EDUCATIONAL THEORY Winter 1987, Vol. 37, No. 1 0 1987 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Review Article - Philosophy of Education on Moral Development and Moral Education*

By Ciinton Coliins

What have philosophers of education to contribute to moral education? Any quick survey of the literature will suggest that there is little consensus on the matter. Here, for example, are two books that cover much of the same ground in terms of the theorists they discuss, yet their approaches are quite distinct. John Martin Rich and Joseph L. DeVitis, in their Theories of Moral Development, have found a way of finessing questions of the place of philosophy in moral education. They begin with the assumption that anyone involved in or concerned about moral education would benefit from increased familiarity with what social psychological research has revealed about moral develop- ment. As philosophers, their plan is to compare and briefly critique a large number of current theories, hoping to extract the better elements from each of them. Barry Chazan, in his Contemporary Approaches to Moral Education, on the other hand, takes an approach that is more problematic regarding the contribution of philosophy to moral education. Though he looks at the work of some of the same theorists discussed by Rich and DeVitis, he examines the ideas of a much smaller number of theorists, and he develops what he calls an analytic “conceptual prism” by which he hopes to reveal some of the philosophical “underpinnings” for these theories and approaches to moral education.

The role assigned philosophy in moral education by Rich and DeVitis implicitly becomes more foundational than it is for Chazan. Rich and DeVitis make clear at the outset their belief that scientific theories of human development are foundational to the understanding of morality.’ Later they suggest that armed with such theories, educators can make informed curricular decisions on the basis of their knowledge of a student’s stage of development.2 Furthermore, Rich and DeVitis indicate by their criticisms of some of the theories they consider their belief that many key questions in human development await more rigorous empirical investigation?

Chazan, by contrast, appears more modest in his goals, viz., to “help educa- tors . . . reflect . . . on the great issues involved in the activity of moral education.”‘ The assumption may be that such reflection informs the subsequent practices of educators, but Chazan notes only an unexplained gap in understanding how that may O C C U ~ . ~ His application of philosophy to issues of moral education lacks any justification beyond limited goals of understanding.

Correspondence: Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation, 131 Taylor Education Building, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-0004.

* Barry Chazan, Contemporary Approaches to Moral Education: Analyzing Alternative Theories.

John Martin Rich and Joseph L. DeVitis, Theories of Moral Development. Springfield, 111.:

1. John Martin Rich and Joseph L. DeVitis, Theories of Moral Development (Springfield, 111.:

2. Ibid., 77. 3. Ibid., 57, 81. 4. Barry Chazan, Contemporary Approaches to Moral Education: Analyzing Alternative Theories

5. Ibid., 119.

New York Teachers College Press, 1985, 159 pp. $14.95.

Charles C. Thomas, 1985, 138 pp., $16.75.

Charles C. Thomas, 1985). 3.

(New York: Teachers College Press. 1985). x.

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THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT

The advantage enjoyed by approaches to moral education that begin with a theory of human development is the widespread acceptance of such theories as distinguishing features of scientific psychology in the twentieth century. A clear motive for the popularity of such theories is that they provide a scientific way of understanding the evident differences among people in cognitive ability, emotional maturity, or any number of other of the qualities identified with human psychology. One particularly sensitive area of human difference is that of moral judgment and action.

Historically, the ready source of explanation of human differences in these sensitive areas has been some theory of evil; i.e., that some people are not as moral as we because they have fallen under the influence of evil forces, whether these forces come from within the person or from a universe of opposed Good and Evil. In contrast, developmental theory appears to offer a far more optimistic explanation: some people are morally different from us because they have not yet developed as fully or as far in this dimension in their personality. The latter view, instead of entailing eternal conflict, gives hope that education can improve the moral life of humanity in general.

Rich and DeVitis can unreservedly be classed among such optimists. Theories of Moral Developrnenf embraces no less than a dozen and a half theories of moral development. While all these theories are subjected to critical evaluation, it is clear that what the authors are looking for are the best elements of all these theories. Never once do the authors even hint that there may be an alternative,ret alone a better, way in which to understand moral difference.

