCRACIES

Stacy Smith

Department of Education Bates College

What values and virtues should schools cultivate in young people as part of a program of moral or citizenship education? And how, if at all, do those values and virtues differ based on historical and political contexts? Each of these questions presupposes a broader background question -what moral or civic values should be shared in order for a democratic society to flourish? Taken together, these questions frame the inquiry projects of four recent volumes on moral and citizenship education. The volumes include Moral Education for Americans, by Robert Heslep; Teaching Right and Wrong, edited by Richard Smith and Paul Standish; Civic Virtues and Public Schooling, by Patricia White; and Citizenship Education in the Modern State, edlted by Kerry Kennedy.’

The questions taken up in these books are perennial questions. But current interest in the questions is driven by a sense of urgency fueled by two parallel states of affairs. The two texts on moral education, on the one hand, are offered in response to a perceived state of moral decline in the advanced, industrial democracies of the United Kingdom and the United States. The texts on civic and citizenship education, on the other hand, aspire to inform educational enterprises in “countries all over the world [now seeking] to establish democratic institutions” (CVPS, 1 J within unique political, social, and theoretical contexts (CEMS, viii). Thus, while fledgling democracies attempt to identify the basic values and dispositions that their citizens should share, established democracies struggle to regain, revive, or re-vision such foundational agreements. All four of these texts suggest that contemporary explorations about how and whether to teach morality and civic virtue reflect a deep sense of ambivalence and uncertainty surrounding: (1) what it means to be moral; (2) what it means to be a good democratic citizen; and (3) the extent to which the virtues of a “moral person” and a ”good citizen” should overlap in modern, pluralistic, democratic societies.

A CLIMATE OF MORAL DECLINE OR MORAL UNCERTAINTY? Moral Education for Americans and Teaching Right and Wrong both arise out

of climates - the first in the United States, the latter in the United Kingdom - in

1. Robert Heslep, Moral Education for Americuns (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1995). This book will be referred to as M E A in the text for all subsequent citations. Richard Smith and Paul Standish, eds., Teaching Right and Wrong: Moral Educaiion in the BLilance [Oakhill: Trentham Books, 1997). T h s book will he rcfcrred to as TRW in the text for all subsequent citations. Patricia White, Civic Virtues and Public Schooling: Educating Citizens for a Democratic Society [New York: Teachers College Press, 1996). This book will be refcrred to as CVPS in the text for all subsequent citations. Kerry Kennedy, ed., Citizenship Education and the Modern State [London: Falnicr Press, 1997). This book will be referred to as CEMS in the text for all subsequent citations.

EDUCATIONAL THEORY / Summer 2000 / Volume 50 / Number 3 0 2000 Board of Trustees / University of Illinois

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which a state of “moral decline” is perceived to be an acute problem; a problem in need of remedying through public education. Robert Heslep asserts ”a dire need for moral education,” and offers Americans ”a theoretical framework containing a set of moral norms and a view of the end, content, and pedagogy of education resting on that set of norms [that will be] feasible for the United States as well as logically sound (MEA, 5). Richard Smith and Paul Standish, in turn, are concerned to contribute in a timely manner to formal policy discussions in the United Kingdom that are taking place in response to “a widely-shared conviction that things have somehow gone badly wrong” (TRW, vii).

Whereas Heslep chose the device of a written text that enjoins readers to engage in hypothetical dialogue with his conception of moral education in the United States (MEA, 22-23), educational policy makers in the United Kingdom addressed their shared concerns through actual dialogue in a conference setting. In January, 1996 the United Kingdom‘s School Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA) hosted a “National Forum for Values in Education and the Community.” One hundred fifty delegates from educational, religious, and ”other national organisations with a membership representative of the population at large” were charged to:

( I ] Discover whether there are any values upon which there is agreement across society [my emphasis]; and

121 Decide how best society in general, and SCAA in particular, might support schools in the task of promoting pupils’ spiritual, moral, social, and cultural development [ TRW, 1-2).

