This is a steep accusation, with not a lot of facts backing it. What it does do is raise questions about what actually is being taught.

My guess that history (as told by the winners), science (apolitical power acquisition methods), and
business (consumerism) is being taught, but that is just my opinion. Whether that is good, bad, or amoral is a different story.

The question is:

Is education amoral? If not, what is the morals being taught?

I think there is a lot of truth in both statements. I believe the current state of education is a crises, but it has seemed that way to me for 50 years. I don't think it has become what it has become so much by design as it has by default. Moral
and morality have never been major constructs for me. Perhaps that is the reason they don't seem terribly relevant to my concerns about education. I,m more interested in terms like adaptative, facilitative, democratic, scientific ethical, etc.
In this sense, education is mostly amoral.

Adapting to what? Without a goal or moral, there's nothing to adapt to.

Survival seems to be the most universal goal. But even with that goal, not everyone agrees on who is most worthy of surviving.

Socialization and self-actualization, integration and accommodation, letting be
and being with, breathing in and breathing out. staying connected and not getting in one's own way, optimizing surviving--quantitatively and qualitatively. My goal for my existence is to optimize Awareness for as long as possible.

So perhaps Maslow's hierarchy should be the foundation for education, leaving the top two levels (4 and 5) for the individual to determine what those needs are.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs:
5. Actualization
4. Status (esteem)
3. Love/belonging
2. Safety
1. Physiological (biological needs)

My wife just informed me that there is something similar to morals being taught called character education.

There is a wikipedia article on the subject:It included a couple of links:
http://www.goodcharacter.com
http://www.character-education.info

This is all what I call Personing skills. A lot of this kind of work has been developed
in Human Services and Rehabilitation, in the context of Employability Training.

I hope it's used for more than employability concerns. If not, Manuel Valenzuela may have a more valid point than I thought.

Due to what one might call "language corruption," nothing gets funded in education or human services unless one can some how relate it to employment.

I will be happy if I teach them phoemic awareness skills and get them started with decoding text. I will also be happy if I can teach them to think for themselves and be independent. This philosophy of education stuff isn't very useful to me. Could I have an aide or a push-in teacher instead thank you!

KT :hexe:

So you are OK with amoral education?

Oh goodness no! It is my job to teach my students to say please and thank you and it is not nice to say "Teacher I pissed myself!" when you mean "I had an accident and my pants are wet!" Another one I notice is when they put their feet up on the desks or chairs. I have to say something about that too. So yes, I have to teach morals if that is what you want to call it.

KT :hexe:

Sounds like you are teaching manners. Manners is how one should behave, regardless of whether or not they know why?

Teaching morals would be teaching the why (beyond simple obedience), instead of the how.

Many people on this forum prefer to call it ethics. In my book, it's the same thing.

Are you saying, simply put, that teaching morals or ethics is teaching why we should behave a certain way, instead of of how we should behave a certain way without an explanation? I just try to keep it simple. I don't want to impose my values on anyone but we need a few rules so we can get along together.

Here is one they all understand:

No messing around.

KT

Simply put.

Being a lower-grade teacher, I'm sure you know better than most that kids have to reach a certain maturity level (in contrast to grade level), before they can comprehend certain morals or ethics lessons.

I think words like morals or ethics might be used by adults when discussing,
planning or evaluating kinder garden and early education curriculum. class
room management and teaching methods. I don't find your how/why distinction
helpful in this context. I think what, how, when come into play much more directly
than why.

I don't know about that bill. Last year one of my students saw her father stab her mother repeatedly in the chest along with her maternal grandmother and aunt who tried to defend her. The child and her older sister were then abducted by the father and taken out into the desert. Another of my students saw his mother's boyfriend shot to death by the police in our school neighborhood. Why can't young children comprehend morals and ethics when they are exposed to harsh life experiences every day? When are they going to be taught these things? How about the children in countries at this moment who have seen family members raped, brutalized and murdered? Wait till you're older kid and we'll teach you about morals and ethics.

KT

This is more true with immaturity than maturity.

Immaturity doesn't care about "why" as much as maturity does. Maturity is much more concerned with purpose than simply occupying time, having fun, indulging, etc.

Nobody is ever completely mature. However, the more mature we get, the more we are concerned with our (self actualization) purpose in life. We are more selective when choosing our methods or what we conform to, once we are aligned with the "why" we do things. It's what separates us from animal impulsiveness or robotic obedience.