INADEQUACY OF PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES

While all the theories that Rich and DeVitis consider are, at least in part, psycho- logical theories, they make clear in their discussion of the first of these theories of development, that of Sigmund Freud, why they wish to go beyond psychology in analyzing theories of moral development. The authors appear to include themselves in a “minority camp of psychologists and educators,” which of late “has begun to question. . . the fundamental ‘theoretical egocentrism’ of Freud and certain post- Freudian paradigms, including that of Kohlberg.” The complaint of this emergent minority is that “these dominant models focus primarily on internal, individual, and differential measures of man and morality” (an example is Freud’s concept of “weak superego” or Kohlberg’s “pre-conventional personality”). The flaw in these formulations, according to Rich and DeVitis, is that they “tend to ‘blame the victim’ ” of stunted moral development “rather than the larger social order.’I6

A way of elaborating this concern might be to say that psychological theories often picture development as the filling out of some preformed human nature, as if some internal weakness prevented some individuals from coping effectively with environmental pressures. ( I should say here that I believe Rich and DeVitis misapply this criticism to Kohlberg, whose theory of development is far more concerned with categories that are inherently social - consider, for example, Kohlberg’s use of the term “conventional” - than is that of Freud.)

What is clear, however, is that Rich and DeVitis are seeking a theory of moral development that places a large share of the responsibility for moral development on “the larger social order.” It is this, I believe, which explains their move in their opening chapter to make Emile Durkheim’s “sociological paradigm . . . serve as a base” for their discussion of these theories.’

THE SOCIOLOGICAL PARADIGM

Rich and DeVitis construct an argument in the manner of Durkheim in order to subsume individual moral development under the egis of social progress. They take

6. Rich and DeVitis, 23. 7. Ibid., 7.

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as premises that “societies are interested in maintaining themselves” and that “most societies seek to improve themselves.” From this they conclude that “certain forms of independence and autonomy are needed among citizens to enjoy the creativity to effect these improvements” [in s~ciety].~ The thrust of this argument is to subsume personal autonomy under some larger social good or value, i.e., social improvement or social progress.

This conclusion seems to me to reflect accurately the positivist orientation of Durkheirn’s sociology. Certainly Durkheim has made a major contribution to our understanding of the place of socialization in moral education. By accepting Durkheim’s theory as their central paradigm, however, Rich and DeVitis have radically skewed the basis for their critique of theories of moral development. Their use of the paradigm leads them to regard the tension between individual autonomy and social tradition as fundamentally a competition between two social goods.

POSSIBILITIES FOR A PHILOSOPHICAL PARADIGM

It is not at all clear to me why the central paradigm chosen by two philosophers of education should be sociological rather than philosophical. Granted that they wish to hold “larger social structures” responsible for moral development, there is readily at hand a philosophical theory of moral development, one that by no means under- estimates the significance of social structures, namely, that offered by John Dewey. Dewey is a contemporary of Durkheim’s; he is by contrast an American - and, therefore, more likely to be conversant with American values and educational tradition - and he is a philosopher of education as well.

I am, however, being a bit disingenuous. By ferreting out clues from throughout their text I think I have a good idea why their central paradigm is not Deweyan. One clue is the criticism they offer of Daniel Levinson’s theory of the seasons of the lifecycle. Rich and DeVitis criticize Levinson’s contention that the sequence of seasons in the typical human life do not represent a hierarchy, and that one “season” or stage is as important as any other. This contention seems to Rich and DeVitis to be contradicted by Levinson’s suggestion “that those who remain in a period beyond a set chronological age manifest arrested gr~wth.”~

Because they do not deal with Dewey’s theory of development, Rich and DeVitis do not note that Dewey’s theory contains just these same elements that they attribute to Levinson. Dewey sees development as having no teleology and therefore believes that no criteria exist for deprecating one stage, phase, season, or whatever and for preferring another. For Dewey, the criterion of a good life is not development to some highest level. He regards a human life as good so long as a person continues to develop. Put another way, Dewey conceived the principal evil of human life to be loss of the capability for further development. As Dewey put it, the only goal of growth is more growth. I think this suggests a reason for the authors’ reluctance to include Dewey’s theory of development in their survey. They have an evident predilection for theories which depict development as progress toward some determinate goal.

