Thursday, December 29, 2011

Of Moral Education

Today I read an interesting post that referred to an article in The New Yorker on a new Catholic school football powerhouse in New Jersey, and even as I've just typed those words, the phrase "Catholic school football powerhouse" looks oxymoronic. Jesus advised us, "Lay up your treasures in heaven; for where your treasure is, there shall your heart be also"; and where can the treasures be of these New Jersey Catholic school football players, but in a sports marketing office in Florida?

And this brings me to the topic of missing, or ineffective, moral education. It is missing in the United States; ethics classes do not appear on the transcripts nor in the course catalogues of our secondary schools, which is unusual for the OECD (and contrasts with my plans for One World Secondary School, where a course in Comparative Ethics is being planned). Its effectiveness is questionable in east Asia, where bullying is a problem, and in the Foundations classes that I have privately tutored students in for many years; and it appears to be failing altogether at Don Bosco Prep and similar prep school powerhouses in the United States (although I can't begin to confirm this without reading the New Yorker article that is carefully hidden behind a pay wall). And in general it is hard to be a parent of the technophiles Marc Bauerlein has appropriately termed The Dumbest Generation, growing up "in a generational cocoon" (10) of constant contact with peers similarly adrift in this strange new world that we all are, but no one is, creating. 

No comments:

Post a Comment