The particularly wording of each of the Forum’s charges is telling in terms of what is revealed about the social context. The first and primary call, to discover whether there are any agreed upon values across U.K. society, indicates that there is a pervasive sense of uncertainty as to whether individuals agree upon anything at all - and, if so, what precisely is agreed upon. The second call, to consider how to promote students’ “spiritual, moral, social, and cultural development,” reflects a discomfort amongst U.K. educators that ”academic” knowledge has gained a strong- hold to the detriment of other valuable educational goals. SCAA policy makers Marianne Talbot and Nicholas Tate sensed that schools wanted to foster ”spiritual, moral, social, and cultural development” but lacked confidence in whose values, or which values, they should be concerned to instill in young people (TR W, 1). A recent Infobrieffrom the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) suggests that a similar lack of certainty plagues moral education in the United States. In this document, communitarian Amitai Etzioni claims that the question “whose values?” serves as a...”trump question that is often raised to stop all further exploration of the subject.”z

Taken together, a climate of moral uncertainty and inertia among educators spurred the authors represented in these four volumes to search actively for

2. Erik W. Robelen, ”Educating for Democratic Life,” ASCD Infobrief, Issue 13 [June 1998): 3

STACY SMITHis Assistant Professor in the Department of Education at Bates College, 304 Pcttengill Hall, Andrews Road, Lewiston, ME 04240. Her primary areas of scholarship are political philosophy, democracy and education, school choice, and multicultural education.

SMITH Morality, Civics, and Citizenship 407

agreements that represent a “middle ground” between moral absolutism and moral relativism; agreements that can therefore guide projects of moral education in pluralist democracies. Accorlng to Smith and Stanlsh, the context of widespread moral uncertainty combined with a pervasive sense of moral decline has given rise to ”heavily polarised discussions of morality with Absolutism and Relativism appearing like rival football clubs, the exclusive candidates for supporters’ loyalty” (TRW, ix). As they see it, the pole of Absolutism is characterized by a dogged search for moral absolutes that is often associated with fundamentalist movements; movements that some label as a “backlash” to the perceived liberality of relativism. The pole of Relativism, on the other hand, is characterized by a complete abandon- ment of any criteria to distinguish right from wrong. This tendency lies behind statements such as “everything is a matter of opinion” or ”it all depends” (TRW, ix) that leave educators uncertain as to what falls under the rubric of moral education. This relativistic tendency is of great concern to educators who prioritize the moral and ethical development of young people because a lack of moral confidence appears in large part to blame for the inertia surrounding moral education identified by both the SCAA in the United Kingdom and the ASCD in the United States.

I would argue that shared perceptions in the United States and the United Kingdom of moral decline and a lack of confidence about which, or whose, values schools should teach are part and parcel of a larger phenomenon. Each is a particular expression of a lack of moral certitude that has arisen in modem, complex democracies from at least two interrelated sources: a decline of faith in moral absolutes accompanied by a rise in cultural pluralism that has spurred a sense of moral relativism.

The decline of absolute principles on which to ground moral authority is in large part linked to what postmodemists describe as the demise of “grand metanarratives.” Historically, grand metanarratives - such as moral authority expressed through Divine Will within particular religious belief systems and political regimes - provided coherent sets of answers to questions of meaning andvalue. More recently, a modern faith in the power of Reason to lead to absolute answers has exhibited staying power from the Enlightenment period through the present day. But the increasing secularism and pluralism of democratic societies have brought each of these sources of moral authority into question. Scientific reasoning casts doubt on the moral authority of religious faith; cultural pluralism casts doubt on the moral authority of universal reason.

The rise of cultural pluralism - both people of many different value systems simply becoming aware of one another through increased mobility and communica- tion and the normative considerations that arise as people of conflicting value systems attempt to live together in shared political contexts - has spurred an attendant rise in beliefs that all values are relative to cultural context. In the midst of declining adherence to worldviews that provide moral absolutes, and rising pluralisms that spur relativism, we are left without moral certitude. Thus, according to John White, “[tlhe problem is not moral decline, but a certain lack of confidence about how we should behave and what we should believe” (TRW, 19).

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This background context of moral uncertainty is evident as the launching point of each of the volumes discussed here, most notably in the case of the SCAA Forum on National Values in the United Kingdom. Organizers and educators involved with the Forum felt compelled to begin their task by establishing agreement on the point that there is such a thing as ”right’, versus “wrong.” Once they had demonstrated that it is possible to distinguish one from another, they sought agreement from a wide variety of people on some fundamental premises, or norms of conduct, for “right” behavior. They hoped to identify the sorts of values that a wide variety of people of “goodwill” can and should agree upon. The list of common values that they generated included friendship, justice, freedom, truth, self-respect, and respect for the environment (TRW, 3 ) .