Even though they have not included Dewey, however, the principal strength of their text, in my judgment, is that they have done a very Deweyan sort of thing, viz., they have shown the role of philosophy in mediating between the developmental claims of psychologists and those of sociologists. Indeed, the authors’ chief reservation with regard to Durkheim’s paradigm is that its “dominant sense of relativism tends to nullify the possibility of universalized moral principles.”1D

It should be noted, in this context, that an alternative explanation of moral difference, in addition to traditional theories of evil, on the one hand, or developmental theories, on the other, is some form of cultural relativism; i.e., the argument that people have

8. Ibid., 8. 9. Ibid., 104. 10. Ibid., 15.

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different moral values because in different groups these have been shaped by radically different sets of cultural influences, Thus, where there is a tendency for psychologists to explain moral difference by theories of biological or deep-structural preformation, there is a competing tendency for sociologists to explain moral difference as a matter of cultural relativism.

In their approach it seems to me that Rich and DeVitis want, rather, to agree with Dewey that development is both biological and tied to evolving social structures. Like Dewey, they seek to avoid relativism by assuming that social evolution is a result of the progressive empowerment of the biological nature of man. By their repeated call for social and psychological data, however, Rich and DeVitis perhaps have not done enough to show that moral development involves matters of philosophical understanding and commitment as much as scientific proof. Social evolution is no straight-line course of development: there are numerous blind alleys. (Indeed, Nazism represents so deep and murky a blind alley that many would argue that social evolution has become a vain human hope.) Nevertheless, the promise of social evolution remains a philosophical way between the Scylla of cultural relativism and the Charybdis of a fixed human nature.

BETWEEN RELATIVISM AND DOGMATISM

At times Rich and DeVitis appear overenthusiastic in uncovering these risks. Their critique of Piaget’s theory of moral development, for example (and by implication that of Kohlberg as well), raises a faint spectre of the moral outrage that was Nazism. Their general complaint is that Piaget is unable to disengage questions in moral development from cognitive process. The authors warn that “the human and social dangers implicit in [the equation of cognitive and moral ability]. . . have engendered exceedingly inhu- mane social practices; e.g., sterilization.”ii

As the authors note earlier, however, Piaget clearly separates himself from those psychologists who regard cognitive ability in any sense a fixed capacity of individuals. Like Dewey, Piaget appears to regard any healthy human as capable of further cognitive or moral development. Again like Dewey, Piaget shares the liberal, Enlightenment faith that the open potentialities of human development are what justifies the hope that social evolution will reach a point where moral differences are no longer perceived as a threat, a view that is 180 degrees from that of the advocates of selective breeding.

Throughout their text Rich and DeVitis repeatedly appear perched on a dilemma between relativism and dogmatism, and they resist the attempt of William Perry to present a theory that puts these in developmental perspective.’* The authors accuse Perry of not recognizing the weaknesses of value relativism, yet his treatment of commitment as a stage tater than relativism clearly suggests that relativism is largely a transitory phase in the way in which individuals make value judgments. Perry describes this phase of relativism as unstable because of the demands which everyday life make on individuals to find areas of commitment in their living.

Furthermore, Perry makes it clear that the stage of commitment is not to be confused with dogmatism and fanaticism (as Rich and DeVitis suggest it may be) principally because the individual has passed through the stage of value relativism. Perry is particularly concerned with ways in which initiation into the values of academic life in colleges and universities exposes students to the assumption that any belief is subject to challenge by means of critical thinking (although any challenge rests upon assumptions which, for the time being, are unchallenged). Commitment involves the choice of a course of action in the face of recognition that the intellectual rationale for one’s action can always be second-guessed. It is not dogmatism, however, to insist that one’s course of action be defensible, so long as one also acknowledges the

11. Ibid., 51. 12. William G. Perry, Jr., Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years:

A Schema (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970).

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possible appropriateness of challenges to the thinking which entered into one’s action. Commitment is the recognition that one can act morally without the justification of a perfected rationale.

