Introduction
Ethics in Modern Life
Principles of Character Ethics
Work, Community, and Character Formation
Community Based Learning
Notes

Work, Community, and the Development of Moral Character

By Dayle Bethel

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Introduction

Work, I propose to show, serves as a key mechanism in the human growth and learning process. Authentic work, that is, work that is attuned to the nature of the unique individual one is, is essential for the development of moral character and social consciousness. In this essay, I will draw particularly from the pioneering work of David Norton, a colleague with whom I spent many hours in close fellowship and stimulating intellectual adventuring over a period of nearly two decades.1 Our discussions developed out of a mutual concern and recognition that in the societies in which we lived and worked, Japan in my case, the United States in his, a low state of public and private morals and an accompanying lack of integrity in social life have become increasingly evident in recent years. Some social critics had begun to speak of a "crisis of moral character" in these societies. In Japan, for example, scarcely a week goes by without some new revelation of bribery, favoritism, insider trading and theft, collusion among government and business leaders at the highest levels. But not only at the highest levels. Graft, political payoffs, and personal gain at public expense permeate Japanese society at every level. A current case recently exposed involved a group of doctors and hospital administrators who were found to have hoarded vast sums of money by falsifying hospital records and collecting health insurance payments for empty beds. And Americans certainly cannot claim that their country is any better or any different in this respect.

Ethics in Modern Life

This situation, according to Norton, is due to the fact that integrity rarely occurs as a personal characteristic in either country, and that this lack of integrity is a result of the pervasive influence of modern ethics. A direct consequence of a lack of integrity in a society is the kind of rampant corruption and moral decay we are now witnessing. Norton notes in his writings that modern ethics discards the virtue of integrity as being inconsequential in human affairs. Since integrity, and the other moral virtues which integrity produces, constitute the core of a truly human life, its absence in a society has far-reaching consequences.

We can begin to grasp the extent of the influence of modern ethics in industrial societies by contrasting it with pre-modern or classical ethics. The basic principles of classical ethics can be found in the ancient cultures of both the East and the West. Modern ethics, on the other hand, is an outgrowth of the scientific-industrial revolution which began in the West some four hundred years ago. The domination of Japanese culture by modern ethics is due in part to Japan's choice of the American model of industrial development during the early decades of this century and its reinforcement following defeat in World War II. Modern ethics can be best understood as a revolution in human thought which occurred in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. The roots of modern ethics can be found in the realpolitic of Niccolo Machievelli and Thomas Hobbes and in the classical liberalism of John Locke.2

The contrast I want to emphasize can be considered under the headings of, "ethics of rules" and "ethics of character." Modern ethics is an ethics of rules, whereas classical ethics is an ethics of character. These two modes of ethical theorizing lead to greatly different types of personality structure, as well as greatly different types of personal and social behavior. (And, it should be noted, greatly different types of institutional structures). Rules ethics and character ethics start from very different primary questions. For modern moral philosophy the primary question is, "What is the right thing to do in particular situations?", and it is answered by finding the rule that applies to the given situation and acting in accordance with it. The source of human behavior is understood, in this instance, as being external to the person. One's behavior is determined by calling upon rules formulated by others than oneself.

By contrast, classical morality begins with the question, "What is a good life for a human being?" This leads directly to the problem of the development of moral character, because any adequate description of a good human life will necessarily include attributes that are not evident in persons in the beginnings of their lives, but are developmental outcomes. The attributes on which classical ethics focuses are the moral virtues, and it will here suffice to refer to Plato's famous four--wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice--to recognize that none of them can be expected of children, but only of persons in later life, and only in the later life of persons in whom the requisite moral development occurs.

