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Recommended Reading
Moral Questions in the Classroom: How to Get Kids to Think Deeply About Real Life and Their Schoolwork
by Katharine G. Simon
Yale University Press, 2001
ISBN: 0-300-09032-3Katharine Simon analyzes how teachers address or avoid moral issues that arise in middle and high school classrooms, then explains how morally charged issues may be taught responsibly in a diverse democracy. She offers many practical tips to help teachers explore deeply important questions with their students. What constitutes a just war? How does race matter in America, and how does race matter in other parts of the world? Are the interests of government the same as those of the public when it comes to the environment or public safety? History, literature, and science classes abound with important moral, social, and political questions. But under pressure to cover material and fearful of raising controversy, teachers often avoid discussing these profoundly important questions. As a high school teacher herself, Simon admits that she too often missed such opportunities. Using extensive observations and transcripts of discussions in public, Catholic, and Jewish high schools, Simon analyzes how teachers avoid or address moral questions raised by students and implicit in course materials.
Moral Questions in the Classroom addresses the question most often raised in the context of moral education: "If public schools teach values, whose values will they teach?" The book reviews current approaches to moral education and examines how morally charged issues can be taught responsibly in our diverse democracy. In an afterward that teachers and teacher educators will find particularly useful, Simon provides practical tools and strategies for structuring discussion and designing units to help teachers explore moral issues more deeply with their middle and high school students.
Posted January 2002 New Horizons for Learning, all rights reserved.
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