Values and virtues: how should they be taught?

Abstract

Courses in medical ethics, bioethics, and other humanities subjects flourish in professional schools, yet a tension exists about whether their teaching goals should include trying to make students more humane and virtuous. Some hold that these courses should help instill values and virtues professed by the medical community, such as fidelity, compassion, empathy, respect, and other qualities that will make students not only better professionals but also better and more humane people. Others reject this role, arguing that humanities courses should teach students the knowledge and skills to become better problem solvers regarding theoretical, moral, and social issues; they regard it to be counterproductive, presumptuous, or futile to try to make students better persons. The author examines the extent to which these views are incompatible, arguing that a cogent philosophy of education can be neither value-free nor fully independent of moral choices. Within limits, diverse approaches to incorporating values in teaching can be a strength.