Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
February 28, 2008
In two earlier articles, entitled ´Asafa Dibaba and the Prevalence of the Oromo Moral Order´ and ´Theoretical Foundations of Oromo Education and Moral Order´, we published the preliminary parts (Background, Introduction) and the first part of an essay composed by the famous Oromo Intellectual Asafa Dibaba. In the present article, we publish integrally the essay´s further units of the essay´s main part; Mr. Dibaba examines to what extent is the ´moral´ education a mere indoctrination, and whether moral ´contents´ – in the form of moral principles – should be given a priority over real knowledge. Asafa Dibaba´s criticism of the modern Western educational approaches and practices reflects the tarditional Oromo Weltanschauung, and brings forth the establishment of a genuinely African Pedagogical Science. III. Theoretical overtones3. Is moral education indoctrination? Equally important problem of moral education is that it tends to be indoctrination. Following the "bag of virtues" view point, moral education or character education is vulnerable to criticism concerning indoctrination. The reason is that it straightforwardly endorses a specific set of values and/or moral content. Since it emphasizes on behaviour it cannot claim to be impartial with respect to the values it embraces. It must recognize the possibility of people´s doing the right thing for the wrong reason or for no reason at all. Be that character itself not an "entirely rational intellectual entity," then, "Character education does encourage the subject to believe in and act on a specific set of values" (p475). Conversely, the Kohlbergian value clarification and moral development does not show any indoctrinative threat. The approach avoids imposing moral claims on the leaner and rather focuses on the intellectual processes by which the individual arrives at a moral judgment. For this reminiscent of Kantian tradition of moral thinking, there is plenty of support that the moral actions of the agent are determined by a freely made autonomous rational decision (Kant 1981; Baron 1985; Peters 1966). 4. Teaching ´moral content,´ or what? Some theoreticians of moral education (Hamm 1977; Peters 1973, 1974; Seizer and Seizer 1970; Baier 1965) argue in defense of teaching the content of moral values, the view that is challenged by Lawrence Kohlberg (1981). Kohlberg, as it is to be reviewed shortly in this article, is of a view that children can develop a universal form of morality through invariant stages of moral development. Our role is, to Kohlberg, to provide them with "cognitive stimulation" in those stages of moral development. Kohlberg sees the previously venerable tradition of enforcing specific rules of moral behaviour into children as fruitless and irrelevant practice. He abandoned the content of morality labeling it as nothing but a "bag of virtues."Cornel M. Hamm is of the view that failure to inculcate moral virtues is morally debilitating and socially hazardous (ibid p. 218). He advocates the bag of virtues approach to be both compatible with and necessary to the Kohlbergian theory of moral development through cognitive stimulation (Kohlberg 1970). For the purpose of this article, we review some content which could "legitimately comprise part of the bag of virtues" and thoughtful approach to teach it (ibid). Cornel M. Hamm suggests the following contents of the bag of virtue in his article "In Defense of the Bag of Virtue" (1977):the following rules are said to be controversial because their justifiability depends on differing situations and on relevant information which is often unavailable: don´t swear, don´t drink, don´t smoke, don´t pollute the environment, don´t involve in premarital sexual activity, don´t take drugs, obey your parents and others in authority. One needs to be very cautious about starting teaching virtues to children with these controversial rules at initial stage. One has to select the best rules among the host of others one can think of and work out a common body of rules. There are moral contents in our oral culture for which there is ample moral justification. At the most general level here are some basic principles: be just, fair, and impartial; consider other peoples interests; do not without warrant interfere with other´s freedom; respect your fellow man.These constitutive moral principles are moral even by definition; and they are believed to be acceptable. So much so, there would be no any hesitation to accept the following basic moral precepts.don´t kill or disable others; do not injure or wantonly cause pain; be honest; keep promises and abide by contracts; don´t cheat; don´t lie; don´t steal; do not discriminate against others on the basis of irrelevant differences such as sex, ethnic origin or colour. One can legitimately add also such values as:courage, politeness, punctuality, kindness, perseverance, integrity, loyalty, thoughtfulness, lawfulness, toleration, respecting others´ privacy, self-respectHamm also suggests the following at the more mundane and childish level:take turns; don´t jump the queue; don´t needlessly make a mess; don´t talk out of turn; don´t damage property; don´t be selfish; don´t deceive; don´t be lazy; obey school and family rules. One has to note that rules are not without exceptions, so much is true to all moral rules, as Kurt Baier has noted (Baier 1965, p97). Let children be taught these moral rules, and of the legitimate/justifiable exceptions they can easily learn. The above moral rules are not exhaustive, nor are they organized according to types and classes of virtues. With such real but little thought one can come up with quite a substantial body of rules generally acceptable on moral grounds. Kohlberg´s objections to the bag of virtues can be summed up into three: 1. there are no moral virtues
