Emotion education is enjoying new-found popularity. This paper explores the "cosy consensus" that seems to have developed in education circles, according to which approaches to emotion education are immune from metaethical considerations such as contrasting rationalist and sentimentalist views about the moral ontology of emotions. I spell out five…

In the post-Kohlbergian era of moral education, a "moral gap" has been identified between moral cognition and moral action. Contemporary moral psychologists lock horns over how this gap might be bridged. The two main contenders for such bridge-building are moral emotions and moral selves. I explore these two options from an Aristotelian…

This paper takes as its starting point the Journal of Moral Education Special Issue (September, 2008, 37[3]) "Towards an integrated model of moral reasoning". Although explicitly post-Kohlbergian, the authors in this Special Issue do not, I argue, depart far enough from Kohlberg's impoverished notion of the role of the affective in moral life--or…

This article is about (1) the ancient (Aristotelian) emotional virtue of emulation, (2) some current character-education inspired accounts of the use of role models in moral education and, most importantly, (3) the potential relevance of (1) for (2). The author argues that the strategy of role-modelling, as explicated by the character-education…

In her 2006 bestseller about the rise of "raunch culture" and of such self-ascribed "Female Chauvinist Pigs" as the tawdry socialite Paris Hilton, Ariel Levy describes these phenomena as being indicative of a drastic cultural shift. Serious concerns have been raised, most recently by the American Psychological Association, about the effects of…

A recent trend in moral education, social and emotional learning, incorporates the mantra of emotional intelligence (EI) as a key element in an extensive program of character building. In making his famous claim that the good life would have to include appropriate emotions, Aristotle obviously considered the schooling of emotions to be an…

The virtue of generosity--at least generosity in the context of world poverty--is conspicuously absent from most curricula in the field of moral education. This article explores generosity and its educational ramifications. I start by characterizing two types of persons who may seem to be generous but who do not really possess generosity as a…

This essay subjects to philosophical scrutiny a well-known theory in social psychology, the theory of a belief in a just world ("BJW"-theory). What are the implications of the theory for moral philosophy, in general, and moral education/schooling, in particular? Should parents and teachers discourage or encourage children to believe in a just…

R.S. Peters coined the term "paradox of moral education". In this article, the author identifies two subordinate paradoxes: how habituated reason is psychologically possible and how heteronomously formed autonomy is morally/politically possible and justifiable. He sketches possible Aristotelian solutions of those paradoxes and argues that for…

Shows that there is a substantial agreement in philosophical circles on what constitutes self-respect. Indicates that there are two major shortcomings to this common specification and that they can be ameliorated through a synthesis of recent conceptions of self-respect and Aristotle's analysis of megalopsychia. Suggests practical applications for…

The question of whether there is such a thing as teachable justified anger encompasses three distinct questions: (1) the psychological question of whether the emotions in general, and anger in particular, are regulatable; (2) the moral question of whether anger can ever be morally justified; and (3) the educational question of whether we have any…

Defines ways normative concerns enter into the design and interpretation of empirical research on children's development of justice conceptions. Emphasizes William Damon's stage theory of development. Suggests an alternative research program based on adjustments between the normative and the empirical. Argues this program must focus on children's…