The SCAA was not alone in feeling that these sorts of fundamental claims of values agreement need to be made. Patricia White devotes her entire text to explicating fundamental “civic virtues” for democratic citizenship including hope, confidence, courage, self-esteem, self-respect, friendship, trust, honesty, and decency. She does not, however, explain adequately why these nine virtues are of primary importance to democratic citizenship; in other words, she offers little rationale for why these virtues make her list but others do not. Heslep, on the other hand, devotes the bulk of his argument to articulating and defending the underlying tenets of his moral theory. He first grounds the theory on what he claims are neutral “first principles” (MEA, 21 J. From these he derives four “norms of moral agency” (the Criterion of Moral Value, the Criterion of Moral Rights, the Criterion of Moral Duty, and the Criterion of Moral Virtue). Heslep asserts that these criteria are ”logically defensible” and “feasible” (MEA, chaps. 2 and 3 J, in part because they are consistent with “three well-known American values”: freedom, knowledge, and equality (MEA, 56-61 J.

Regardless of the methodology involved, it is easy to look at the core values advocated in each of these texts, raise your eyebrows, and wonder “what is all of the fuss about? ” None of the claims appears radical, nor even all that contentious. As one critical response to the SCAA Forum’s list of values asserts, the values included in the statement are “so obvious as to be anodyne” (TRW, 3) . But the simple fact that scholars and practitioners alike feel it necessary to make these sorts of foundational claims demonstrates the climate of moral uncertainty. In the midst of a host of pluralisms, and absent grand metanarratives to provide us with absolute explana- tions, it is often difficult to determine the right course of action. Often it is even more difficult to fathom convincing someone else that a course of action that I have determined to be right is also right for you. Contemporary celebrations of individu- ality and of difference make such assertions not only unpopular, but downright dangerous.

Nevertheless, in the face of radical differences from individual to societal to cultural levels, humans do seem to share some moral intuitions. The intersections of core values and dispositions advocated across the four texts, by authors from a variety of national contexts, demonstrates some level of shared moral agreement. This does not tell us anything about the source of moral agreements. But it does tell us that agreement is possible, even amid a myriad of complex hfferences.


The authors in these volumes are representative of a tendency to search for grounds of moral agreement that fall somewhere between the poles of absolutism and relativism outlined by Smith and Standish. None of these authors is comfortable with extreme forms of either absolutism or relativism; all struggle with ambiguity surrounding the right course of action in moral life in general, and moral education in particular. Standish, in an essay that elucidates the lack of fruitful alternatives at the extremes of the absolutism/relativism continuum, frames this search as essen- tially a communal endeavor:

It is then at the level of neither the universal nor the subjective that morality must bc located but at thc intermediate level of the communal with its presupposition of trust and of the regard of others. It is these communal bonds that are essential to morality and to the dcvclopment of anything like citizenship .... What needs to be recovered is the middle ground of morality, the only ground on which we can live. And this is not some compromise between the absolute and the subjective. The absolute is a metaphysical chimera; thc subjective can only emerge out of a communal space in which not just morality but meaning itself is given to our lives, the space in which our lives takc their shape (TRW, 52-53).

It is this sort of search within the context of specific communities that fuels the four books of concern in this essay. Each of the texts is an attempt to inform and sway debate so that particular democratic societies, and schools within these societies, can move beyond inertia and uncertainty and claim a stronger role in moral and citizenship education.

DELIBERATING OUR MORAL AND CIVIC FUTURES

The search for middle ground between absolutism and relativism in moral education is part of a broader project of contemporary moral and political theory - a project forging new ground that I refer to as situated morality. The normative theoretical argument behind a concept of situated morality asserts that moral reasoning is not akin to scientific reasoning. "Private" particularisms impact moral deliberations, therefore moral determinations are relative to the specificity of context and reflect the situational nature of moral life. This position rejects the moral universality of Kant's Categorical Imperative in favor of a more contingent, located, indeterminate set of answers arrived at through processes of reasoned deliberation. This argument is "relativistic" not in the sense that it claims that everything is simply a matter of opinion, but because morality is relative to context. Ultimately, this approach blurs boundaries and emphasizes connections between moral principles, ethical values, and political ideal^.^

Situated morality resides in the middle ground, the messy ground, where human life is lived; ground that Standish refers to as an "intermediate level" of "communal space" (TRW, 52-53). In this space, morality is relative not in the sense that anything goes, but rather in the sense that it is socially constructed. Bill Williamsonsuccinctly describes the fundamental premises of this view, and of the relation between moral education and moral life, in the following passage:

morality is learned and moral learning is continuous throughout life.. ..What people learn reflects the circumstances of their lives and the resources of moral undcrstanding available to them .... From this perspectivc, morality cannot be fruitfully viewed as an agreed code of values

~

3. See, for example, Seyla Benhabib, Siluatinfi the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Conternporury Ethics (New York: Koutledge, 1992).

