A review of recent educational and theoretical research reveals a consistent concern with at least three moral imperatives: (1) the importance of students' reflecting upon the events, situations, and circumstances in their own learning experiences or in those of others; (2) the importance of asking students to determine the most meaningful moral…

This paper offers a different perspective for teaching and learning--the "thoughtful" perspective--as an alternative to the current technocratic perspective. The technocratic frame of reference implicitly proposes that any problem is amenable to programmatic definition and solution. The following three propositions are presented: one's perspective…

This paper presents a historical study of three issues in education: (1) the teaching of morals; (2) teacher retraining; and (3) practices in language arts. It demonstrates that recent actions by the South Dakota legislature to ensure that children are given moral and character instruction are similar to efforts undertaken in the 1890s in North…

A comparison is made between the educational philosophies of Confucius and John Dewey. The comparison is limited to four aspects of education: democracy, instruction, learning, and scientific attitude. Confucianism emphasizes the necessity of self-examination, of the cultivation of virtue, and of education as the means of producing the kind of…

This paper examines the place of morals and values in the early school in the North West Territories (1885-1905), and in Alberta and Saskatchewan (1905-1945). The purpose is to determine whether values and morals have always been a part of the goals and/or curricula of the Canadian public schools. Department of education annual reports, curriculum…

Consciousness raising movements and charismatic Christian worship display an extraordinary degree of rhetorical similarity. This four-part paper outlines the likenesses of the two groups, indicates where they differ, and focuses on the social and political dimensions of consciousness raising. The first section lists the following similarities…

Public schools must conform to the changed mood of public opinion, which in the 1980s favors traditional education both academically and in morality and standards of behavior. The educational trends of the 1960s and 1970s were associated with sustained attempts to use the public schools as instruments of social engineering, that is, instruments to…

Empathic distress refers to the empathic response to another's pain, anxiety, or sadness. Empathic distress must be viewed as only one component of a person's response when observing someone in distress. Studies of empathy should be designed to rule out or control the non-empathic components insofar as possible. The importance of perception and…

The Community Voices and Character Education (CVCE) Project presents a model for moral education that is based on four ideals: (1) the consensus among leaders worldwide on the necessary characteristics of a citizen in the new century; (2) the conception of human goodness from moral philosophy; (3) conclusions from social sciences about what helps…

Ethical behavior, particularly among young people, is of increasing concern to various segments of society. Before this or any behavior can be influenced, an understanding is needed of the factors that shape it, including social influences, cognitive and emotional factors, and attitudes. The purpose of this study was to examine students' knowledge…

This paper contains four articles that describe the philosophy and outcomes of the Child Development Project (CDP), developed by the Developmental Studies Center in Oakland, California. The first article--"Giving Content to Restructuring: A Social, Ethical, and Intellectual Agenda for Elementary Education," by Marilyn Watson--describes the CDP and…

This paper discusses why the Roman Catholic community should be united on the desirability of school choice without financial penalty. It describes what the Catholic motives should be and the political warrant that can be employed. It then asks whether there is sufficient will in the Catholic community to fulfill its proper motivations and…

Babson College (a school of business and management in Wellesley, Massachusetts) attempted to make a group of first-year students computer literate through "clustering." The same group of students were enrolled in two courses: a special section of "Composition" which stressed word processing as a composition aid and a regular…

The classical concept of "ethos" (the establishing of the speaker or writer's credibility, his or her moral character) has acquired many meanings over the centuries and has played an important role in determining the many shifting perceptions of the teacher's role, both in the classical period and the modern period. The issue can be…

Moral development is viewed as a matter of progression in the cognitive reasoning and rationale underlying choices and judgments. Traditionally, retrospective reports of rationales have been used to measure moral development levels, resulting in unreliable information. Information Integration Theory attempts to assess individual differences in…