Answering the "Virtuecrats": A Moral Conversation on Character Education. Advances in Contemporary Educational Thought Series, Volume 21

Emphasizing the importance of respecting different moral languages, Nash (philosophy, U. of Vermont) critiques the character education espoused by William F. Bennett, Thomas Lickona, and William Kilpatrick. He examines classical questions about virtue; provides a historical context for character education; critiques strategies for imparting neo-classical virtues; and looks at other value systems such as communitarian, liberationist, and his own postmodern alternative of cultivating democratic dispositions. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or. The book examines approaches to moral education, first attempting to understand each one sympathetically, then highlighting strengths and weaknesses, and finally formulating the problems and issues uncovered in the analysis. The work concludes with the author's own version of a postmodern "patchwork" pedagogy of moral conversation. The chapters of the book are: (1) "Ministers of Morality: Past, Present, and Future," including a brief historical context for character education and a postmodern critique of character education; (2) "The Character Education Initiative: The Neo-Classical Virtues," including the cultural declinists, and the classical worldview and the role of virtue; (3) "Imparting the Neo-Classical Virtues: A Morality of Compliance," including cultural decline, and the classical worldview, democracy, and the virtues; (4) "The Communitarian Initiative: Sectarian, Postliberal, and Civic-Liberal Virtues," exploring the hunger for community, and introducing three types of communitarianism; (5) "Imparting the Communitarian Virtues: A Morality of Conformity," exploring the sectarian, postliberal, and civic-liberal types of communitarianism; (6) "The Liberationist Initiative: The Transformative Virtues," including the growing influence of critical pedagogy and discussing liberationist education; (7) "The Liberationist Virtues: A Morality of Contestation," including liberationist politics/democracy and the tranformative virtues; (8) "A Personal Interlude: A Morality of Conversation," exploring the moral elements of language and conversation; and (9) "A Postmodern Alternative: Cultivating the Democratic Dispositions," including postmodern conceptions of truth and virtue. (Contains 235 references.) (HTH)