Approach to understanding morality in teaching (Con't)

It seems to me that it is vital we ask ourselves: What is the right way to live? In our occupation, this question becomes: What is the right way to teach? Also, given the failure of science and methodology to provide comprehensive and convincing answers, our response to this question has to be moral in nature. Philosophy also leads us to ask: Are human beings fundamentally good, fundamentally bad, or fundamentally amoral? This may seem a high-blown question, but our answer will affect our actions as teachers in many domains—that of testing and evaluation, for example, where our view of human nature affects the degree of trust we evince in our assessment procedures (see chapter 4). Finally, is there a universal human morality that transcends the moral values of particular cultures? This last question continues to bedevil philosophers and others (Harman & Thomson, 1996; Power & Lapsley, 1992), yet it would seem to be an issue in which we language teachers have both a stake and a say. If we believe in the existence of such an absolute morality, what does it consist of? How does it relate to national, cultural, or religious moralities? On the one hand, the creation of charters such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), including a universal right to education (Spring, 2000), would seem to indicate that there is a set of values we humans all hold dear. On the other hand, the signal failure of pretty much every society on earth (however big or small) to honor these rights in full should give us pause for thought. These are big, big questions yet, as I hope to show, our responses to them have very tangible consequences in the real world of our classrooms. There objective truths” (p. 1), or is morality based only on our “feelings and social conventions” (p. 1)? Second, “how should we live, and why?” (p. 1)—in other words, what is the right way to lead one’s life? At certain points in this book I draw on some of the answers to these questions that different philosophers have proposed. Generally speaking, though, I have not found the philosophical literature to be very helpful in my goal of seeking to understand the moral foundations of language teaching. Part of the problem lies in the fact that the application of reason to such matters—the usual tool of philosophers—only takes us part of the way (Eisenberg, 1992). As I explained earlier, whether we like it or not, reason is of only limited use in considering how to teach, and likewise only some part of the teacher student relation can be understood with reference to reason alone. In addition, the discussions in the philosophical literature are usually of an abstract nature; where concrete examples are given, these are usually simplistic inventions, designed to point up the central issues of a moral problem rather than to explore the morality of everyday life. Let me take the first two examples that come to hand. In describing and analyzing an approach to moral values called absolutism, Wilson (1988) suggested the example of a person being absolutely opposed to torture and wrote: “Imagine…a case in which some tyrannical scientist is about to blow up the world […] we are to suppose that only by his being tortured will he reveal some secret which alone will prevent this” (p. 39). Another example, from Oderberg (2000), is: “Suppose Donald threatens to shoot Fred if he does not rape Celia” (p. 31). These situations do indeed present moral dilemmas, yet they are also extreme and very unlikely scenarios and ones which are distant from my own daily experiences—and, I hope, those of my readers. Our own experiences are also rich in moral dilemmas, but they seem to me to be of a different kind than these simplistic conundrums, which unfortunately dominate the literature of moral philosophy; this literature, however, does not include examples of problems I can recognize as belonging to my own life and those of my colleagues. At the same time, it is undeniable that many of the ideas from the philosophical literature on morality have found their way into the collective subconscious. This is certainly true of utilitarianism, the philosophical approach to morality put forward initially by Bentham (1789/1948) and Mill (1863/1998) that claims that “the criterion of the rightness and wrongness of actions is whether they maximize good consequences” (Oderberg, 2000, p. 66), leading to the well-known motto of “the greatest happiness of the greatest number” (Rachels, 1998, p. 18). Such a principle can be seen, for instance, in the issue mentioned earlier of the way a teacher chooses to divide her time in attending to the competing needs of different learners. Thus, in some cases philosophical approaches will help us to make sense of our own unconscious assumptions and inclinations. Furthermore, while philosophy may not aid us in solving our moral dilemmas, it can
certainly help us to pose interesting questions. It seems to me that it is vital we ask ourselves: What is the right way to live? In our occupation, this question becomes: What is the right way to teach? Also, given the failure of science and methodology to provide comprehensive and convincing answers, our response to this question has to be moral in nature. Philosophy also leads us to ask: Are human beings fundamentally good, fundamentally bad, or fundamentally amoral? This may seem a high-blown question, but our answer will affect our actions as teachers in many domains—that of testing and evaluation, for example, where our view of human nature affects the degree of trust we evince in our assessment procedures (see chapter 4). Finally, is there a universal human morality that transcends the moral values of particular cultures? This last question continues to bedevil philosophers and others (Harman & Thomson, 1996; Power & Lapsley, 1992), yet it would seem to be an issue in which we language teachers have both a stake and a say. If we believe in the existence of such an absolute morality, what does it consist of? How does it relate to national, cultural, or religious moralities? On the one hand, the creation of charters such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), including a universal right to education (Spring, 2000), would seem to indicate that there is a set of values we humans all hold dear. On the other hand, the signal failure of pretty much every society on earth (however big or small) to honor these rights in full should give us pause for thought. These are big, big questions yet, as I hope to show, our responses to them have very tangible consequences in the real world of our classrooms.