John Marenbona Moral Maze: Government Values in Education

John MarenbonA Moral Maze: government values in education

A Moral Maze:

government values in education

John Marenbon

POLITEIA

1996

First published in 1996

Politeia

28 Charing Cross Road

London WC2H 0DB

Introduction

During the last year, SCAA (the School Curriculum and Assessment Council) has entered the public debate about morality. It has set up 'The National Forum for Values in Education and the Community' and has recently issued for consultation the Forum's draft statement of values intended for use in schools. These moves have been generally welcomed by politicians and the press, and it is not hard to see why. There is a widespread perception of moral crisis in the nation, especially among the young. Children, it is believed, are growing up without a clear set of values or even a developed sense of right and wrong. The result is violence, crime and social instability. So complain the newspapers and their higher-minded commentators. Politicians have been eager to agree and to promise remedies. In such circumstances, SCAA's intervention seems timely. What, it is thought, could be more sensible than to draw up a nationally agreed statement of values and, through the National Curriculum, inspection and teacher training, ensure that these values are taught to all children? There has been some dissent about the contents of the statement, especially from those who would place more emphasis on the family and stable marriage. But the principle - that, through its quangos and bureaucracies, government should determine a set of agreed values and ensure that they are taught - has been unquestioned. The purpose of this pamphlet is to question it.

I shall argue that SCAA's intrusion into the field of morality and spirituality will bring only harm: harm not just to academic education but to the teaching of morals and religion itself. They will hinder instruction in these areas both by debasing the teaching of morality and religion at school and by upsetting the delicate arrangements which, up until now, have recognized the fundamental role of parents in the moral upbringing of their children.

The documents issued by SCAA itself provide the basis for my discussion. Although the statement of values drawn up for it by the National Forum is a draft for consultation and will, no doubt, be changed in its details before it is finalized, it shows clearly the scope and direction of SCAA's initiative.1 Another of SCAA's publications is even more revealing. Last January SCAA organized a conference of 'education professionals and others with responsibility for children and young people' to discuss the place of 'spiritual and moral development' in the school curriculum, and it published an account of the delegates' conclusions and recommendations.2 Here will be found both SCAA's attempt to give the rationale for its proposals, and detailed indications of how a statement of values will be imposed on school teaching.

Some may think it precipitate to pay close attention to what so far are merely the suggestions of a quango and its advisers, not yet firm proposals for legislation. If so, they should consider how many of the recent educational reforms have been devised and implemented. An idea originates in an official body or elsewhere; a conference is arranged, with carefully chosen delegates, to develop the idea and give it the weight of professional approval; the conclusions of the conference are published, presented so as to justify a particular course of action; proposals are issued for consultation and, with minor changes, become law. They should remember, too, the high degree of central control now exercised over schools, through the National Curriculum, school inspectors and teacher training: all the machinery needed to translate the officials' wishes into classroom practice throughout the country.

There is no doubt that SCAA sees the purpose of teaching of morality as different from that of academic or vocational subjects. The goal is not to increase what children know, but to improve their behaviour. The main part of my discussion (chapters three and four) will be devoted to explaining why SCAA's proposals will not further, but frustrate this aim. But it is worth pausing, first, to consider the effects which the plans will have on academic education. For here too, as the next chapter will show, they present a considerable danger.

The threat to academic education

There are four, connected reasons why SCAA's proposals for moral teaching will damage academic education. First, greater emphasis on courses designed to foster 'spiritual and moral development' will take time away from academic subjects. Second, in these courses pupils will very probably be exposed to teaching which lacks intellectual rigour. Third, the requirement to promote moral and spiritual development 'across the curriculum' will force teachers to dilute their teaching of academic subjects by addressing matters irrelevant to the main concerns of their subjects. Fourth, the academic content of teacher training will be reduced if space is to be made for training in moral and spiritual education.

Two of the proposals being considered by SCAA are that the status of Personal and Social Education (PSE) in schools should be raised (possibly even to the extent of including it in the statutory curriculum for 14-16 year-olds), and that 'citizenship education' should be developed, perhaps as a discrete subject (Education, pp.14-16). School timetables are crowded, and the National Curriculum leaves little room for manoeuvre. The status of PSE can be raised, or citizenship education introduced, only at the expense of time and energy now given to major subjects such as Mathematics and History, or - in the few schools where the National Curriculum has not yet extinguished them - to subjects such as Latin and Greek. Newspaper reports suggest that SCAA's plans also extend to 16-18 year-olds.3 The General Studies 'A'-level is to be revamped, with a new name, a new moral agenda and added importance. Dr Tate, the chief executive of SCAA, is even reported to hope the new examination will become a requirement for entry to university. Such moves will block or discourage those able students who now choose to do four, rather than three, academic 'A'-levels, often thereby being able to add Mathematics to arts subjects or English to sciences.

