Free Daily Reads 2022: Article 57

Article Title: If we disagree about morality, how can we teach it?

Article Summary

This article deals with the topic of morality and due to different ideas of morality how to inculcate them in children; the topic of sociability.

The author starts with how people disagree about what morality prohibits, permits and requires. He further gives us example to prove the various thoughts about morality.

Reasonable disagreement about morality presents educators with a problem. It is hard to see how we can bring it about that children subscribe to moral standards, and believe them to be justified, except by giving them some form of moral education. He further gives us three scenarios which can be followed in such cases as to how to explain children about morality or rely on their own inner sense of morality.

The author believes that some basic moral standards to which almost everyone currently subscribes enjoy the support of a decisive justificatory argument. Moral educators can properly aim to bring it about that children subscribe to these standards and make them believe that they are justified . He further touches on the problem of sociality in the society .

To conclude the author states that to tackle this problem we need a supplementary kind of motivation for keeping to cooperative agreements and treating each other in non-harmful ways. We need the kind of motivation that subscription to moral standards can provide. If moral education is to be rational, much of it will have to take the form of nondirective enquiry into controversial moral standards and arguments. It should take the form of cultivating children’s subscription to moral standards and helping them to see why those standards are justified.