2. the bag of virtues approach does not serve the purpose of moral education3. teaching specific content and rules of behaviour for the acquisition of a bag of virtues is morally and constitutionally illegitimate. To argue if indeed there are such things as moral virtues is of no use, while there is no society lacking the disposition to behave in a morally desirable manner. Though Kohlberg is heard as saying "I have no idea what virtue really is" (1970: 57) but he has a fair grasp of what virtue consists when citing fair play, loyalty, courage, and honest as examples in his theory. It is true not all people who display these qualities of character are in the full sense of the term morally educated. One can internalize certain morally acceptable rules and behave according to them as a matter of habit. And he does so without grasping the principle which constitutes the reasons for those rules. This gap can be filled simply by "moral training" if not "moral education." Proponents of the bag of virtue approach declare that our children better be taught to do the right thing for inadequate reasons rather than not to do the right thing at all. Second, Kohlberg´s second objection to the bag of virtue is that it doesn´t work. One reason, as he has it is that for we don´t know how or who teaches it. Who taught us the moral values we know? not the parents, teachers at school, friends, siblings, adults, elders? How? not by rewarding and punishing, by frowning and smiling, by praising and blaming—in short, not by percept and example? If Kohlberg´s objection is that those techniques do not work, he can mean of these two: one, such attempts do not produce the dispositions characteristic of a virtuous person; two, such attempts do not promote development of moral judgment (in light of his cognitive moral theory) (Hamm, ibid., p.220). In order to be successful in inculcating specific moral values into our children, methods and techniques more consistent with sound moral judgment should be made. Some form of consistent rule following is logically and pedagogically required for cognitive moral development. The problem in those arguments against the effectiveness of teaching virtues rooted in our oral culture is not just the issue of effectiveness. It is rather those specific contents at close examination are not morally justifiable: Oromo proverbial metaphor about children and women come to mind. The best solution is to carefully select contents and to think of logical and pedagogical alternatives. Another possible reason why the teaching of virtues fails could be also because the methods employed may deny individuals autonomy. From a logical and pedagogical standpoint, the learning of specific content must precede learning of formal principle of morality. For instance, the person who has made honesty a habit in the early stages of his moral development is expected to prove that honesty is an exemplification of a high order moral principle and is therefore acceptable to a morally autonomous agent. Kolberg´s third objection to the teaching of content is thus analyzed and refuted. According to him the teaching of content is constitutionally and morally illegitimate. Where on earth is it unconstitutional to teach children such virtues as honesty, loyalty, courage, generosity, fair play, politeness, consideration, to name only a few? What could be morally and constitutionally illegitimate is if the content taught could be shown to be not morally justifiable, and/or if the rules taught to promote it could be shown to impede cognitive moral development. Generally speaking, no practice can be deemed moral if on balance it leads to immorality. If a particular content at a particular time fails the test, revision is in order. Kohlberg distinguishes between form and content. Form, to Kohlberg, refers to rather abstract universal principles (primarily justice), while content refers to concrete rules of action such as don´t cheat, don´t steal, tell the truth. And his opposition to the bag of virtues is that the teaching of virtues requires particular content and specific rules which articulate the content. Proponents of the bag of virtues approach focus on the specific rules of action which constitute the cognitive components of the bag. The kind of ideal character and moral personality Kohlberg envisions is an autonomous moral agent whose action flows from self-adopted universal moral principles, such as justice and respect for persons. In line with his theory of cognitive stimulation the teaching of content supports his cause and is compatible with it so much as it is socially desirable for other reasons. In favour of the teaching of contents R.S. Peters (1973: pp60-65) argues that the learning of content has pedagogical utility for children before they come to grasp the principles which cover a wide range of cases. To suggest that generalizations such as those self-adopted universal moral principles can be made without particulars could be logically absurd. Principles of morality could not operate without concrete content. Peters rightly argues, to say respect for a person is a universal ´principle´ embodies a consideration to which appeal is made when criticizing, justifying, or explaining some determinate content of behaviour or belief. From this logical standpoint content then must be learnt prior to or at least side by side with principles. There is point to the teaching of virtues that having taught thus let our children do the right thing for the wrong reason than do the wrong thing for the wrong reason. There are good reasons to instill reasonable habits in the children at their heterogonous stage so that they can capitalize on their training when they rich autonomous stage of morality and later come to realize that the habit they have is indeed reasonable (Hamm p225), or "enter the palace of reason through the courtyard of habit" (Peters 1974: 274). We will publish the second part of Mr. Dibaba´s essay in a forthcoming article.
