Transcript Maxine Greene Awakening to the Moral

Maxine Greene
Awakening to the Moral
“I am convinced that, if teachers today are to initiate
young people into an ethical existence, they
themselves must attend more fully than they
normally have to their own lives…; they have to
break with the mechanical life, to overcome their
own submergence in the habitual, even in what
they conceive to be the virtuous, and ask the ‘why’
with which learning and moral reasoning begin.”
-Maxine Greene, “Wide Awakeness and the Moral Life,” p. 46
Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa
EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
Moral Action & Choice
“Moral action, of course, demands choosing
between alternatives, usually between two
goods, not between good and bad or right
and wrong.”
-Maxine Greene, “Wide Awakeness and the Moral Life,” p. 48
Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa
EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
“These are choices of consequence for the self and
others; and they are made, they can only be
made in social situations where custom,
tradition, official codes, and laws condition and
play upon what people think and do…To be
moral involves taking a position towards that
matrix, thinking critically about what is taken
for granted.”
-Maxine Greene, “Wide Awakeness and the Moral Life,” p. 49
Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa
EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
Morality & the Conventional
“If individuals act automatically or
conventionally, if they do only
what is expected of them (or because
they feel they have no right to speak
for themselves), if they do only
what they are told to do, they are not
living moral lives.”
-Maxine Greene, “Wide Awakeness and the Moral Life,”
p. 49
Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa
EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
Simon Blackburn:
the invisibility and the
inconvenience of ethics
“The workings of the ethical environment
can be strangely invisible.”
-Simon Blackburn, Being Good, p. 2
Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa
EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
the power of the habitual
“For we may not be aware of our
ideas. An idea in this sense
is a tendency to accept routes
of thought and feeling that
we may not recognize in
ourselves, or even be able to
articulate. Yet such
dispositions rule the social
and political world.”
-Simon Blackburn, Being Good, p. 3
Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa
EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
being ethical - vs. - being
moralistic
“An ethical climate is a different thing from
a moralistic one.”
-Simon Blackburn, Being Good, p. 3
Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa
EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
human beings:
the ethical animal?
“Human beings are ethical animals. I do not
mean that we naturally behave particularly well,
nor that we are endlessly telling each other what
to do. But we grade and evaluate, and compare
and admire, and claim and justify. We do not
just ‘prefer’ this or that, in isolation. We prefer
that our preferences are shared; we turn them
into demands on each other.”
-Simon Blackburn, Being Good, p. 4
Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa
EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
philosophy & self knowledge
“Philosophy is certainly not
alone in its engagement
with the ethical climate.
But its reflections contain a
distinctive ambition…It is
an enterprise of selfknowledge.”
-Simon Blackburn, Being Good, p. 4
Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa
EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations
“Ethics is disturbing.”
“We all have a tendency to
complacency with our own
ways…We do not like being
told what to do…Ethics is
disturbing.”
-Simon Blackburn, Being Good, p. 6-7
Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa
EDU 6424: Ethics and Diversity in Educational Organizations