What Can Schools Do to Stoke the Moral Imagination of Students?
What can schools do to stoke the moral imagination of students? “A lack of moral imagination can make deeply ethical actions seem like crimes.” (NYT Article Link)
The opinion piece caused me to question, what do I love? What causes am I willing to fight for? There are many things that I feel are unjust in this world, yet for every reason that I can think of to burn everything to ground, I also think of reasons why a scorched earth tactic could make things worse. Is my counter reasoning a fear of shifting from my relatively safe station in life or is restraint evidence of good logic? When does it become justifiable to be morally imaginative? To take deeply ethical actions to resolve the injustices that I acknowledge, thus shifting me from the safer stance of being a moderate.
“..we often act ethically because we have been socialized into a particular ethical worldview and not because we have any deeper underlying ethical commitments.”
I struggle to fully accept this quote, as it really touches a nerve. I struggle to accept this because I have never contemplated how my world view was shaped. A world view that thought being a moderate was being on higher ground. If I could hold my position as a moderate, then I will find common cause between the right and left, and more importantly take appropriate ethical actions. Regardless of which way my sympathies leaned, I would be able to see the forest through the trees and act ‘ethically’.
The anecdote about Martin Luther King’s letter from jail to “white moderate” clergy made me question how his letter might apply to my life and the causes that surround me. This quote in particular made me reflect on the events in Hong Kong, where my family and I live: “…the “shallow understanding from people of good will” threatened to enervate the civil rights movement into acceptance of an intolerable status quo. For King, moderation in the face of injustice might have been a worse problem than injustice itself.” It is not my intention to relate the Civil Rights movement in the US to the political unrest in Hong Kong. But, how can schools help students understand political events, such as those in Hong Kong, to socialize students to have a morally imaginative worldview? Or, is it wrong to think schools should play any role in socializing students? I would really like to read your view on this matter.
