Why Johnny Can't Tell Right from Wrong: Moral Illiteracy and the Case for Character Education. - book reviews

Christian Century, March 3, 1993 by David Neil Mosser

FEW WOULD argue that morality and personal ethics are irrelevant to national life. Yet which ethical positions are to be passed on? Debate on that question is roaring in school boards, churches and homes. Into this fray charges William Kilpatrick, professor of education at Boston College, who says moral illiteracy is rampant in our society because during the Vietnam era moral education drifted away from "character education" (education that uses story heroes to model proper ethical behavior). Kilpatrick points out that character education is a method that predates Plato. Its emphasis on story and narrative will also interest readers attentive to narrative theology.

Kilpatrick's methodological enemy has various names: decision-making, moral reasoning, the dilemma method or values clarification. He argues that while these approaches may be adequate for the few adults who understand fine nuances of moral decision-making, young people have no experience upon which to base decisions or evaluate outcomes. When students are in a classroom discussing, for instance, the moral implications in the "lifeboat exercise," the exercise often becomes merely a "bull session," since most of the alternatives are outside students' experience. "The irony," Kilpatrick comments, "is that instead of developing their own values, young people seem increasingly at the mercy of peer and media values."

This book hits squarely topics that people are now debating. Kilpatrick brings forward many issues germane to the subject of morality and argues that before a community constructs a public morality, individual citizens first must have private ethical accountability. Voters who gauge the moral fitness of political candidates may fail to stand up to their own measuring device. Kilpatrick suggests that in many places students have a thought-out rationale for protecting the environment or fighting a nuclear war, but lack similar thoughtfulness on personal issues such as sexuality or drug use.

One mechanical difficulty I had with the book was the system of endnotes--no numbers in the text. If I suspected that an idea had been imported from another source, I had to infer it from the context of the text. Then I referred to the back where the note referent was by page. Though Kilpatrick did not intentionally obscure his source, vague citations to others' work is itself and ethical issue.

Whether the reader agrees with Kilpatrick's generally conservative viewpoint or not, he offers substantive information and probing opinions about how a society and its institutions discern and then pass along ethical wisdom. He also offers a remedy to the ethical problems he has addressed. The last 45 pages constitute a "Guide to Great Books for Children and Teens." Kilpatrick also provides a chapter each on what schools and parents can do to help with character education. This book moves beyond the all-too-familiar accusatory rhetoric toward constructive conversation.