IMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

Summer Semester 2000

EDUC 437 - 4 ?

Dr. HeesoonBai

Ethical Issues in Education

Office: MPX 8666

Phone: 291-5443

D01.00 ?

E-mail: hbai@sfu.ca

Mondays 13:00-16:50 ?

PREREQUISITE

60 credit hours

COURSE DESCRIPTION

People in Education are increasingly talking about education as a moral project." This view

contains an implicit criticism of the traditional liberal education that has focused on abstract

intellectual competencies and "marketable skills" while largely neglecting to address the question

of how we must live so as to be deeply caring and in harmony with each other and with our

environment. This course explores philosophically challenging issues underlying the conception

of moral life and moral learning, both within and outside school. We will consider the nature of

morality (what are the aims of morality? What are we called to do in our own time?), domains of

moral concern (ecology, community, psyche, cultivation of moral agency (awareness, caring,

empathy, compassion, justice. . .), and strategies of moral transformation. This course aims as

much at self-transformation as exploration of content-matter.

OBJECTIVES

The coursework aims at cultivating in the students:

• the ability to read texts accurately and critically

• the ability to employ philosophical vocabulary

• the ability to examine practices in the light of theories, and vice versa.

• the ability to compose carefully conceptualized and reasoned arguments

• the ability to engage in productive dialogues in a community of inquiry

REQUIREMENTS

• Reading journal

• Presentation in preparation for the final paper

• Final Paper: an essay of 10 to 12 pages.

Further details will be discussed on the first day of class.

READINGS

Orr, D. (1996).

Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect.

Washington, D.C.: Island Press. ISBN: 1-55963-295-X.

Noddings, N. (1992).

The Challenge to Care in Schools.

New York: Teacher College Press.

ISBN: 0-8077-3177-3.