Moral Issues in Education

Program Standard 1

In the Spring of 2017 I took EDU 6085, Moral Issues in Education. I appreciated Professor Fritzberg's emphasis that moral does not necessarily mean morality, and that while SPU is a Christian university there is a desire to educate about what it means to live rightly more so than what it means to live as a Christian. However, I teach at a Catholic school and am Catholic myself, so I have a somewhat biased lens towards religion as a moral compass.

I see tension at my school, a liberal school in a liberal place that also has a Catholic identity. The liberal nature of our geographical placement leads to discussions about cloning, ideas about abortion, and the nature of relationships that can be at odds with our Catholic school identity. Furthermore, a teacher reported that during an end-of-the-year reflection session in her seminar class, one student stated that while it was kind of nice that everybody mostly agreed, she wished there had been more controversy at times to deepen the discussions. This contradicts reality- not all the students in the class agree, rather, the minority don’t feel safe speaking up because they know their ideas will be shot down, or they are afraid speaking their mind will change their classmates’ view of them. This shows that we need to reconsider how we structure discussions and how we teach dialogue at our school. Students (and many adults!) need training in listening skills so that they can better understand how to see those with differing opinions as people who are worth their time and energy to hear.

The classroom can also be an emotionally charged place. As a faculty, we watched the film Race to Nowhere and saw many of our students in the children interviewed. Students today are stressed beyond measure by pressures from home, school, and society. Even if as teachers we think we haven’t placed a large verbal emphasis on grades, every action we take belies that. Almost every assignment is graded, our walls are covered in college posters, and we prep for the SAT in English class. This is integrated in students’ minds with their parents’ desires for them to do well and to get into the “right” college. As much as our school tries to educate parents around what the “right” college really means, everything the parents see in the media about college says that “right” means “ivy league.” It is a vicious cycle that needs action in many areas to decrease that charge.

I think that my school is on the right track to help students cultivate more balance and acceptance. As we move away from the IB curriculum, we are finding space to breathe and to bring back a fuller, more comprehensive advisory program that will help our students think more critically about not just who they are but about how they fit in with the larger community. We are on track to help our students understand that talent and intelligence takes many forms and speaks many languages. For one of my inquiry projects for this class, I researched restorative justice models and the work being done to implement them in schools. Our new student-driven leadership model, with students working to enforce rules and accountability, is one way that my school guides our students in seeing the challenges that others face. I recognize that my school is not perfect, and that there is a lot of work to be done regarding equity and justice, but I think we are doing good work that will continue to deepen and expand with time. Regardless of the school's Catholic identity, our overall goal should be to create students that are capable of critical thinking and holding a conversation with someone who believes differently than they do.

References

Abeles, V. (Producer). (2010). Race to nowhere [video]. Available from http://www.racetonowhere.com/screenings.

James, J.H., with Schweber, S., Kunzman, R., Barton, K.C., & Logan K. (2015). Religion in the classroom: Dilemmas for democratic education. New York, NY: Routledge.

Pace, J. (2015) The charged classroom. New York, NY: Routledge.

Sperry, P. (2015, March 14). How liberal discipline policies are making schools less safe. New York Post. Retrieved from http://nypost.com/2015/03/14/politicians-are-making-schools-less-safe-and-ruining-education-for-everyone/.

Wirzba, N. (2016). The way of love: Recovering the heart of Christianity. New York, NY: HarperOne.