Students should be taught civic competence, values, and dispositions; and skills needed for a democratic society should be acquired through formal education. U.S. schools must teach moral and civic values consciously, yet these values should be taught beyond civics and values clarification courses. The narrow focus of this type of course is to…

Today many signs point to an uneasy concern among scholars regarding the ethics of their peers. All too frequently the press reports cases of ethical breaches in many fields of scholarship. Over the years a few people have continued to note and study patterns of deviant and unethical behavior in scholarship. But in spite of the need to…

This collection of four articles on issues in social education in Australia begins with "Global and Nationalistic Education in International Perspective" (J. L. Nelson). The article discusses the nationalistic viewpoint of citizenship education, its place in the social sciences, the role of history instruction, and the divergent view of…

In the case of "Pico v. Island Trees Union Free School District," involving school library censorship by a Long Island (New York) board, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1982 failed to decide whether board discretion or First Amendment rights should prevail, and instead remanded the case to lower courts. The author of this document first…

A 20-year study to monitor moral developmental stages is summarized with a focus on the invariant sequence and internal consistency of each stage. It is theorized that an individual passes through several stages in attaining moral judgment. As children grow older, they are able to integrate diverse points of view on a moral conflict. Each stage…

This paper proposes that schools resume their historic role in cultivating basic moral values in their students, based on what is defined as our national ethos: (1) a belief in the worth and perfectability of human life; (2) a belief in democracy; (3) faith in reason and the orderly solution of conflict; (4) respect for knowledge and commitment to…

Available evidence does not support the notion that aging is associated with increasingly conservative social and political attitudes, or the idea that attitudinal rigidity is the norm among older cohorts. To examine whether aging is associated with attitudinal rigidity, nine surveys from the National Opinion Research Center were analyzed to…

This issue of "The Community College Humanities Review" contains a series of articles, reviews, and reports addressing various issues related to values education and other areas of the humanities. The issue contains: "The Study of History and the Question of Human Values," by Abraham Ascher; "A Moral Imperative for Teaching Values in a Literature…

Trends in students' religious activities and attitudes between 1973 and 1983 were studied at the University of Maryland, College Park. A questionnaire was administered to a sample of 270 incoming freshmen in 1973 and to 389 freshmen in 1983. Findings suggest a continuation of the trend of decreasing religious orthodoxy among students, with both…

The third annual study of censorship incidents in public schools revealed that during the 1984-85 school year, censors took aim at an array of courses, textbooks, teaching methods and materials, as well as a wide assortment of books, plays, and films. More than 42% of the challenges that were directed at instructional materials resulted in removal…

Discusses the theoretical and practical importance of the interaction between children and their environment. Discussions of moral dilemmas in children's literature provide a rich source of interaction that could help children clarify the basis for moral development of higher levels of moral reasoning. (Author/SDH)

Alice Miller, the former psychoanalyst, has gained world renown for her controversial and provocative writings on child rearing. Miller contends that traditional child rearing practices--in schools, ecclesiastical settings, and the family--consist of physical and emotional cruelty that she labels "poisonous pedagogy." According to…

This paper explores the need to examine value systems in composition courses concerned with persuasive writing. Values are defined as beliefs used to evaluate or structure experience. When concepts and facts are related to daily life, as they are in persuasive writing, they either reinforce values already formed or necessitate a change in values.…