Principles of Character Ethics

Classical or character ethics rests on two presuppositions. One is that there is something innate in every human being which guides that person's life, something which is unique to that individual. In classical Greek philosophy, this "something" was called "daimon"; in Roman culture it was referred to as "genius," and the American Renaissance thinker, Ralph Waldo Emerson, used the same term. Norton, a founding member of the contemporary character ethics movement in philosophy, used the terms "natural talents" and "personal excellences" to signify this innate something which resides within and guides each individual's life. Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, a Japanese educator, described this innate "something" as an inborn capacity in every human being to create value. These innate potential personal excellences (genius) are "potential" in that they await progressive actualization over time. Until they are actualized, they are simply possibilities.

It is through discovering and actualizing these few, interrelated possibilities which are uniquely one's own, that one finds life meaning and purpose. As this occurs, there wells up from within the individual the motivation to actualize them even when actualization requires sacrifices and involves great effort and pain. Conversely, in those situations in which an individual attempts to actualize possibilities which are not one's own, this internal motivating power is lacking and must be supplied from sources external to the individual.

It is through the discovering and actualizing of one's own unique potential that a person finds true happiness and life satisfaction, a deep down happiness that can come to a person in no other way. At the same time, the full actualization of any person's potential manifests objective worth in the world which can be enjoyed and utilized by others who need and can appreciate it. Thus, the split between self-interest and other interest to which modern ethics gives rise has no basis here.

Strong objection to this position has come from "environmentalism," the doctrine spawned within the past century by rigorously empirical psychology and sociology, which until very recently was widely accepted, at least in Western societies, as "common sense." According to the environmentalist view, "personality" in any differentiated sense is the product of cultural factors, coming into being in the growing person's progressive interiorization of cultural contents--likings, aversions, norms, beliefs--which are prevalent in the life of one’s culture and family. The primary objection to this view, Norton asserts, is that it ascribes to personhood a radical duality that is both theoretically unintelligible and practically unworkable.

A second presupposition of character ethics is the unique, irreplaceable potential worth of every human being. That is, each individual human being's worth is equal to that of every other individual. This presupposition is in contrast with the conventional belief that "genius," or "natural talents", are haphazardly distributed. (Geniuses, in modern thinking, are those lucky two or three percent of a population who are endowed with "greatness"). But, according to character ethics, in their root meaning as potential personal excellences, "natural talents" are universally distributed but haphazardly recognized and, consequently, haphazardly cultivated.

Work, Community, and Character Formation

In essence, then, to be a person is to be an innate potential excellence requiring to be actualized, and responsibility for such actualization is the foundation of moral life. The reason that work is regarded as an unpleasant necessity in modern societies is that persons, by innate disposition, differ greatly from one another with regard to the work that is theirs to do. For each person, there are many kinds of good, useful, productive work that are nevertheless intrinsically unrewarding. On the other hand, there are a few (usually interrelated) kinds of work that will be experienced as intrinsically rewarding, such that the individual will identify with them and on his or her own initiative invest the best of the self in them.

But currently--as for several centuries--no attempt is made to match persons to their meaningful work (or in education, to assist them toward the self-knowledge that such matching requires). In consequence, persons who by accident or good fortune find their meaningful work are extremely few, and the vast majority, having no experience to the contrary, endorse the prevailing view that work is an unpleasant necessity.

Within the context of the classical philosophical traditions of both the East and the West, then, and contemporary character ethics as its modern and more fully developed expression, nothing is more important for those who would nurture children than, first, assisting the child in discovering and recognizing one’s unique potential excellences or natural talents, and, second, supporting the child in the developmental task of actualizing those potential excellences. Such guidance should be the primary contribution to the child's growth by both the family and the school. And in a good society, this initial contribution to the child's welfare will be supplemented by systematic efforts to aid individuals in their search for intrinsically rewarding work.