On the other hand, Rich and DeVitis commend Perry’s theory, along with a number of others, because it offers a schema to “reshape instruction to coincide with the student’s present stage in order to communicate and evaluate more effe~tively.”’~ In the case of Perry, it seems to me that such a schema is far from his intention. Rather, it appears to be Perry’s intent to picture the extent to which students benefit from an initial sense of strangeness in an academic environment. On Perry’s view, it is often more of a contribution to students’ eventual adaptation to an academic environment that the teacher be a strong representative of values that dominate academic life than that he or she pitch instruction to the level of the student’s presumed stage of present development.

GILLIGAN’S FEMINIST CHALLENGE TO KOHLBERG

In their critique of the currently most prominent theory of moral development, that of Lawrence Kohlberg, Rich and DeVitis are to be commended for their sensitivity to the significance of the critique of Kohlberg’s work offered by Carol Gilligan.14 Kohlberg claims to have empirical evidence of a universal, invariant sequence of stages in the development of moral judgment. Gilligan’s counterevidence, which indicates that women typically follow a different pattern of moral development than Kohlberg found in his all- male sample, is indeed devastating, and it becomes the focus for the concluding discussion in Theories of Moral Development.

Rich and DeVitis, however, seem skeptical that Gilligan has proved her point: and the language with which they express their reservations might even be described as “sexist.” They describe her model of women’s moral development as “couched in highly speculative, intuitive lang~age.”‘~ They regard her “sensitive explorations in androgyny” as failing to address wider social and political concerns and argue that Gilligan “postulates social relationships which are largely restricted to personal relations among family members, friends, and colleagues,” thereby neglecting what Robert Paul Wolff refers to as “ideals of affective, productive, and rational community.”16

In this respect Gilligan’s analysis appears to fall under the authors’ general dissatisfaction with contemporary developmental psychology: that it is too much under the influence of Piaget and Kohlberg and, as a result, too much emphasis is placed on peers and self as the source of moral development. In contrast, Rich and DeVitis put forward the possibility that the society can be restructured to form egalitarian relationships even between adults and children.

The authors’ model for this is the developmental theory of Alfred Adler. In response to Gilligan the authors conclude that “Adler pointed the way [to a moral community of relative equality] for both men and ~ o m e n . ” ’ ~ Yet in their critique of Adler’s theory, Rich and DeVitis note that Adler “appears to be unaware that he is committing the naturalistic fallacy” in his claim that individuals regard what is “right” to be “that which is useful for the community,” an ideal which, according to Adler, “everyone of us, consciously or unconsciously, carries in himself.”’*

An alternative means of countering Gilligan’s feminist challenge to developmental theory might be for Rich and DeVitis to abandon the sociological foundationalism that

13. Rich and DeVitis, 77. 14. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development

15. Rich and DeVitis, 117. 16. Ibid., 119. 17. Ibid., 120. An expansion of this argument is provided by Joseph L. DeVitis in “Freud,

Adler and Women: Powers of the ‘Weak’ and ’Strong’,’’ Educational Theory 35, no. 2 (Spring

18. Ibid., 32.

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982).

1985): 151 -60.

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they embrace in chapter 1 in favor of a more Kuhnian view of theoretical “paradigms.” On such an alternative view, feminist critique of developmental theory does not entail the conclusion that moral development is hopelessly sex-linked. It is enough that Gilligan provides us with an additional perspective from which to discuss development and sends us in search of new paradigms.

DURKHEIM’S DUAL HUMAN NATURE

One of the striking parallels between these two volumes under consideration is the prominence in both given to Durkheim’s views on moral education. Chazan’s explanation is in somewhat greater detail than that of Rich and DeVitis. Chazan describes Durkheim as the “father of modern moral education” and explains that “he established the conceptual realm of discourse that continues to characterize any contemporary analysis of moral edu~ation.”’~ What Durkheim’s approach to moral education appears to supply for Chazan as well as for Rich and DeVitis is what the former describes as a theory of a dual human nature.