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to which people more or less conform. Nor can it be seen as a divinely given framework of universally valid rules. It has to be seen instead as a socially constructed set of rules, values, and sentiments which reflect the attempts of dfferent groups of human beings in different cultures to do what they believe is “good” or “right” (TRW, 93).

This situated, or socially constructed, view of moral value makes moral life appear at once very much vibrant and alive, yet exceedingly complicated. There are no absolute answers to be found, yet the point is engaging in the process of trying. This is at heart an optimistic vision that wants to hold onto the possibility of morality, while simultaneously rejecting any one vision of morality. According to Williamson,

There is greater moral hope in [an approach that] stresses the fundamental moral nature of all human action and, through that, understands that morality - which is always ambiguous - must be constantly discussed and debated (TRW, 104).

Williamson’s emphasis on discussion and debate as central to moral life parallels the thrust of the political project of “deliberative democracy.”

Like StanQsh and Williamson, deliberative democrats emphasize the importance of context for moral and political decision making. According to Seyla Benhabib, deliberative democrats are even more interested than liberals such as John Rawls are “in what he calls ’background cultural conditions,’ precisely because politics and political reason are always seen to emerge out of a cultural and social ~ontext.”~Although the deliberativeview of moral and political reason is contextual, it is not hopelessly relativistic. Deliberative democrats would agree with Patricia White’s argument that “democracy is distinguished by its values - justice, freedom, and respect for personal autonomy.. . .Democrats, having ends like social justice or the protection of basic liberties in mind, will deliberate with some care about how best to achieve their purposes” (CVPS, 1 and 24). But, if moral principles are socially constructed, how can deliberative democrats lay claim to such overarching, foundational principles? Are they not falling into the trap of absolutism?

Benhabib would argue that they are not. She contends that the normative con&tions - namely concepts of basic rights and liberties - that frame moral and political deliberations, and make agreement possible, “are to be viewed as rules of the game that can be contested within the game but only insofar as one first accepts to abide by them and play the game at all.“5 Moral principles are available for us to draw upon as we engage in the complex balancing acts of moral, ethical, and political decision making because we agree that these are the best principles to protect values that we each cherish: justice, freedom, and personal autonomy.

If, as Williamson and White suggest, deliberation is at the core of moral and political life in democracies, what capacities do young people need to engage in these activities? White defends “certain positive dispositions, or virtues.. .that citizens require if democratic institutions are to flourish” (CVPS, 2). She defines dispositions

4. Seyla Benhabib, ”Toward a Deliberative Model of Democratic Legitimacy,” in Democracy and Difference: Contesting ihe Boundaries of the Political, ed. Scyla Benhabib [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 76.

5. Ibid., 80.

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as those things “half-way between a capacity and an action”(CVPS, 2).6 As stated previously, those dispositions that she views as “essential elements of citizenship education’’ include hope and confidence, courage, self-respect and self-esteem, friendship, trust, honesty, and decency - “dispositions that democrats need but that have to be shaped to take a particular form in a democratic society” (CVPS, 3 ) . White devotes a full chapter to developing what each of these Qspositions entails in a democratic context, as well as how educational institutions might cultivate these virtues in students. But she never provides a sustained argument for why these particular dispositions, as opposed to a plethora of other possibilities, are necessary for democracy to flourish. In her concluding chapter she simply states that “there are more dispositions to be explored that have a very direct relevance to the life of democratic citizens” and mentions loyalty, gratitude, patience, anger, and mercy as among them (CVPS, 88).

White also claims that the dispositions she defends, while crucial to democracy, “are not closely tied to any particular institutional embodiment of democratic values, Whatever particular democratic institutions are in place, things will go better in the polity if citizens acquire the appropriate democratic dispositions“ (CVPS, 2- 3 ) . I would argue that a democratic society flourishes only to the extent that its institutions and machinery are well-utilized. For this to take place, it seems reasonable that particular dispositions should be cultivated to allow the citizenry to make use effectively of the institutions available to them. As Dewey argued about schools, democratic institutions do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, democratic institutions exist in specific contexts and are chosen to bring particular values to life.’ Dispositions, therefore, need to be tailored to the institutional mechanisms at hand.

