Engaging traits of reasonableness for civic and moral development: against an unchecked apprehension of indoctrination

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article emerges from a stream of scholarship demonstrating the inadequacy of broad arguments favouring ‘neutrality’ as an alternative to ‘directive normative instruction’ in the early childhood classroom. We advance a moral educational framing of the tension between neutrality and normativity in education: specifically, we argue that irreplaceably valuable moral aims of public education are jeopardized when a sense of disquiet regarding indoctrination operates unchecked. After detailing several ways in which moral education is entangled with civic and/or political education specific to a conceptualization of educationally desirable ‘traits of reasonableness’, we locate civic educational goals as a subcategory of moral education. In light of seemingly intensified calls for neutrality and/or the omission of specific topics and perspectives in the U.S. schools, this article draws upon Hand’s work on moral education, to recenter and strengthen existing arguments against anti-indoctrination-based defences of ‘neutrality’ in education. Finally, we detail a meaningful divergence from Hand’s moral guidelines; we argue that increased engagement with opaque moral dilemmas may be of substantial benefit, stimulating valuable experiences of critical reflection for young children in their roles as today’s and tomorrow’s moral, civic, and political actors.