According to Durkheim, humans partake of a double existence, one as a biological organism and the other as an extension of society. He characterizes the one as being composed of sensations and sensory tendencies, whereas the social being is char- acterized by universalized, impersonal conceptual thought. Chazan notes that, for Durkheim, morality occurs only in the second being, and that it is the end of education “to constitute this being in each of us.”2o

Chazan, however, allows it to pass without comment that Durkheim ignores any distinction between society in the large, objective, rational and empirical sense and community, that is, face-to-face friendship and kinship relationships. By allowing only his two-way division, Durkheim is able to regard the personal as nonrational, nonmoral, and implicitly solipsistic. Durkheim fails to observe the distinctive moral qualities of face-to-face communities. Indeed, Chazan quotes him as attributing the “spirit of love” to the “benevolent and protecting power” of society in the large.*’

At this point the reader might be forgiven for assuming, given Chazan’s build-up for the centrality of Durkheim’s views of moral education, that, like Rich and DeVitis, he shares a certain affinity for the way in which Durkheim has resolved the issue between individual autonomy and social suasion in morality. In his final chapter, however, Chazan uses the views of John Dewey to “second-guess” the principal theorists he has earlier introduced. This leads the reader to the contrary assumption that Dewey is to have the last word for Chazan, in this case stressing the process of interaction between individuals and the social environment, and denying Durkheim’s reduction of the individual to the social in all but its sensory aspects. This format of giving the first word to Durkheim and the last word to Dewey and placing all current approaches to moral education between these classic pillars makes somewhat of an enigma of the book’s organization.

CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES

Chazan begins his analysis of contemporary approaches with the utilitarian and formalist theory of the British philosopher of education, John Wilson. He then shifts pace to consider the two currently dominant psychological approaches, Values Clari- fication and the Cognitive-Developmental approach of Lawrence Kohlberg and his associates.

Each of these three approaches is analyzed by the same “conceptual prism” that Chazan has modeled in his analysis of the work of Durkheim. The prism consists of nine issues on which the positions of each approach are sought. Five of these issues

19. Chazan, 9. 20. Ibid., 10. 21. Ibid., 11.

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Chazan takes from philosophical ethics: they are the relative importance of the individual and the society as well as the relative importance of the form or procedures of morality as opposed to its content; the place of moral principles: that of moral reason; and that of moral action. Two of the issues, according to Chazan, are borrowed from theories of education: the place of indoctrination in moral education and the ideal of the morally educated person. The final two issues concern pedagogic practices and the role of teachers.

Unfortunately Chazan’s conceptual prism becomes a bit of a Procrustean bed (one is tempted to say “conceptual prison”). Not all theories of moral education have the same components; indeed, the question of which components are most salient may be a key issue dividing the different approaches. Dewey, for example, is not likely to regard the ideal product of moral education to be “the morally educated person,” but rather something closer to “the optimal educational relationship.” Furthermore, Chazan’s faithful adherence to his prism renders the three middle chapters a bit repetitive; in some cases what is basically the same point is made in reference to two different issues.

The chapter on Wilson is particularly tough going, in part because Chazan is not able to articulate a consistent position for Wilson. Far from “showing the promise of philosophy. . . in moral education” (p. 44), Wilson’s work is more likely to give philosophy a bad name with many readers. As presented here, it is excessively analytic and foundational, suggesting that teachers must master philosophy in order to be effective moral educators; which is simply untrue. At one point Chazan even notes that Wilson embraces an epistemological argument against moral education, viz., “that schools should only teach facts and arguments for which there is publicly accepted evidence” (p. 94). It is understandable that Chazan would want to include a contemporary spokesperson for utilitarianism in moral education. His choice of Wilson suggests that there may be no significant and representative utilitarian writing on moral education today (although a better example might have been Michael Scriven).

AGAINST MORAL EDUCATION

It is in the chapter “Against Moral Education” that Chazan’s book achieves its distinctiveness. Readers who have had their fill of summaries of Dewey, Durkheim, Kohlberg, and Values Clarification will, nevertheless, want to read this chapter. In it Chazan abandons (breaks free of?) his “conceptual prism” to note that there is a long and distinguished tradition of opposition to traditional forms of moral education. Chazan’s alternative schema, used only in this chapter, reveals many overlaps in the ideas of thinkers rarely associated in discussions of moral education, e.g., A. S. Neill, Ivan Illich, Michael Katz, and Carl Bereiter.

