Abstract
In recent years, virtue ethics has been applied to a wide range of contemporary issues and disciplines (politics, the environment, professional ethics, animal rights, bioethics, war, sports, to name a few). In this chapter I explore the pros and cons of applying virtue ethics (broadly understood) to education. What are the advantages of a virtue-centered approach to education? What forms might such theories take? What problems or objections must a virtue-centered approach overcome?
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Notes
“A virtue is a good quality of character, more specifically a disposition to respond to, or acknowledge, items within its field or fields in an excellent or good enough way.” C. Swanton (2003) Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View (New York: Oxford University Press), 19.
See generally the relevant chapters on these thinkers in A.O. Rorty (1998) (ed.) Philosophers on Education: New Historical Perspectives (New York: Routledge).
T. Lickona (1991) Educating for Character: How Our Schools Can Teach Respect and Responsibility (New York: Bantam Books), 7.
J. K. Rowling (1999) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (New York: Scholastic), 333.
R. Paul (1993) Critical Thinking: What Every Person Needs to Survive in a Rapidly Changing World, 3rd revised edn (Santa Rosa, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking), 321.
J. Locke (1947) Some Thoughts Concerning Education, in John Locke on Politics and Education (Roslyn, New York: Walter J. Black, 357
M. Adler (1983) Paideia Problems and Possibilities: A Consideration of Questions Raised by The Paideia Proposal (New York; Macmillan), 8.
J. Maritain (1943) Education at the Crossroads (New Haven: Yale University Press), 18.
Some would go further and say that education, by definition, is centrally concerned with the virtues. See, for example Paul, Critical Thinking, 337 (“Instruction that does not further the development of human rationality, though it may properly be called training, is not education”) and W. Frankena (1965) Three Historical Philosophies of Education: Aristotle, Kant, Dewey (Chicago: Scott, Foresman, and Company), 7
M. Adler (1988) Reforming Education: The Opening of the American Mind (New York: Macmillan), 74.
Compare R. Hutchins (2010) “The Basis of Education”, reprinted in J. Noll, ed., Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Educational Issues, 15th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill), 11
Aristotle (1925) Nicomachean Ethics, translated by W.D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press), X.8.1178b20-25.
St Thomas Aquinas (1993) Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, translated by C. I. Litzinger (Notre Dame, Indiana: Dumb Ox Books), 377.
St Thomas Aquinas (1981) Summa Theologica (Westminster, Maryland: Christian Classics)
J. McDowell (1979) “Virtue and Reason”, Monist 62, 331–50
T. Monis (1997) If Aristotle Ran General Motors: The New Soul of Business (New York: Henry Holt), 142–145.
D. Solomon (1988) “Internal Objections to Virtue Ethics”, in P. A. French, T. E. Uehling, and H. Wettstein (eds) Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 13, Ethical Theory: Character and Virtue (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press), 428–41.
R. Hursthouse (1999), On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 28–31.
On the distinction between “virtue theory” and “virtue ethics”, see R. Crisp (1996) “Modern Moral Philosophy and the Virtues”, in R. Crisp, ed., How Should We Live? Essays on the Virtues (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 5.
For an insightful discussion of the conflicting values objection, see T. H. Irwin (2005) “Do Virtues Conflict? Aquinas’s Answer”, in S. Gardiner, ed., Virtue Ethics Old and New (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press), 60–77.
A. McIntyre (1984) After Virtue, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press), 181–225.
M. Nussbaum (1988) “Non-relative Virtues”, in P. A. French, T. E. Uehling, and H. Wettstein, (eds) Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 13, Ethical Theory: Character and Virtue (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press), 32–53.
E. D. Hirsch Jr. (1996) The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them (New York: Doubleday).
E. D. Hirsch Jr. (2003) “General and Particular Aims of Education”, Principal Leadership 3, 20.
Aristotle (1976) Nicomachean Ethics, revised edn, translated by J. A. K. Thomson (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books), 64 (1094a23).
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Bassham, G. (2013). Virtue-Centered Approaches to Education: Prospects and Pitfalls. In: Austin, M.W. (eds) Virtues in Action. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137280299_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137280299_2
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