Ethics and Education 7 (1):59 - 73 (2012) |Abstract||Robin
Barrow claims in his ?Moral education's modest agenda? that ?the
task of moral education is to develop understanding, at the
lowest level, of the expectations of society and, at the highest
level, of the nature of morality???[that is, that moral
education] should go on to develop understanding, not of a
particular social code, but of the nature of morality ? of the
principles that provide the framework within which practical
decisions have to be made? [Barrow, R. 2006. Moral education's
modest agenda. Ethics and Education 1, no. 1: 3?13.]. Barrow's
words are noteworthy not only because he sets out to define the
?modest? agenda of moral education in terms of principles, but
also because he asserts that education is important for teaching
students to understand morality in such terms. However, even
though he is arguing that understanding morality is important in
terms of principles, he says little about their function or
status, or how we cultivate ours