A significant example of the antimoral education tradition is Carl Bereiter, the behaviorist psychologist. Bereiter’s brand of positivism is almost everywhere an important agenda for American schools, but the implications of his position against moral education have heretofore been largely ignored. Chazan notes that Bereiter distinguishes between three types of school activities: (1) child care; (2) training in specific skills necessary for functioning in the larger society; and (3) education, which Bereiter regards as the imposition of values and socialization upon children. Bereiter’s position is that the third of these activities is morally wrong. Legitimate skill training can, he notes, include such things as “learning how to take the point of view of others,” since “to acquire such skills is not to become a certain kind of person (as moral education implies), but rather to acquire a greater capacity of becoming the sort of person one desires to be.”22 To this plea for individual choice of values is added an empirical argument that schools are largely ineffective in their attempts at moral education and should concentrate “on those areas schools can do well,’’ viz., the training of ~ki l ls .2~

22. Ibid., 95. 23. Ibid., 99.

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It seems to this reviewer that Bereiter is closer to the current consensus on moral education than any of Chazan’s other candidates. From this perspective the whole book might take on greater dramatic interest if the chapter “Against Moral Education” were expanded and put up at the front, so that the various advocates of moral education could be seen as responding to these anti-moral-education arguments. Since Chazan mentions that there is a long tradition against moral education, it does not seem fanciful to believe that the advocates of moral education represent in part a response to such arguments.

CONCLUSION

Given the positivist emphasis of so much of contemporary schooling, the main difficulty that moral education encounters today is one that Chazan notes briefly with the question “How does the already overburdened teacher introduce yet another subject into his/her busy day?”24 Teachers are unlikely to be interested in moral education so long as they regard it as an add-on; something additional for them to be concerned with.

If we think of morality, however, not as a kind of performance, but rather - following Kant - as a set of motives for organizing experience in order to achieve shared meanings, then morality can be understood as a condition of certain kinds of knowledge; ju$t as technical and aesthetic motives are a condition of other kinds of knowledge. Sirce objective and impersonal knowledge is often assumed to be the principal motive for schooling, it is possible to assume (as Durkheim does) that no moral difficulties need accompany that motive. Recent investigators such as Thomas Kuhn, Clifford Geertz, Richard Rorty, and Stanley Fish25 have suggested, however, that there is a strong element of communitarian interest that enters into the way in which knowledge develops. Schools, therefore, in addition to having the motive of establishing and disseminating objective knowledge, also have the motive of sustaining open-ended conversations. In addition, school is often a domain of self-development in which students pursue motives of self-identification and self-protection. It is likely that each of these motives should be attended to “in the long run” of schooling.

On this view, moral education is understood as something that teachers are willy- nilly engaged in, though not necessarily reflectively. Moral development, in addition to being something that happens to individuals, can be understood as something that happens in communities and in societies. No one piece of this larger picture need be considered foundational to the other parts. Schools and teachers can contribute to reflective awareness of these processes, but that is not essential to their continued functioning.

Rich and DeVitis tell us a lot about what contemporary social psychology has learned of individual moral development. That is an important part of the picture of morality in our schools and communities, but it is not foundational; i.e., it is not knowledge that any person needs in order to live within these schools and communities, unless his or her motive is to be part of the particular community that gives time and effort to reflecting on moral processes. Chazan appears to limit the purpose of his book to speaking within that particular community.

While the efforts of these authors are unlikely to make schools or societies more moral (whatever such a goal might mean), they do enhance the level of understanding within that smaller community and may conceivably help provide entry into that

24. Ibid., 7. 25. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1970); Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983); Richard Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982); Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980).

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community on the part of those previously uninvolved. For anyone seeking such involvement, these two books represent good places at which to join the conversation. Those already involved should, as this reviewer did, find much of what these books have to say stimulating to further growth in understanding.

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