These worries would, however, be groundless were PSE, citizenship education and remodelled General Studies 'A'-level likely to provide study as rigorous as, say, Physics or German. Consider, then, some of the suggestions canvassed for the contents of a new, higher-status PSE (Education, p.15). They range from the loftily vague ('exploration of the concept of the self in relation to creativity, responsibility and achievement') and the impossibly demanding ('ethical issues arising from producing, investing, buying and selling' - an area which requires a good grasp of economics as well as skills at philosophical analysis) to topics which seem merely to prepare ('the ethos and lifestyle of working life') or propagandize ('looking honestly and realistically at the values of business and industry') for future employment. Citizenship education, a vaguely conceived introduction to rights and responsibilities, seems even less academically ambitious. As for General Studies 'A'-level, Dr Tate is said to be thinking of calling the new examination 'PPE' (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) after the Oxford degree. It is a common complaint that all but the very best Oxford PPE graduates are less than thoroughly educated by a course which makes them cover too wide a range of difficult subjects. Yet they are all bright students, who have three years to devote themselves entirely to the course. For the average 16 or 17 year-old, 'PPE' - which must belong with three other 'A'-levels - will be an invitation to superficiality and pretension.

The new emphasis on moral and spiritual development is not to be confined to classes and examinations specially devoted to it. 'Spiritual and moral dimensions', SCAA announces (Education, p.13) 'must ... permeate ... all subjects in the curriculum.' This means not just the arts and humanities, but science and even PE. (Moral mathematics is not discussed, but no doubt the best brains in SCAA are working on it.) What does this 'permeation' involve? In the case of science, it seems (to judge from comments by the delegates at SCAA's conference) to have two aspects. On the one hand, time should be spent discussing ethical and spiritual issues connected with science, and also 'important philosophical concepts such as reality' which are raised by the subject; indeed, science teachers may be expected also to act as surrogate teachers of religion and to teach their pupils about matters which, we are told, lie outside the scope of science ('Science cannot answer the question "why is the world as it is?", but teaching science should include questions such as these', Education, p.14). On the other hand, it was recognized that, at least implicitly, science teachers do already convey values and philosophical positions. The worry, expressed by various conference delegates and apparently endorsed by SCAA, is that they are the wrong ones. 'The perception of science as the only way to understand experience, combined with Enlightenment humanism' was seen by some as 'largely responsible for the demise of the spiritual and moral dimensions of the curriculum'; the 'values and philosophy' conveyed by science teachers 'need full and careful consideration' (Education, p.13).

These ideas have strange and worrying implications. At a time when universities are already extending the length of their science courses to compensate for the declining level of scientific knowledge among entrants, teachers will be forced to spend less time in science lessons teaching science. Good science teachers, hard enough as it is now to recruit and retain, will be told that teaching science well is not enough: they must be moral philosophers and lay preachers too.

For those about to train as teachers, such re-education will not be necessary, since another component of SCAA's plans is to ensure that attention is given in teacher training to instruction in 'relevant teaching and learning strategies for spiritual and moral development' (Education, p.5, cf. p.17). Over the past years, many have fought against the prejudices of the teacher trainers to assert the principle that the overriding requirement for teachers is academic knowledge of their subjects, whilst skill in conveying this knowledge is largely a matter of experience which can be gained only in the classroom. The new emphasis on spiritual and moral dimensions will be a powerful weapon in the hands of the teacher trainers. Whatever the qualifications of a candidate in French or Chemistry, for instance, they will be able to insist that he needs special training, which they alone can provide, to teach moral and spiritual development. Another obstacle will thus be put in the way of allowing good graduates to enter teaching directly, and the academic content of the BEd will be further weakened.

Even from the purely moral point of view, these threats to academic education should cause concern. The intellectual discipline instilled by good academic teaching, concern for accuracy and regard for truth are all powerful influences in promoting good behaviour. None the less, were it likely that SCAA's moral initiative would succeed in producing better, more responsible, more law-abiding young people, then it might well be worth the cost to academic education. As the next two chapters will show, however, the initiative itself is misconceived and it will be even more detrimental to moral behaviour than to academic achievement.