Everyone eventually wants to know that they are achieving their goal, whether their goal is hedonism, euphoria, nirvana, infamy, heroism, martyrdom, or a combination of the above.

I wasn't suggesting that kids shouldn't be taught morals at a young age. I was saying that they are less capable of comprehending them. When they are young, they learn obedience, mainly because they don't want to bite the hands that feed them. I guess that's life's first moral lesson.

In my last response to rla, I talked about maturity. Kids who have rough lives are forced to comprehend sooner or grow-up faster. They are more capable of understanding morals. But it's a harsh way to learn them that usually involves long-term psychological damage.

Young children can teach us all a thing or two about morals and ethics bill.
Care to join the "mosh pot"?

KT

You mean the moral lessons of why trust and honesty is the best policy?

If so, I still wouldn't call those a young version of morals. Young people are honest and trusting because they haven't learned how to be evil or avoid evil yet.

You mean the moral lessons of why trust and honesty is the best policy?

If so, I would agree with those lessons. But I still wouldn't call those a young version of morals. Young people are honest and trusting because they haven't learned how to be evil or avoid evil yet.

First they dumbed down the teachers, then the dumbed down teachers brainwashed the children, who are also dumbed down by dumbed down parents watching television and believing it is all good and true.

Children need to be taught to think, to empathize and to make moral judgements based on at least respect for the human being and the place we have to inhabit because we are light years away from finding another planet, which would be a repeat of the end of WW2, in which the elite of the Jews, the ones who wanted Israel in the first place, are transported to the Promised Land, and the rest die in awful suffering in the Holocaust.

One thing that should be taught is that history repeats itself and the only way to avoid it is to get to know the hidden facts. These hidden facts are what most people refer to as 'conspiracy theory'. It is, in fact, the truth that they do not want to get out, so they have to demean the person proposing the truth.

Actually some young are honest and trusting most of the time and some are not.
The way I managed to get my graduate education paid for from l966-1968 was
on a graduate assistantship at the University of Georgia where they had a
hughes 5-year federal grant to study early child hood education. The major thrust of the research was to infuses information from cultural anthropology into the
curriculum along with, "state of the art" teaching materials and techniques, and
evaluate the results on the children's cognitive development and moral development. Some of the studies replicated Piaget"s ideas about developmental stages--both cognitive and moral. I've been away from the field for a long time
but I think this is still the prevailing view.

This is somewhat off topic but I don't want to create a whole new topic for Teaching Children to Fight Back in Schools (when an intruder enters) unless there is interest. I am bringing up the subject because last night on my T.V. news it was announced that El Rio School Dist. (which is next to ours here in Oxnard) is teaching children how to do this. It makes sense but it blows my mind. A lot of parents were protesting this. What do you think?
KT

http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/10/13/de...m.ap/index.html
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..............................................
Browne recommends students and teachers "react immediately to the sight of a gun by picking up anything and everything and throwing it at the head and body of the attacker and making as much noise as possible. Go toward him as fast as we can and bring them down."

Response Options trains students and teachers to "lock onto the attacker's limbs and use their body weight," Browne said. Everyday classroom objects, such as paperbacks and pencils, can become weapons.

"We show them they can win," he said. "The fact that someone walks into a classroom with a gun does not make them a god. Five or six seventh-grade kids and a 95-pound art teacher can basically challenge, bring down and immobilize a 200-pound man with a gun."

Change in mindset
The fight-back training parallels the change in thinking that has occurred since September 11, 2001, when United Flight 93 made it clear that the usual advice during a hijacking -- Don't try to be a hero, and no one will get hurt -- no longer holds. Flight attendants and passengers are now encouraged to rush the cockpit.

Similarly, women and youngsters are often told by safety experts to kick, scream and claw their way out during a rape attempt or a child-snatching.
......................................

If you can teach kids to be concerned for the group more than their individual selves, this would work. I don't think it's possible to teach kids that. Kids are born selfish. That's how I define youth. Maturity is a journey to an unselfishness that is never completely reached in our mortal lives.

Bill, what you mention brings to my mind situations where a hero has emerged to save the group and also human pack behavior which also erupts in certain circumstances. Are humans anything like dogs in a pack? What do you think?

KT

I haven't a clue. Maybe rla knows more about it.

My guess is that humans start out behaving like sheep, but may learn dog pack behavior under certain circumstances like growing up in rough neighborhoods.