Ethics education seen through the lens of Habermas’s conception of practical reason: the Québec Education Program

Abstract

This paper examines the Québec Education Program (QEP), particularly the new course in ethics and religious culture (ERC), in the light of Habermas’s conception of the moral and ethical uses of practical reason. Habermas’s discursive theory of morality is used to assess the program’s understanding of what it means to be competent in moral matters. Specifically, the paper considers whether or not the program limits the exercise of practical reason to its purely pragmatic form, and the extent to which the program takes into account the intersection between the subjective and social world of learners. The Québec program serves as a context for thinking about the level(s) of practical reason an ethics education program ought to cultivate in learners.