I would argue that White does not attend closely enough to the types of dispositions necessary to support her claim that ”[ dlemocrats, having ends like social justice or the protection of basic liberties in mind, will deliberate with some care about how best to achieve their purposes” (CVPS, 24). Capacities necessary for deliberating with care go beyond those dispositions that she defends. Her use of the term “deliberate” in this passage indicates at minimum a two-tiered sense of deliberation: an individual level of deliberative reflection and a collective level of deliberative decision making and action. These levels are different in that one requires a capacity for imaginative empathy while the other requires empathetic listening and understanding. Yet both require fundamental critical capacities of moral reflection and moral judgment.*

White’s endorsement of democratic deliberations about how best to achieve purposes presupposes a great deal of exploration as to just what ideals like “social

6. White draws this definition from Anthony Kenny, The Metaphysics of Mind [Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 19921, 84.

7. See, for example, John Dewey, Democracy and Education [New York: The Free Press, 1916). 8. My use of the term ”capacity” here is intended to denote something along the lines of an ability, capa bility, or skill whereas White’s emphasis on ”dispositions” as those things falling somewhere between capacities and actions stresscs an actor’s tendency to makc use of his/her capacities.

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justice“ and “basic liberties” entail. Future citizens must give serious thought to questions such as: What does justice mean? What might it look like in a particular social context? What is a “basic liberty“? How can tensions between individual liberties and democratic decision making be balanced? Young people must gain not only a sense of what is at stake in these principles, but also capacities of critical reflection with which to balance and apply these principles. Moreover, young people need capacities that will allow them to transition from a state of individual deliberative reflection to collective deliberative judgment and action.

Although White‘s study gives short shrift to the development of such capacities as moral reflection and moral judgment, other authors within the four volumes attend more fully to this component of moral education. Richard Smith, for instance, encourages moral educators to elevate the role of judgment in moral life and education. In an essay entitled ’ I Judgement Day” he asserts that “the notion of moral judgement is of fundamental importance [because it] foregrounds the need for a responsiveness to people and to individual cases” (TRW, 109, emphasis in original]. Smith identifies the key features of moral judgment as attentiveness, a kind of self- awareness, flexibility, and the right use of experience (which entails reflection on expcrience) (TRW, 114-15). He then urges us, as citizens and as educators, to

(re-draw] our picture of the moral life to give moral judgcincnt its due [in order to] understand rather better our own responsibilities as adults, parents, and teachers. While talk of moral principles risks suggesting a lofty standard which wc must reach on pain of the accusation of hypocrisy, recognition of the nature and role of judgement accepts that judgement may be faulty from time to time without moral damnation for its owner.. . .We want those around us, including children, to be generally honest, loyal, truthful people, and we want them to have principles which thcy maintain “for thc most part,” using their judgement to make cxceptions for good reasons and with regard to all the different elements of the moral life, including our welfare and the welfare of others (TRW, 117).

It is important to note here that Smith is not rejecting moral principles as playing a pivotal role in moral life. Rather, he simply warns against placing too much emphasis on moral principles because this both posits moral guidance as rigid and unvarying, and relegates morality to fragmented pieces of life (TRW, 116). According to Smith, moral judgment is a crucial component of a full vision of moral life and, thus, any concrete program of moral education.

In sum, many of the authors in these four volumes suggest that the best option for building moral consensus in postmodern, pluralistic democracies is not agreement on a laundry list of absolute values that all citizens should subscribe to. Rather, moral agreement results from processes whereby citizens engage questions of moral and civic virtue together, through discussion, debate, and deliberation. One of the primary places for such discussions to take place is in public schools through projects of moral and civic education. If reasoned deliberation is the end sought, then the best option for preparing young people to become virtuous adults and citizens is to educate them to engage in reasoned deliberations - moral and political, inlvidual and collective deliberations.

In light of this view, the primary question for moral and civic education is not necessarily “What values should we cultivate in young people?” Although the United Kingdom’s SCAA began with this question, scholars and educators who


emphasize the importance of context and deliberation in moral life would likely argue that precise values must be agreed upon locally under normative conditions of basic rights and liberties. These emphases point toward a second key question for moral educators to address: 'What capacities are necessary for reflecting on the relative worth of moral principles and values, particularly in the context of relevant situations (the situational context of all norm-based conduct)?" I would argue that capacities like moral judgment and reflection, as defended by Smith, are necessary partners for the general dispositions outlined by White. Indeed, such capacities will allow young people to address precisely the question that White ignores: "Why is one particular virtue preferable to another for democratic flourishing? " In addition, students will further draw upon such capacities to assess when a particular virtue is called upon, or in evidence, as well as to determine right courses of action in morally relevant situations.