February 28, 2008
In two earlier articles, entitled ´Asafa Dibaba and the Prevalence of the Oromo Moral Order´ and ´Theoretical Foundations of Oromo Education and Moral Order´, we published the preliminary parts (Background, Introduction) and the first part of an essay composed by the famous Oromo Intellectual Asafa Dibaba. In the present article, we publish integrally the essay´s further units of the essay´s main part; Mr. Dibaba examines to what extent is the ´moral´ education a mere indoctrination, and whether moral ´contents´ – in the form of moral principles – should be given a priority over real knowledge. Asafa Dibaba´s criticism of the modern Western educational approaches and practices reflects the tarditional Oromo Weltanschauung, and brings forth the establishment of a genuinely African Pedagogical Science. III. Theoretical overtones3. Is moral education indoctrination? Equally important problem of moral education is that it tends to be indoctrination. Following the "bag of virtues" view point, moral education or character education is vulnerable to criticism concerning indoctrination. The reason is that it straightforwardly endorses a specific set of values and/or moral content. Since it emphasizes on behaviour it cannot claim to be impartial with respect to the values it embraces. It must recognize the possibility of people´s doing the right thing for the wrong reason or for no reason at all. Be that character itself not an "entirely rational intellectual entity," then, "Character education does encourage the subject to believe in and act on a specific set of values" (p475). Conversely, the Kohlbergian value clarification and moral development does not show any indoctrinative threat. The approach avoids imposing moral claims on the leaner and rather focuses on the intellectual processes by which the individual arrives at a moral judgment. For this reminiscent of Kantian tradition of moral thinking, there is plenty of support that the moral actions of the agent are determined by a freely made autonomous rational decision (Kant 1981; Baron 1985; Peters 1966). 4. Teaching ´moral content,´ or what? Some theoreticians of moral education (Hamm 1977; Peters 1973, 1974; Seizer and Seizer 1970; Baier 1965) argue in defense of teaching the content of moral values, the view that is challenged by Lawrence Kohlberg (1981). Kohlberg, as it is to be reviewed shortly in this article, is of a view that children can develop a universal form of morality through invariant stages of moral development. Our role is, to Kohlberg, to provide them with "cognitive stimulation" in those stages of moral development. Kohlberg sees the previously venerable tradition of enforcing specific rules of moral behaviour into children as fruitless and irrelevant practice. He abandoned the content of morality labeling it as nothing but a "bag of virtues."Cornel M. Hamm is of the view that failure to inculcate moral virtues is morally debilitating and socially hazardous (ibid p. 218). He advocates the bag of virtues approach to be both compatible with and necessary to the Kohlbergian theory of moral development through cognitive stimulation (Kohlberg 1970). For the purpose of this article, we review some content which could "legitimately comprise part of the bag of virtues" and thoughtful approach to teach it (ibid). Cornel M. Hamm suggests the following contents of the bag of virtue in his article "In Defense of the Bag of Virtue" (1977):the following rules are said to be controversial because their justifiability depends on differing situations and on relevant information which is often unavailable: don´t swear, don´t drink, don´t smoke, don´t pollute the environment, don´t involve in premarital sexual activity, don´t take drugs, obey your parents and others in authority. One needs to be very cautious about starting teaching virtues to children with these controversial rules at initial stage. One has to select the best rules among the host of others one can think of and work out a common body of rules. There are moral contents in our oral culture for which there is ample moral justification. At the most general level here are some basic principles: be just, fair, and impartial; consider other peoples interests; do not without warrant interfere with other´s freedom; respect your fellow man.These constitutive moral principles are moral even by definition; and they are believed to be acceptable. So much so, there would be no any hesitation to accept the following basic moral precepts.don´t kill or disable others; do not injure or wantonly cause pain; be honest; keep promises and abide by contracts; don´t cheat; don´t lie; don´t steal; do not discriminate against others on the basis of irrelevant differences such as sex, ethnic origin or colour. One can legitimately add also such values as:courage, politeness, punctuality, kindness, perseverance, integrity, loyalty, thoughtfulness, lawfulness, toleration, respecting others´ privacy, self-respectHamm also suggests the following at the more mundane and childish level:take turns; don´t jump the queue; don´t needlessly make a mess; don´t talk out of turn; don´t damage property; don´t be selfish; don´t deceive; don´t be lazy; obey school and family rules. One has to note that rules are not without exceptions, so much is true to all moral rules, as Kurt Baier has noted (Baier 1965, p97). Let children be taught these moral rules, and of the legitimate/justifiable exceptions they can easily learn. The above moral rules are not exhaustive, nor are they organized according to types and classes of virtues. With such real but little thought one can come up with quite a substantial body of rules generally acceptable on moral grounds. Kohlberg´s objections to the bag of virtues can be summed up into three: 1. there are no moral virtues
