Rethinking the Neutrality of Dominant Paradigms in Moral Education

• In Event: 35.082 - Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: 35.082-16 - Warding Off Curricular Rigidities

Abstract

This paper reexamines the purported ideological and cultural neutrality of the developmentalist orthodoxy in moral education. The dominant school of thought, best represented by Lawrence Kohlberg’s work, simultaneously contains specific philosophical claims and incorporates a linguistic structure whose lack of internal resolution opens the door for establishing moral norms via arbitrary majority consensus. Predominant methodology thus marginalizes minority intellectual traditions and risks unjustly labeling non-Eurocentric groups as anti-social or misguided. The thought of Italian educational theorist Luigi Giussani is suggested as a possible point of departure for a moral education framework which both employs a substantive ethical tradition and avoids privileging a specific cultural group.

Author

• Brett Bertucio, University of Wisconsin - Madison