A CALL FOR ATTENTION TO COMPLEX SCHOOL AND SOCIAL PRACTICES

The core values behind any project of moral or civic education need not be absolute, as advocates of a situated "middle ground" suggest, or all that controver- sial, as the "anodyne" list generated by the SCAA Forum demonstrates. Regardless of what the central values behind a project of moral or civic education are, the really tough questions for educators to tackle as they attempt to undertake such projects surround how best to cultivate particular values and virtues in students. Questions surrounding how best to teach values and virtues are even more complex in pluralistic environments where such concepts are interpreted and applied differently by different people. In pluralistic democracies, varying interpretations of moral and civic virtue have distinct implications for educative practices both within schools and throughout broader social contexts. In this concluding section, I will attempt to highlight some concrete challenges for projects of moral and civic education that arise within specific schooling contexts.

As Kerry Kennedy asserts in the introduction to Citizenship Education and the Modern State:

Citizenship education is not a field for academic speculation: it is about the lives of people who live and work from day to day. It is true that citizenship education, or education of any kind, cannot solve all the problems which people face in their daily lives. Yet it can ensure that people are able to live their lives based on principles of peace, harmony, respect, and tolerance and that they will know when these principles are being violated. They will also be aware of their responsibilities and how they can exercise them. In this sense, citizenshp education provides the foundations on which a truly democratic society can be built (CEMS, 5).

Kennedy's edited volume emphasizes not only the importance of civic education for democratic flourishing, but also the importance of understanding theoretical, political, and social contexts in order to shape educational program^.^ Because "citizenship education is capable of being constructed in multiple ways," this volume brings

9. Kennedyclaims that "thc &stinctionbetweencitizenship educationandcivics educationis an important one-the latter refers largely to formal programs of instruction while the former is broader and encompasses the multiple ways in which citizens are encouraged to pursue their roles in a democratic society" {GEMS, vii). I am confining my elaboration of the terms, however, to a more general distinction between moral and civic education that captures shared meanings across the four texts discussed in this essay. lnsofar as "civic"

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together essays that “provide a background for testing new ideas” and ”contribute to the development of durable and stable foundations” for citizenship education (CEMS, viii-5).

Although I agree with Kcnnedy as to the importance of context for identifying the multiple ways that educational programs can be constructed and implemented, it is precisely on this point that I find each of the four volumes lacking. Careful attention to context demonstrates intricate nuances within specific societies, communities, schools, and situations. None of these volumes provides educators with a close look at the challenges posed to projects of moral and civic education within particular contexts where parties interpret norms differently, or where parties interpret appropriate action differently in light of specific shared norms. I will provide two examples of how differing interpretations of moral principles and appropriate action complicate projects of moral and civic education.

My first example demonstrates the complexity of applying norms for ”right” behavior when values are interpreted and applied differently in the context of a school practice aimed toward civic education. A high school in Massachusetts takes one of the central facets of its mission to be civic education. In keeping with this mission, the school conducts a traditional Town Meeting on Friday afternoons that all students and faculty attend. Town Meeting is intended as an opportunity for students to practice democratic participation. During one such Town Meeting in the mid-1990s a female student stood to speak and announced “I’m hungry - let’s go to lunch.” The faculty moderator interpreted this statement to indicate disrespect for the Town Meeting process and called the meeting to a close. The students were directed to return to classrooms where individual teachers spoke with their advisees about proper decorum and respect for the democratic process.

This exchange between a student and the faculty moderator illustrates a complicated moment where two potential civic virtues -honesty versus respect for the processes - collided within an explicit practice of civic education. The student who spoke out was telling the truth; she was hungry and she wanted Town Meeting to end so that she could go to lunch. The moment demonstrates that the most difficult aspects of moral and civic education are not necessarily located in the process of asserting w h a t values are most important. Instead, figuring out how to balance these values, and how to teach them to young people, within the messy interactions of daily institutional life, are among the toughest challenges that teachers face.