2. the bag of virtues approach does not serve the purpose of moral education3. teaching specific content and rules of behaviour for the acquisition of a bag of virtues is morally and constitutionally illegitimate. To argue if indeed there are such things as moral virtues is of no use, while there is no society lacking the disposition to behave in a morally desirable manner. Though Kohlberg is heard as saying "I have no idea what virtue really is" (1970: 57) but he has a fair grasp of what virtue consists when citing fair play, loyalty, courage, and honest as examples in his theory. It is true not all people who display these qualities of character are in the full sense of the term morally educated. One can internalize certain morally acceptable rules and behave according to them as a matter of habit. And he does so without grasping the principle which constitutes the reasons for those rules. This gap can be filled simply by "moral training" if not "moral education." Proponents of the bag of virtue approach declare that our children better be taught to do the right thing for inadequate reasons rather than not to do the right thing at all. Second, Kohlberg´s second objection to the bag of virtue is that it doesn´t work. One reason, as he has it is that for we don´t know how or who teaches it. Who taught us the moral values we know? not the parents, teachers at school, friends, siblings, adults, elders? How? not by rewarding and punishing, by frowning and smiling, by praising and blaming—in short, not by percept and example? If Kohlberg´s objection is that those techniques do not work, he can mean of these two: one, such attempts do not produce the dispositions characteristic of a virtuous person; two, such attempts do not promote development of moral judgment (in light of his cognitive moral theory) (Hamm, ibid., p.220). In order to be successful in inculcating specific moral values into our children, methods and techniques more consistent with sound moral judgment should be made. Some form of consistent rule following is logically and pedagogically required for cognitive moral development. The problem in those arguments against the effectiveness of teaching virtues rooted in our oral culture is not just the issue of effectiveness. It is rather those specific contents at close examination are not morally justifiable: Oromo proverbial metaphor about children and women come to mind. The best solution is to carefully select contents and to think of logical and pedagogical alternatives. Another possible reason why the teaching of virtues fails could be also because the methods employed may deny individuals autonomy. From a logical and pedagogical standpoint, the learning of specific content must precede learning of formal principle of morality. For instance, the person who has made honesty a habit in the early stages of his moral development is expected to prove that honesty is an exemplification of a high order moral principle and is therefore acceptable to a morally autonomous agent. Kolberg´s third objection to the teaching of content is thus analyzed and refuted. According to him the teaching of content is constitutionally and morally illegitimate. Where on earth is it unconstitutional to teach children such virtues as honesty, loyalty, courage, generosity, fair play, politeness, consideration, to name only a few? What could be morally and constitutionally illegitimate is if the content taught could be shown to be not morally justifiable, and/or if the rules taught to promote it could be shown to impede cognitive moral development. Generally speaking, no practice can be deemed moral if on balance it leads to immorality. If a particular content at a particular time fails the test, revision is in order. Kohlberg distinguishes between form and content. Form, to Kohlberg, refers to rather abstract universal principles (primarily justice), while content refers to concrete rules of action such as don´t cheat, don´t steal, tell the truth. And his opposition to the bag of virtues is that the teaching of virtues requires particular content and specific rules which articulate the content. Proponents of the bag of virtues approach focus on the specific rules of action which constitute the cognitive components of the bag. The kind of ideal character and moral personality Kohlberg envisions is an autonomous moral agent whose action flows from self-adopted universal moral principles, such as justice and respect for persons. In line with his theory of cognitive stimulation the teaching of content supports his cause and is compatible with it so much as it is socially desirable for other reasons. In favour of the teaching of contents R.S. Peters (1973: pp60-65) argues that the learning of content has pedagogical utility for children before they come to grasp the principles which cover a wide range of cases. To suggest that generalizations such as those self-adopted universal moral principles can be made without particulars could be logically absurd. Principles of morality could not operate without concrete content. Peters rightly argues, to say respect for a person is a universal ´principle´ embodies a consideration to which appeal is made when criticizing, justifying, or explaining some determinate content of behaviour or belief. From this logical standpoint content then must be learnt prior to or at least side by side with principles. There is point to the teaching of virtues that having taught thus let our children do the right thing for the wrong reason than do the wrong thing for the wrong reason. There are good reasons to instill reasonable habits in the children at their heterogonous stage so that they can capitalize on their training when they rich autonomous stage of morality and later come to realize that the habit they have is indeed reasonable (Hamm p225), or "enter the palace of reason through the courtyard of habit" (Peters 1974: 274). We will publish the second part of Mr. Dibaba´s essay in a forthcoming article.
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