Moral No More, Maybe

Before they arrive for the whirlwind of Freshman Week, starry-eyed first-years are mailed the blandly-titled booklet “Conversations with Faculty and Staff: Readings for Freshman,” that includes essays by Emerson, Ellison, and Jane Adams. Harvard thus seems to be the ivy-clad place where students are not simply educated, but are taught to view the ethical implications and obligations of their education. You know, the weighty stuff.

Upon arriving, freshmen are treated to a brief lecture and hour-long discussion on the essays, which are then quickly tossed aside in favor of more alluring texts like CUE guides, course catalogs, and ever-handy copies of “Writing with Sources.”

Today, Harvard makes one last-ditch attempt to force students to think critically about ethics through the Moral Reasoning core. There, students are asked to question their own beliefs. What is justice? If there is no God, is all permitted? And other such quandaries.

Under the new General Education plan proposed by the Committee on General Education, however, moral reasoning classes may be stricken from the catalog. The proposal stresses the importance of moral and ethical education, but stops short of a requirement. Everyone agrees that ethics are a vital part of any education, but there is disagreement about where they belong in the new curriculum.

“The committee seemed to drift to a least-common-denominator approach,” writes Johnstone Family Professor Psychology Steven Pinker in an e-mail.

The Generdal Education Committee was unable to agree on the right requirement, so they settled for no requirement at all.

VERITAS

Until the late 19th century, according to Professor of History James T. Kloppenberg, seniors in the College capped their education with a year-long course in moral philosophy taught by the University president. The course was meant to give overall meaning and purpose to the students’ college experience.

The moral reasoning requirement, though, was not meant to be a grand exercise in making life in the Yard meaningful.

Instead, according to a 1978 core curriculum report, the original intent of the requirement was to teach students that it is possible to think systematically about issues like justice, personal responsibility, and friendship.

In Phyllis Keller’s book “Getting to the Core,” then-University President Derek C. Bok, addressing an audience of professional school faculty in 1976, said that whether or not ethical standards have declined, “most people seem to think that they have, and this belief...[can] sap the willingness to behave morally to others.” According to Keller, Bok thought that universities could make an important contribution to society by developing students’ sensitivity to moral questions.

Towards that end, a requirement was proposed in “Philosophical Analysis,” which later became Moral Reasoning. Keller writes that the requirement attempted to meet the needs of several types of students, in particular skeptics who believed that disguised self-interest was the only basis of rational choice.

“My own experience teaching Moral Reasoning during the 1980s,” writes President Bok’s wife and former Moral Reasoning professor Sissela Bok in an e-mail, “was both challenging and exhilarating.” Indeed, The Crimson reported in November 1984 that after hearing a lecture in Moral Reasoning 22: “Justice,” two students started a fund-raiser to help famine-stricken Ethiopia. Talk about a moral imperative.

SHOULD IT STAY OR SHOULD IT GO?

So what changed? According to a March 10 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, more than half of university professors nationwide think it’s “important to enhance undergraduates’ self-understanding and to develop their moral character and values.”

And it’s not just the grown-ups. college freshmen too reported they consider an improvement in their self-understanding “essential” or “very important.”

So it’s clear that MR classes are important, but there seems to be a problem with how their taught.

“A lot of these great classes turn you off and make the problems seem impossible, unsolvable,” says Henry J. Seton ’06. Obviously, the Moral Reasoning requirement isn’t quite doing its job.

According to the new plan, there will be optional MR-type courses, either within one of the three divisions in the General Education plan or through individual departments. This way, students can deal with moral and ethical issues from a variety of perspectives.

“If one takes a broader definition,” writes Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 in an e-mail, “then a large number of courses given by our faculty in the humanities would count. In this case, it isn’t clear to me that we would need to impose a separate requirement.”

Members of the General Education Committee believe that by making the courses voluntary, faculty and students will get a better learning experience.

“The teachers don’t want to be teaching to a captive audience,” says Emily E. Riehl ’06, a member of the Educational Policy Committee. “A better way to have moral education is to create courses that are good enough to make people want to take [them].”

“In one way, it’s more agreeable to teach classes where all of the students there want to be there, rather than because they have to fulfill a requirement that they don’t particularly like,” says Thomas M. Scanlon, Alford professor of natural religion, moral philsophy, and civil polity. However, Scanlon admits, “I myself took my first course in moral philosophy because it fulfilled a requirement and I was surprised to find that I liked it.”

Some students, like Ali A. Zaidi ’08, worry about the potential student who chooses to ignore ethics classes in favor of an extra finance course. The student who needs the ethics class is very rarely the one who is interested in the subject material.

“The one that does matter most to me is this one, more even than a Historical Studies course,” says Kloppenberg, “because it’s pretty hard to escape a high school without having had a few history courses. It is possible to escape without having had a course that focuses in a mature way on how to make decisions in cases of moral dilemmas.”

GRAB YOUR PARACHUTE

“Is there space and air in your mind,” William James suggested, “or must your companions gasp for air whenever they talk with you?” What is missing in the debate about Moral Reasoning is James’ very point. Moral Reasoning was never intended to be a course like any other course, filled with coursepacks and quizzes. It was supposed to facilitate personal exploration and social consciousness—a place to explore the “space” where there are questions but not necessarily answers.

While the new proposal currently lacks a Moral Reasoning component, this does not mean that there is no hope for a future ethical component to Harvard’s curriculum. The report simply outlines the recommendations of the committee but also encourages student and faculty debate.

Yet without a mandatory course in ethics, students may end up missing out on one of their most valuable educational experiences at Harvard. “Moral reasoning is like sky-diving,” Associate Professor of Government and of Social Studies Glyn Morgan writes in an email. “It’s exhilarating and risky.”