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Recently my university unveiled a new marketing slogan, "We Change Lives." It has a nice ring to it. After all, my good friend Avis Glaze often says that the field of education "is in the people changing business." And indeed we are. However, as well intentioned as the slogan is, it reflects, unintentionally I am sure, two chronic problems in the fields of character education and socioemotional learning: moral phobia and missing adjectives.
To situate this argument, it is necessary to provide a little context. Humans have always, or as long as we can ascertain, been concerned with the socialization of children and adolescents. That is, there has always been concern about what kinds of people the upcoming generations will be when the world is inevitably placed in their hands. Hence, some form of moral education, character education, socioemotional learning or positive youth development has been there, whether formally or informally and whether done by society (for example in schools), by religious authorities, or in the home. And it has always centered on human goodness, however that is defined in a particular place and at a particular time in history. The nature of the desired person, the means of shaping development, and the labels we use to describe all this vary widely, but the bottom line is that we are trying to help youth to be the best people they can be, both for their own sake and for the people and world around them.
At the core of this is morality, human goodness, ethics, justice and compassion, et cetera. After all, if we want to live in a more just, equitable, and compassionate world, we need just, compassionate and ethical people. If we want people to authentically care about us, treat us with respect and fairness, and to be generally concerned about our best interests, then we need people who understand that, care about that, and have the capacity to act in that way.
Interestingly, at least in most western societies, while the general populace has no hesitation to voice such concerns and use such terms, those who are in charge of education (and other public enterprises) seem to be allergic to talking about goodness, morality, and virtue . They avoid the vocabulary of...