Education and Human Values: Reconciling Talent with an Ethics of Care

107 Pages·2012·1.06 MB·English

by  Michael Slote

Education and Human Values
Two of our greatest educational theorists, John Dewey and Nel Noddings,
have been reluctant to admit that some students are simply more talented
than others. This was no doubt due to their feeling that such an admission
was inconsistent with democratic concern for everyone. But there really is
such a thing as superior talent; and the present book explains how that
admission is compatible with our ideals of caring (and democracy). Tradi-
tionalists confident that some disciplines are more important than others
haven’tworriedthatthatwayofputtingthingsthreatenstomakethosewho
areexcluded feelquite bad about themselves.But an ethics of care can show
us how to make these differences much less hurtful and more morally
acceptable than anything that has been proposed by traditionalists.
So the present book offers a middle way between the denial of the reality
of superior talents andan insensitiveinsistence onthat reality.Itargues that
care ethics gives us a way to do this, and it bases that claim largely on the
promise of such an ethics for moral education in schools and in homes. It is
arguedonpsychologicalgroundsthatcaringcanonlytakeplaceonthebasis
of empathy for others, and the book shows in great detail how empathy can
beencouragedordevelopinschoolandhome contexts. Other approachesto
moral education—like Kantian cognitive-developmentalism and Aristotelian
character education—cannot account for (increasing) moral motivation in
thewaythatanemphasisonthedevelopmentofempathyallows.Andinthe
end, it is only students educated via care ethics who will be sensitive to one
another in a way that largely undercuts the negative psychological impact of
educational institutions and practices that acknowledge the greater talents
or creativity that some students have.
Michael Slote is the UST Professor of Ethics at the University of Miami.

Education and Human Values
Reconciling Talent with an Ethics of Care
Michael Slote
Firstpublished2013
byRoutledge
711ThirdAvenue,NewYork,NY10017
SimultaneouslypublishedintheUK
byRoutledge
2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN
RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninforma
business
©2013Taylor&Francis
TherightofMichaelSlotetobeidentifiedasauthorofthisworkhas
beenassertedbyhiminaccordancewithsections77and78ofthe
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Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproduced
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Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksor
registeredtrademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationand
explanationwithoutintenttoinfringe.
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Slote,MichaelA.
Educationandhumanvalues:reconcilingtalentwithanethicsof
care/byMichaelSlote.
p.cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
1.Moraleducation--UnitedStates.2.Ethics--UnitedStates.
3.Education--Philosophy.4.Dewey,John,1859-1952.5.Noddings,
Nel.I.Title.
LC311.S54852012
370.1104--dc23
2012002362
ISBN:978-0-415-53095-8[hbk]
ISBN:978-0-203-11655-5[ebk]
TypesetinSabon
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
In memory of
Francis (“Black Mack”) McCarthy,
my first philosophy teacher

Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
1 Education and Creativity 7
2 Care Ethics vs. Other Approaches 17
3 Sentimentalist Moral Education 27
4 Sentimentalist Rational Education 48
5 What Kind of Country? 65
Conclusion 79
Notes 81
Index 97
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Raul de Velasco, Harvey Siegel, Yuan Yuan, and,
especially, Nel Noddings, Carol Gilligan, and two readers for Routledge for
their helpful suggestions. I am also grateful to Andrew Beck for editorial
advice and general support.
Introduction
The philosophy of education encompasses many sorts of issues and a great
number of different approaches to those issues. Some of these, of course, we
haven’t even thought of yet, but among those we have, epistemological and
ethicalquestionsloomlarge.Philosophersofeducationareinterestedinhow
children are best or even just well taught and in the justification of claims
about educational efficacy. But of course the philosophy of education is also
interested in the aims or goals of education, in questions about what edu-
cators, school systems, and universities should be ultimately trying to do.
These two sorts of issues are in many ways intertwined, and the present
book will be an example of how that can, and I believe should, happen.
Overthepastcenturyeducators intheEnglish-speakingworldhavewrestled
with (issues about) educational methods and values, and I have here joined
in those debates. The overall emphasis in the present book will, in fact, be
on the values side of things. Questions and suggestions about educational
methods will be subordinated to issues about (our) moral and other values,
and the picture that emerges will represent a kind of compromise between
(what I take to be) the two main sides of a century-old (and even older)
debate/discussion.
I believe some of the most interesting and important work on the aims of
education has been done by John Dewey and, to a certain extent following
him, by Nel Noddings. And both of them question traditionalist assumptions
abouttheaimsofeducation,aboutthevaluesweseektorealizethroughand
ineducation.However,thepresentbookarguesthattheygotoofar.NowIam
hardly the first person to criticize some of Dewey’s most radical ideas
and suggestions—that has been going on ever since Dewey began to write
and lecture on the subjects and themes for which he is so well known. But
much of the criticism—though hardly all—has come from traditionalism
defending itself against the seemingly total overthrow of its aims and meth-
ods that Dewey proposed and that to some extent Nel Noddings has also
proposed. However, unlike many of the critics, and as I more than hinted
above, I think some of Noddings’s and Dewey’s ideas are quite wonderful.
But I do think Noddings and Dewey go too far in rejecting traditionalist
ideas and values. I think we need to combine things Dewey/Noddings want