Moral Maturity and Education beyond Conventional Morality

Abstract

"Moral Maturity" was the first goal of four of the denominations in our study and was rated second and third by the other two. What does this mean? Three perspectives are developed here. (1) An examination of the items in the Moral Maturity scale shows that postconventional elements appear there, enough to warrant thinking that adults want youth to be reasonably independent. (2) A refactoring of the ten goals of Part I yielded two new factors, whose analysis indicates that the denominations vary in their support for postconventional morality, with the Evangelicals least supportive. (3) Given Fowler's stages of faith as an interpretive tool, only two denominations prefer critical stage four to conventional stage three for the outcome of religious education; none want stage five (a postcritical and universalizing posture.)