(published 11/16/99, after one rewrite)
Moral Education
by Mischa Gelman

  Gandhi once listed seven deadly social sins, which have generally become
commonplace in today's world.  In his mind, one of these most awful sins
was the problem of education without character, or in the modern
terminology, moral education.  It is interesting that this issue has gone
undiscussed in the mainstream media, given numerous complaints about the
lack of morality in America.  How, after all, are we to become moral if we
are not taught what is right and what is wrong?
  One notices this absence of discussion of values in looking over the
course offerings at Pitt - you can choose all sorts of classes, from
architecture to psychology, history of jazz to nursing anesthesia.  Yet no
department addresses matters as simple as the proper way to act as a
member of society.  Similarly, most of us were not offered these classes
in grade school.  The question then becomes why?
  Numerous explanations can be put forward.  Too often, our educational
system overly focuses on job training, ignoring those things that are more
important in life.  After all, as Paul Tsongas has pointed out, "No one on
his deathbed ever said I wish I'd spent more time on my business."  Our
university, though, pretends work is the primary concern of its student
body.  Even fields that cover social issues overlook the moral dimensions
of things. In social work, for instance, we are taught to be
nonjudgemental and moral relativists.  In one of my classes, students went
so far as to defend Klan members as normal (even good) human beings who
should be treated the same as other folks.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
had a good response to such moral relativism: "Some things are right and
some things are wrong, no matter if everybody is doing the contrary...so
long as we adopt this relativist attitude toward right and wrong, we're
revolting against the very laws of G-d himself."
  A second problem is that much of the left has ceded the discussion of
morals to the right.  Social justice advocate Jim Wallis, in his book "Who
Speaks for G-d", recounts a story where a group of liberals condemned him
for his usage of the term moral values, which they considered something of
a bad phrase.  If one side of the American political debate does not wish
to even examine such a key manner, no wonder it is not given the attention
it deserves.
 A third problem is that the right, while talking quite a bit about
morals, often overlooks or encourages immoral things like environmental
degradation, the cutting of anti-poverty programs and nuclear
proliferation.  Those things it rightly condemns (adultery, for one) are
often done by those same conservatives, thus marking them hypocrites and
writing them off as immoral.  Also, for all its talk about both morals and
education, the two rarely overlap - the right's focus on education is on
privatization rather than raising good kids.
 One interesting thing to look at is what we get taught in place of
values.  We focus on technology, on book knowledge and on processes and
procedures.  All are worthwhile focusing on, but all are flawed if studied
without values.  When we get told of "the good old days," we get told
about how people behaved, not what kind of technology they were using -
when the devices of the time get discussed, historian Peter Stearns
reminds us that older technology is seen in a negative light, as backward
and antiquated.  Why do we not then focus on the lessons of history and
teach more values and less about the promises of future gizmos? Book
knowledge is a good thing, but how do we apply it?  If we don't have a
definitive purpose in life, if we can't separate good from bad, of what
use is this knowledge?  We can master the process, but it is value-neutral
- it only becomes productive when put to a good use, when mixed with a
value-centered viewpoint.
   Folks often remark about the wonderful job done by Catholic schools in
raising kids.  Libertarians and conservatives like to say this means that
the absence of government is the reason for success.  Perhaps there is a
simple explanation we are overlooking - that moral education works?

 Mischa Gelman has a "Gandhi's 7 Deadly Social Sins" sweatshirt.  If
you're interested in one, go to http://www.sojourners.com/catalog.html