Moral Education in America
Moral Education in America

Author: B. Edward McClellan

Publisher: Teachers College Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 0807775657

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This one-of-a-kind, comprehensive history of moral education in American schools provides an invaluable historical context for contemporary debates. McClellan traces American traditions of moral education from the colonial era to the present, illuminating both debates about the subject and actual practices in public and private schools, colleges, and universities. He pays particular attention to changing fashions in pedagogy, to church–state conflicts, to the long decline of character training in the schools, and to recent efforts to restore moral education to its once-honored place. The book concludes with a thorough examination of recent theorists, including Lawrence Kohlberg, William J. Bennett, Carol Gilligan, and Nel Noddings, and an appraisal of current practice in American schools. “In an age of specialists who quite productively write books on relatively narrow subjects imbedded in short time periods, McClellan writes effortlessly about the grand themes and social practices in the history of moral education and character training over several centuries.” —From the Foreword by William J. Reese “I would highly recommend this work to anyone interested in educational policy in general and moral education in particular. . . .There is nothing presently available that is comparable in scope, balance, intellectual coherence, and readability.” —Ray Hiner, University of Kansas

Schools and the Shaping of Character
Schools and the Shaping of Character

Author: Bernard Edward McClellan

Publisher: Eric Clearinghouse for Social

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 135

ISBN-13: 9780941339162

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Debates about how moral education ought to be provided have engaged many of the best minds in education and stirred public controversies throughout U.S. history. The vast array of European peoples who settled the American colonies brought a commitment to moral education and a variety of approaches to the task. While French and Spanish settlers brought Catholicism to the New World, northern European Protestants did the most to give moral education its character in the original 13 colonies. The 19th century brought an insistence on rigid self-restraint, moral purity, and cultural conformity. Public schools became the preferred educational institutions for most citizens as state systems expanded rapidly. A movement to establish nonsectarian schools grew out of Protestant social thought and modes of organization. At the same time, Sunday schools appeared to bring Christian discipline and discipleship to the working classes. As the schools of the late 19th and early 20th centuries expanded their functions, moral education was forced to compete for a place in an increasingly crowded curriculum. By the 1940s the role of moral education began to erode. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, schools either adopted neutrality with regard to moral questions or became indifferent to them. At the same time, however, some educators and others sought to restore moral education in the schools. In more recent years, there have been efforts: (1) to take nontraditional approaches to moral education; (2) to restore virtue-centered character education; or (3) to provide public support to private schools. Few can doubt that the decision regarding whether to restore moral education in the schools will be a fateful one. (LBG)

In the Name of Morality
In the Name of Morality

Author: Tianlong Yu

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 9780820467252

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There is presumably a trend toward depoliticization of character education as character educators claim to teach universal values and engage in community-based decision making. However, as Tianlong Yu argues in this book, under the umbrella of universality, character educators define virtues based on neo-conservative ideologies. In the name of community, they trivialize issues of gender, race, class, and culture and promote the interests of dominant social groups. In the Name of Morality: Character Education and Political Control traces the historical origins of character education and stimulates readers to look critically into the social interests, power relations, and political agendas that have shaped the character education movement in the United States. This challenging, yet engaging, book reaffirms the crucial relationship between moral education and politics. It is a must-read for anyone who is concerned about students' character building and moral education in schools.

Ethical Education in American Public Schools
Ethical Education in American Public Schools

Author: Waldo Beach

Publisher: NEA Professional Library

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 76

ISBN-13:

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The intent of this book is to analyze the moral and social problems that currently plague U.S. schools. The volume outlines what can be done to confront the problems of student behavior in and outside the classroom. Illegal drug use, theft and deceit, sexual practices, and race relations are among the troubling issues facing educators. Religious conservatives seek to preserve the religious and moral traditions of the past, for they see the abandonment of these values as the source of current problems. An entirely different approach to moral education is advanced by professional theorists of education and child psychologists. Two specific programs of this group are values clarification, and the cognitive development theories of Lawrence Kohlberg. This book argues that a better approach to moral education is to seek a middle path between the two approaches. This strategy for ethical instruction is described for both the "visible" curriculum and the "hidden" curriculum. Moral education may occur in the prescribed curriculum in such areas as health sciences and hygiene, social studies, and literature and the arts. Attention to the "hidden" curriculum involves developing a proper moral climate in the schools. How the curriculum is taught is as important as What is taught. A 36-item selected bibliography is included. (DB)

Moral Education for Social Justice
Moral Education for Social Justice

Author: Larry Nucci

Publisher: Teachers College Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0807779717

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The authors draw from their work with teachers and students to address issues of social justice through the regular curriculum and everyday school life. This book illustrates an approach that integrates social justice education with contemporary research on students’ development of moral understandings and concerns for human welfare in order to critically address societal conventions, norms, and institutions. The authors provide a clear roadmap for differentiating moral education from religious beliefs and offer age-appropriate guidance for creating healthy school and classroom environments. Demonstrating how to engage students in critical thinking and community activism, the book includes proven-effective lessons that promote academic learning and moral growth for the early grades through adolescence. The text also incorporates recent work with social-emotional learning and restorative justice to nurture students’ ethical awareness and disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline. Book Features: Guidance to help teachers move from classroom moral discourse to engage students in community action. Age-specific lesson plans developed with classroom teachers for integration with regular academic curricula.Detailed overview of moral growth with examples of student reasoning.Connections between moral development and critical pedagogy.Connections between moral development and digital literacy.Connections among classroom management, school rules, restorative justice, and students’ social development.Insights drawn from research conducted within the Oakland Public School system.

Savage Inequalities
Savage Inequalities

Author: Jonathan Kozol

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2012-07-24

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0770436668

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “An impassioned book, laced with anger and indignation, about how our public education system scorns so many of our children.”—The New York Times Book Review In 1988, Jonathan Kozol set off to spend time with children in the American public education system. For two years, he visited schools in neighborhoods across the country, from Illinois to Washington, D.C., and from New York to San Antonio. He spoke with teachers, principals, superintendents, and, most important, children. What he found was devastating. Not only were schools for rich and poor blatantly unequal, the gulf between the two extremes was widening—and it has widened since. The urban schools he visited were overcrowded and understaffed, and lacked the basic elements of learning—including books and, all too often, classrooms for the students. In Savage Inequalities, Kozol delivers a searing examination of the extremes of wealth and poverty and calls into question the reality of equal opportunity in our nation’s schools. Praise for Savage Inequalities “I was unprepared for the horror and shame I felt. . . . Savage Inequalities is a savage indictment. . . . Everyone should read this important book.”—Robert Wilson, USA Today “Kozol has written a book that must be read by anyone interested in education.”—Elizabeth Duff, Philadelphia Inquirer “The forces of equity have now been joined by a powerful voice. . . . Kozol has written a searing exposé of the extremes of wealth and poverty in America’s school system and the blighting effect on poor children, especially those in cities.”—Emily Mitchell, Time “Easily the most passionate, and certain to be the most passionately debated, book about American education in several years . . . A classic American muckraker with an eloquent prose style, Kozol offers . . . an old-fashioned brand of moral outrage that will affect every reader whose heart has not yet turned to stone.”—Entertainment Weekly