Querying The Place and Shape of Ethics in Education: Models and Methods

Do children who attend schools exclusively for the disabled need to learn about ethics? Are they not most commonly the targets of painful slurs, teasing, and bullying in school? What leads the teased to become the teaser? Can we educate all children and youth to create a kinder and gentler school environment, one that is more inclusive of all youth? Will engaging children in ethics education early in their lives lead to more ethical behavior when the consequences are greater, later in life? In responding to these types of questions, speakers in this symposium, “Ethics Across the Curriculum, ” propose a renewed effort to create a place for ethics in educational curricula across the P-12 curriculum in the United States. A number of scholars have explored the idea of integrating ethics and other forms of philosophical thinking into the P-12 curriculum both locally and globally over the last four decades.1 Yet the local movements to incorporate ethics into education have stalled and need to be reinvigorated. This point is argued from the perspective of a science teacher educator experienced in the academic movement Philosophy for Children, a researcher looking at attitudes among in-service and preservice science teachers, a technology teache