In response to such challenges, White’s text is the strongest of the four discussed here in terms of attempting to ground the discussion of general democratic virtues

education, the term that I use, is concemedprimarily with the values, virtues, and capacities particular to democratic public life, my usage of ”civic” encapsulates Kennedy‘s distinction between ”citizenship” versus ”civics” education. Moreover, Heslep’s project is also largely civic accormng to my usage because he identifies his theory of moral education as “public” and confines his use of the phrase “civic education” to programs that “[present] a society’s political ideals as the ultimate standards of life in that society.


within educational institutions. White ends each chapter withstrategies for cultivating in students the specific virtue at hand. She often recommends the use of ”whole- school policies” for implementing one of her dispositions. Whole-school policies are undoubtedly important. Unfortunately, Whitegives little indicationas to what these policies would look like. Readers of her text are left wondering, for instance, what roles she envisions students playing as whole-school policies are shaped and implemented. Lists of values and virtues accompanied by broad recommendations are not the sorts of tools that illuminate for practitioners complex processes of engaging students in reflection on the meaning of values or on ways to embody these values in the lived practices of a school community.

A second example demonstrates the complexity of applying norms for ”right” behavior when values are interpreted and applied differently across the boundaries of school and community. Each of the four volumes discussed in this essay suggests that lines between moral principles and ethical values, between public and private spheres, and between the state and the family are blurred in the face of intersecting projects of moral and civic education in pluralistic democratic societies. Neverthe- less, the volumes give little attention to the relationships between moral and civic education, school reform, and broader social change.

Many educators who perceive a state of moral decline are quick to place blame for moral deficiency on parents and the broader community, while identifying school faculty as somehow separate from this milieu. I recently heard educators from one high school in Maine lament the negative “baggage” -values other than “decency” - that students are bringing to school from home and community. School faculty hoped to identify what decency should look like in their school, and then to bring students, parents, and community members “on board” a project to improve the school climate. A few years ago I was privy to a similar conversation in a Massachu- setts high school. Following a fight between two students, faculty at the school lamented the fact that it was nearly impossible to teach students appropriate behavior when inappropriate behavior, namely fighting, was condoned by misguided parents and community members. They concluded that it would be necessary to change the values and behaviors of parents in order to cultivate appropriate values in their school community.

Reminiscent of Dewey, Heslep points out that “[mloral education takes place in a social setting, not a vacuum” (MEA, 202). The educators described above acknowl- edge this point, but their explanation for the cause of problems they see in their students is too narrow. Dewey was careful to remind his readers of “the constant operation of powerful forces outside the school which shape mind and character” and that ”school education is but one educational agency out of many.”lU In a similar vein, Heslep insists that “[mloral education alone., .is not sufficient to overcome the difficulties in the normative structure of American society. It has to be comple- mented by other types of character education; it also has to be supported by certain

10. John Dewey, Education Todny [New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 19401,355.

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kinds of social, civil, and economic institutions” (MEA, 196). A recollection of personal experience shared by Geoffrey Canada in his book FistStickKnifeGun reinforces this Deweyan notion that formal schooling is but one educational agency among many. Moreover, Canada’s account of his introduction to violent behavior complicates the notion that parents and community members are “less moral” than are educators and disrupts the notion that in order to act as moral educators, teachers‘ first task is to raise the moral standards of families and communities.

Canada shares this vignette of early memories of violence in his neighborhood in a chapter entitled “Codes of Conduct.” He first explains that he grew up in a poor neighborhood in the Bronx, in a small apartment with his mother and three brothers. His father was not a “strong presence;” he was a drinker and financial support from him was "sporadic at best.’’ He describes a day when he was about four years old when his two older brothers returned from a nearby playground without one boy’s jacket. After ascertaining that another boy had roughed up her younger son and taken his jacket, Canada‘s mother “exploded:”

“You let somebody take your brother’s jacket and you did nothing? That’s your younger brother. You can’t let people just take your things. You know I don’t have money for another jacket. You hetter not ever do this again. Now you go back there and get your brother’s jacket.”

My mouth was hanging open. I couldn’t believe it. What was my mother talking about, go back and gct it? Dan and Johnny were the same size. If the boy was gonna beat up John, wcll, he certainly could beat up Dan. We wrestled all the time and occasionally hit one another in anger, but none of us knew how to fight. We were all equally incompetent when it came to fighting. So it made no sense to me. If my mother hadn’t had that look in her eye1 would haveprotested. Evcn at four years old I knew this wasn’t fair. But I also knew that look in my mother’s eye. A look that signified a line not to be crossed.

My brother Dan was in shock. He felt thc same way I did. He tried to protest. “Ma, I can’t beat that boy. It’s not my jacket. I can’t get it. I can’t.”

My mother gave him her ultimatum. “You go out thcrc and get your brother’s jacket or when you get back I’m going to give you a beating that will be ten times as bad as what that little thief could do to you. And John, you go with him. Both of you better bring that jacket back here.”

