Moral education versus indoctrination

Abstract

Moral education is open to worries about indoctrination given the controversies there are about a wide range of ethical matters. I argue, however, that moral education is no more liable to being ‘indoctrinal’ than education in history or science. I begin by proposing an account of what indoctrination involves. I then note that moral education takes different forms and that the different forms raise different concerns about the potential for indoctrination. First is ‘moral socialization,’ which can begin before children have moral concepts. Second is ‘propositional moral education’. Some propositional moral education occurs in the teaching of moral concepts or as an outgrowth of moral socialization. But some addresses highly controversial issues of the kind that raise the greatest concern about indoctrination. I argue that even in such cases, moral education need not involve indoctrination. In concluding, I discuss the objection that my defense of moral education relies on debatable meta-ethical assumptions.