ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Social and Moral Responsibility Educating for Social and Moral Responsibility As such, key questions in terms of developing social and moral responsibility in educational settings remain problematical. Is there a difference between moral education and social engineering to improve public behaviour? How can we resolve issues about the fluid and contextual notion of moral values?

And are we truly able to be held morally responsible for our actions in a deterministic world? Hersch et al (1980:14) suggest that the purpose of moral education in the nineteenth century was to promote a ‘narrow form of socialization’. However, in the twentieth century this narrowness was challenged by philosophers such as Dewey (1909;1938) who argued that morality was a dynamic not static concept, linked to the changing values of modern democracies.

Dewey believed that moral education needed to be rooted in the development of reasoning, not in training children to be dutiful to fixed moral rules. As such, Dewey’s arguments suggest that moral education and education per se are the same thing as they both involve the use of reason to resolve issues. However, liberal educationalists such as Dewey were challenged in their belief that learning the ability to rationally reflect on values was sufficient to develop moral responsibility.

According to Carr (1999) liberal educationalists in a secular world sought to promote ‘rational moral autonomy’ to prepare individuals’ for their role in an individualistic market economy and to maximise the chances of positive life choices. This notion of morality is rooted in concepts of individual rights and reciprocal relationships between individuals rather than the absolute moral values of previous times.

Jonathan (1999) suggests that liberal moral education supports the development of individuals as moral agents who are equipped to reflect on the range of values they encounter and make considered moral judgements about these. Kohlberg (1981) supports this approach through his theory of moral development.

Theorising that moral development is achieved through stages in progress towards increasingly sophisticated moral reasoning signifies that such moral reasoning is the ‘central feature of morality and moral education.’ (Straughan 1982:19). Wilson (1990) argues that moral relativism does not make all values and beliefs arbitrary.