While there is a place in education for factual knowledge and useful skills, they should be recognized as of secondary value. The primary qualities that should be taught are the development of (1) moral values and attitudes and (2) critical independent thinking in a spirit of creative inquiry. (Author/RM)

Research findings of interest to teachers wanting to establish a curriculum about nuclear war are examined, and general themes appropriate for a course about war and peace are suggested. Specifically discussed are students' views and moral reasoning about war. (RM)

Working with postmodern ideas, this book questions the search to define and measure quality in the early childhood field and its tendency to reduce philosophical issues of value to purely technical and managerial issues of expert knowledge and measurement. The book argues that there are ways other than the "discourse of quality" for…

Reviews ethical implications of administrative decisions. Presents several cases to illustrate the potential conflict between the political (doing things right) and the ethical (doing the right thing). Presents a model that helps the administrator identify the extent to which administrative dilemmas impinge on moral considerations. (KW)

Explores distinctions between educational and confessional aims of religious education, examines the meanings of indoctrination, and addresses how these issues affect religious education in Scotland's nondenominational state schools. Offers an approach for meeting the requirement of religious observance in public schools that avoids both…

Discusses theater education in the areas of curriculum, production, and criticism, as proposals in E. D. Hirsch's, "Cultural Literacy" might affect it. Explains context, cultural literacy, and contextual criticism in theater education. Traces interwoven history of education and theater. Explores how embracing Hirsch's proposal would…

Defines moral exclusion. Discusses the antecedents and symptoms of moral exclusion. Explores the interaction between the psychological and social factors that foster its development. Briefly discusses outcomes of moral exclusion. Introduces the articles in this issue by presenting an overview of the themes examined in this issue. (JS)

Female counselor trainees (N=28) in a facilitative skills development course were rated for empathy on the basis of written responses to two videotaped vignettes--one Kohlbergian moral dilemma and one morally neutral dilemma. Found students responded more empathically to morally neutral task than to Kohlbergian task. (Author/TE)

Describes a study which applies a cultural-relativist approach to the study of the meaning of "moral" among adolescents in Haiti, Zambia, and the United States. Compares the conceptions of moral expressed by youths in these societies. Speculates about what cultural conditions might account for the similarities and differences among groups. (Author)

A study of 720 dental students in 8 cohorts participating in a problem-oriented dental ethics curriculum over 4 years found that, in 7 of the cohorts, the instruction had a significant effect on students' moral reasoning, in comparison with 265 nonparticipants. In addition, the students valued the instruction. (MSE)

Investigated how children's decisions about allocating money to story characters were affected by the relationship (friends versus strangers) among the characters. Children's rationales for their decisions showed that equality was the most salient principle for decisions at all ages and that older children provided rationales based on benevolence…

Discusses the genre of teen paperback series. Topics addressed include the necessity for different evaluation criteria than those applied to monographs regarding setting, characters, and continuity; value judgments regarding quality and enjoyment; collection development; and improved circulation. (LRW)

Moral choice for educational administrators involves using conventional democratic principles as well as postconventional actions grounded in principles valued by administrators that are not covered by conventional morality. Presents two case studies involving the application of democratic principles and the formation of independent judgment in…

Investigated whether actors and observers differ in their beliefs about what features of an individual best reflect his/her "authentic self." Results indicate that actors' views differed significantly from observers'. Friend raters believed that their friends' dispositional traits were better indicators than what their friends actually did,…

Examined preschoolers' and second and fifth graders' development of two types of perspective taking: (1) perspective taking based on differences in the information available to two people; and (2) perspective taking based on differences in weighting the same information. (RH)