III

Agreed values?

SCAA believes that it will be able to improve children's behaviour by agreeing upon a set of what it calls 'values' to be taught in schools. According to the definition adopted by SCAA, 'values are the principles that inform judgements as to what is morally good or bad' (Education, p.8). As it stands, this definition is very broad. According to it, values might range from the first principles of moral judgement and action beyond which no further moral argument is possible right down to precise rules which make clear what, under given circumstances, is the right or wrong course of action. In fact, remarks made elsewhere in the conference report and the draft statement of values itself make clear that values in SCAA's sense (what we might call 'SCAA-values') are supposed to belong to neither of these extremes. Rather, they are intended as middle-level principles: neither precise rules, nor first principles, but general guidelines to behaviour.

Why did SCAA choose middle-level principles rather than any other sort? It might, for instance, have decided to issue a set of precise rules, which would be easy to apply to particular circumstances and to which children could be habituated. We learn much of our moral behaviour, by becoming habituated to rules like 'Don't lie', 'Keep your promises', 'Don't use violence against people' - clear rules, though ones which for the most part, if stated explicitly, would need a qualifying clause such as 'exceptional cases aside'. One of the main problems which SCAA sees itself as tackling is the failure of children to become habituated to such rules: they know them, but they do not act on them. SCAA might have chosen to remedy this problem directly, by encouraging schools to make habituation to them a priority. Had its initiative proceeded along these lines, it would scarcely have been newsworthy, but it might perhaps have been useful. In fact, there is a definite hostility among those advising it to moral teaching of this sort. Delegates to SCAA's conference, we are told, warned against 'a list of over-simplified and non-negotiable rules, arguing that young people would reject them as impositions' (Education, p.18). SCAA seems to have needed little persuasion before embarking on an altogether more ambitious plan. It has set out to make young people act rightly by choice: to choose the right action because it is required by general moral principles which they have learned to accept.

Why not, then, make SCAA-values, or at least include among them, the most general, first moral principles? First moral principles are those positions reached at the end of a series of increasingly general moral justifications, which cannot themselves be justified by any further moral argument - principles such as 'Act so as to maximize the balance of pleasure over pain in the universe', or 'Act in accord with what you believe to be God's wishes', or 'Act so that your life is a flourishing one'.4 These very examples make clear why SCAA-values cannot include such first principles. There could be no general agreement on them. There are various different moral first principles (or sets of first principles) which have many adherents, and usually the principles are incompatible with one another. SCAA's National Forum appears to grasp this point when it notes its agreement that 'there could be no consensus on ... the source of the values we share (some believe that God is the source of all values, others believe that human nature is the only source of values)' (Values, p.6).

SCAA, then, has decided to put forward a set of middle-level principles of action, since here agreement, it hopes, is possible, whereas there could be no consensus about first principles. What SCAA does not seem to have realized is that, unless they are given an order of precedence among themselves, middle-level principles can play only a very restricted role in moral decision-making. In most cases of moral choice, a variety of middle-level principles (often including some of the most widely accepted) will be applicable and, frequently, will conflict. We resolve such conflicts by giving more weight to some of the principles than to others. If we are thinking about the matter reflectively and at leisure then, when we find it hard to decide between conflicting middle-level principles, we will probably look to our first moral principles for a resolution. The ordering of middle-level principles derives from (implicit or explicit) first moral principles and therefore, like them, differs widely from one person or group to another.

When SCAA claims to have found a whole set of values on which society at large can agree, this agreement - even supposing it really to exist - amounts to very little. It is rather as if we were to discover that there are 50 ingredients which are found in almost every kitchen. No one would use this as a basis for arguing that most cooks cook alike. Similarly with middle-level moral principles. It is no surprise to find that there are many of them which most people would accept. We may be able to enumerate principles A-Z, all of which usually have a place in the set of middle-level principles a person accepts, alongside all sorts of other middle-level principles which vary from one person to another. The fact that you and I share principles A-Z does not by any means imply that our moral judgements and behaviour have much in common. I may choose to act in one way because I give principles P, Q and T precedence over G, J and K; you act in the opposite way because you give precedence to G, J and K; or perhaps we share our ordering of G, J, K, P, Q and T, but among your principles, but not mine, are BB and CC, and by following them you judge or act quite differently from me.