On Moral Luck: The (Un)Miseducation of Self

• In Event: Roundtable Session 53
  In Roundtable Session: Politics of Social Integration: Incarceration and Opportunity

Abstract

When a society defines morality based on a dominant culture’s viewpoint and makes that the morality standard, and if one lives outside that parameter, Aristotle said that a person who lives outside the moral order is either a god or a monster. How will some student’s lives play out to be a god or monster? How can we “collapse the distance” between their society and larger society? When the weight of unequal public education falls on a group of students, then their normative community bears the brunt of the casualties and wider society continues to wag its moral fingers. This paper explores ways that formerly incarcerated men unpacked and (un)miseducate themselves in their quest for self.

Author

• Joy M. Thomas, Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education