GSE professor discusses moral dimension of education

Many Penn students will remember elementary school as an endless list of rules, from wearing plaid uniforms at the right length to not fidgeting in class.

But according to professor Joan Goodman of the Graduate School of Education, instead of teaching morality, classroom rules are inevitably blended with social conventions. Some public school children, she said, are punished equally for not bringing their pencils to class as they are for cheating.

This is a persistent problem in America’s public education system, according to Goodman, and the main topic of her lecture yesterday with the Philomathean Society. Amidst tomes of literature and philosophy, a dozen Penn students from all majors explored and debated the main arguments of this controversial topic.

Goodman agreed that there is a myriad of philosophical and psychological assumptions embedded in her argument, but this is precisely what makes it interesting and important.

In the end, she emphasized, children who are subjected to the social conventions of the classroom sometimes miss the distinction between right and wrong — the “good student” being the most obedient — and never develop the adequate “moral filter” to make future decisions.

College sophomore Tatum Regan attended the lecture after taking a relevant class and teaching at an elementary school in Philadelphia.

“Everything children are exposed to has a moral end — from the cartoons they watch to what their parents teach them — it’s almost oppressive,” she said.

Goodman explained that one of the main difficulties of moral education in public schools is agreeing on societal values while also respecting different ideological views.

Most students seemed to agree, however, that “notions of mutual respect are based on our equal status as people,” making moral education essential.

Students walked away from the lecture at nightfall, after three hours of in-depth discussion, with new ideas about the role of moral education in the fabric of American society.

College junior Will Darwall summarized Goodman’s thesis as “absolutely self-evident.”

“We teach some system of morality based on the same power structure of the classroom,” he added. “We have to think about the right ways to separate convention from what transcends.”

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