The tears hcgan to flow. Both John and Dan were crying. My mother ordered them out. Dan had t h s look on his face that I had seen before. A stern determination showed through the tears. For the first time I didn’t want to go with my brothers to the park.

I waited a long ten minutes and then, to my surprise, John and Dan triumphantly strolled into the apartment. Dan had John’s jacket in his hand, My mother gathered us all together and told us we had to stick together. That we couldn’t let people think we were afraid. That what she had done in making Dan go out and get the jacket was to let US know that she would not tolerate our becoming victims. I listened unconvinced. But 1 knew that in not going with Dan and John I’d missed something important. Dan was scared when he left thc house. We were all scared. I knew I could never have faced up to that boy. How did Dan do i t? I wanted to know everything.

I have remembered this incident often over thc course of my professional career. I have counseled so many children who’vc said they acted violently because their parents told them to. Parents often give instructions similar to those my mother gave my brother: fight back or I will beat you when you get home. Many times children as young as six and seven would bring weapons to school, or pick up bottles, bricks, or whatever was at hand. When asked about their violent behavior they’d often say their parents told them to ”get something and bash his head in.”

The children were tclling the truth. In the more than twenty years I havc spent counseling, teaching, and running programs for poor, inner-city children, I have seen a steady stream of parents who have given their children these instructions. The parents, inevitably single women raising children in the midst of an urban war zone, come with similar storics of chldren being victimized again and again. Institutions doing nothing to protect the child. The child coming


home scared, scarred, looking to them for protection that they could not provide. The parents feeling as if they had no alternative. Accept it, this is a violent world, so teach them to COPC by acting more violently than the others.”

Canada’s account of learning to be violent demonstrates the importance of considering social context in the task of moral or civic education. His experience raises numerous questions surroundmg how interpretations of whether fighting is “right behavior’’ differ based upon one‘s role vis-h-vis the school and the broader community. Is the incident he describes simply an extreme example of “moral decline”? Should someone be teaching these young boys that stealingand fighting are unequivocally wrong? Is Canada‘s mother a ”bad” mother for teaching her sons that they need to fight in order to protect their property and, by extension, themselves?

In order to answer these questions, it is necessary to consider the societal factors that lead to alcoholism, unemployment, single-parent households, and violence on the streets. It is necessary to consider the conditions that children under 10 years old have to negotiate to get home from the playground. Canada points out that many parents are teaching their children to fight not because they view fighting as the right thing to do. Rather, they view fighting as necessary for survival. They love their children and want to do what is best for them, and that includes teaching them how to fight.

Canada‘s account demonstrates that school faculty are not always “right” and parents “wrong” when disagreeing over the moral appropriateness of certain behavior. Parents are not acting immorally when they insist that their sons and daughters learn survival skills that will get them home alive. Like Heslep, I would argue that institutional changes are necessary in other social realms in order for projects of moral and civic education to be effective in schools. But moving beyond Heslep’s general call for “institutional modifications’’ (MEA, 202), I would like to suggest more specifically that educators broaden their focus in projects of moral and civic education from targeting the “inappropriate” behaviors of students and parents to addressing the systemic factors that allow the “codes of conduct’’ within a culture of poverty to exist. I am not suggesting a relativistic approach that sanctions violent behavior as moral, but rather that educators concerned with morality and civic virtue should consider engaging themselves in forms of social action that will create a social climate where such endeavors are possible.

CONCLUSION A climate of moral uncertainty has produced a lack of confidence among

practitioners as to whether they should even attempt the tasks of moral or civic education. In response, scholars eager to show that agreement on basic values is possible, and to assert which basic values are most fundamental to the flourishing of democratic societies, have produced a flurry of invocations and recommendations. Agreement on basic values, however, is not the only issue salient to moral and civic education. Rather, agreeing on how to interpret and apply these values is tricky in the

11. Geoffrey Canada, FistStickKnifeGun: A Personul History of Violence m Aniericu (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 3-6.

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context of daily life, particularly amid cultural and ethical pluralism. Accordingly, projects of moral and civic education should emphasize cultivating in students critical capacities of moral reflection and moral judgment; capacities that are necessary for individual and collective deliberation. Such projects must also attend to the intricacies of daily life within institutions and between the institution of formal schooling and the broader communities within which schools are situated.

MORALITY, CIVICS, AND CITIZENSHIP: VALUES AND VIRTUES IN MODERN DEMOCRACIES

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