Debating Moral Education

Debating Moral Education

Rethinking the Role of the Modern University

  • Autor: Kiss, Elizabeth; Euben, J. Peter; Pickus, Noah; Reuben, Julie A.
  • Editor: Duke University Press
  • ISBN: 9780822346203
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780822391593
  • Lloc de publicació:  Durham , United States
  • Any de publicació digital: 2010
  • Mes: Gener
  • Pàgines: 362
  • Idioma: Anglés
After decades of marginalization in the secularized twentieth-century academy, moral education has enjoyed a recent resurgence in American higher education, with the establishment of more than 100 ethics centers and programs on campuses across the country. Yet the idea that the university has a civic responsibility to teach its undergraduate students ethics and morality has been met with skepticism, suspicion, and even outright rejection from both inside and outside the academy. In this collection, renowned scholars of philosophy, politics, and religion debate the role of ethics in the university, investigating whether universities should proactively cultivate morality and ethics, what teaching ethics entails, and what moral education should accomplish. The essays quickly open up to broader questions regarding the very purpose of a university education in modern society.

Editors Elizabeth Kiss and J. Peter Euben survey the history of ethics in higher education, then engage with provocative recent writings by Stanley Fish in which he argues that universities should not be involved in moral education. Stanley Hauerwas responds, offering a theological perspective on the university’s purpose. Contributors look at the place of politics in moral education; suggest that increasingly diverse, multicultural student bodies are resources for the teaching of ethics; and show how the debate over civic education in public grade-schools provides valuable lessons for higher education. Others reflect on the virtues and character traits that a moral education should foster in students—such as honesty, tolerance, and integrity—and the ways that ethical training formally and informally happens on campuses today, from the classroom to the basketball court. Debating Moral Education is a critical contribution to the ongoing discussion of the role and evolution of ethics education in the modern liberal arts university.

Contributors. Lawrence Blum, Romand Coles, J. Peter Euben, Stanley Fish, Michael Allen Gillespie, Ruth W. Grant, Stanley Hauerwas, David A. Hoekema, Elizabeth Kiss, Patchen Markell, Susan Jane McWilliams, Wilson Carey McWilliams, J. Donald Moon, James Bernard Murphy, Noah Pickus, Julie A. Reuben, George Shulman, Elizabeth V. Spelman

  • Contents
  • Foreword / Noah Pickus
  • Acknowledgments
  • I. Introduction: Why the Return to Ethics? Why Now?
    • 1. Debating Moral Education: An Introduction / Elizabeth Kiss and J. Peter Euben
    • 2. The Changing Contours of Moral Education in American Colleges and Universities / Julie A. Reuben
  • II. What Are Universities For?
    • 3. Aim High: A Response to Stanley Fish / Elizabeth Kiss and J. Peter Euben
    • 4. I Know It When I See It: A Reply to Kiss and Euben / Stanley Fish
    • 5. The Pathos of the University: The Case of Stanley Fish / Stanley Hauerwas
    • 6. On the Distribution of Moral Badges: A Few Worries / Elizabeth V. Spelman
  • III. The Politics and Ethics of Higher Education
    • 7. Pluralism and the Education of the Spirit / Wilson Carey McWilliams and Susan Jane McWilliams
    • 8. Multiculturalism and Moral Education / Lawrence Blum
    • 9. Against Civic Education in Schools / James Bernard Murphy
    • 10. Education, Independence, and Acknowledgment / Patchen Markell
    • 11. The Power of Mortality / George Shulman
    • 12. Hunger, Ethics, and the University: A Radical Democratic Goad in Ten Pieces / Romand Coles
  • IV. Which Virtues? Whose Character?
    • 13. Is There an Ethicist in the House? How Can We Tell? / David A. Hoekema
    • 14. The Possibility of Moral Education in the University Today / J. Donald Moon
    • 15. Is Humanistic Education Humanizing? / Ruth W. Grant
    • 16. Players and Spectators: Sports and Ethical Training in the American University / Michael Allen Gillespie
  • Bibliography
  • Contributors
  • Index