Meaningful work during the growth years is essential for the development in individuals of moral character. But moral character, and its offspring, social consciousness, can evolve in human personalities only in a nurturing environment. It is here that the crucial role of community comes into sharp focus. The pivotal role of the local community in human learning and character formation was the theme of a remarkable book published in Japan in 1903.3 The author, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, a Japanese teacher, held that direct, intimate contact with nature and with caring persons, within the context of a local community environment, was an indispensable element in the development of moral character in children and young people. The local community, he maintained, contains everything necessary for effective learning:
If we think seriously about it, we can see that every aspect of this universe can be observed in this small area of our homeland. And because our homeland is the place where we live, where we walk, where we see and hear and gain impressions, it is possible for us to observe all these things directly. Thus, it is possible for us to explain the general nature of complex phenomena anywhere in the world through use of examples which we can find in abundance even in the most remote village or hamlet..... (Chapter 2, pp. 20-21)

Let me stress my basic position again; every aspect of the entire universe can be found in the small, limited area of our home community. But we have to be sensitive to these untold riches all around us and we must learn how to be effective observers. (Chapter 2, p. 23)
Makiguchi was driven by his insights into this reality of human existence. He sensed that the social, economic, and political conditions developing in the Japan of his day threatened the existence of local communities and the natural world. He feared for his society and its people, especially its children, if Japan were to lose the intimate, interdependent connections between people, their communities, and the land. The underlying cause of this situation, he believed, was the importation into Japan of the Western system of compulsory education which isolated children in school rooms during the learning years of childhood. He became so preoccupied with this concern, he wrote on one occasion, that he could not think of anything else.

This conviction of the indispensability of community and rootedness in human experience is shared by growing numbers of people today. David Orr, a contemporary educator, points to the difference between an inhabitant and a resident to emphasize the significance and supreme importance of the principle of rootedness in human life.4 "An inhabitant," Orr writes, "is rooted in a place, in a community, whereas a resident is a rootless occupant. An inhabitant and a particular habitat cannot be separated without doing violence to both." The global environmental crisis, he believes, has been created by the "virtual disappearance of inhabitants rooted in communities and contemporary society's mass producing of residents to take their place. This is because the inhabitant and a place mutually shape each other. The resident, on the other hand, shaped by forces beyond himself, becomes that moral non-entity we know as a ‘consumer,’ supplied by invisible resource networks which damage his and others' places."

John Gatto, winner of New York City's Teacher of the Year Award in 1991, expresses similar convictions. "One thing I know," he writes, "is that eventually you have to come to be a part of a place, part of its hills and streets and waters and people--or you will live a very, very sorry life as an exile forever." And of communities, he writes that "an important difference between communities and institutions is that communities have natural limits, they stop growing or they die."5

The loss in our modern civilization of community and the experience of rootedness in a particular habitat has had far reaching consequences for human beings and their societies. Contemporary life, according to one perceptive critique of our present civilization, is characterized by increasing entropy, economic and technological chaos, ecological disaster, and ultimately, psychic dismemberment and disintegration.6 One has only to read of the horror described in accounts of such incidents as the Columbine High School massacre to realize how accurate Morris Berman's depiction of modern culture is. According to him, we have created a "disenchanted" world, "a world of mass administration and blatant violence, a world in which persons are alienated from each other, from nature, and from themselves, a world populated by human shells with a "sickness in their souls." The recovery of community is central to any hope for a peaceful world order. As M. Scott Peck has written: "In and through community lies the salvation of the world."7

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Community Based Learning

Translated into practical terms, these principles governing human growth and learning and the roles of work and community in learning can be summarized, for the purposes of this essay, in the following manner:

  1. The earth is perceived as a unity and all phenomena on the earth, including human beings, are perceived as inter-connected and interdependent.

  2. Education is organized in terms of a specific place, a "community" or a "region," that is, a localized environment, which the student can experience directly.

  3. The curriculum consists of the interconnected phenomena making up the natural and social systems within that local environment. Books and other second-hand materials can be used in support of the direct, personal experiencing of natural phenomena by the learner, but not in place of direct experience.

  4. Direct experience learning implies and requires that learning take place in the midst of the phenomena, natural and social, which constitute the environment, that is, the community which the child can experience directly at each stage of development. Classrooms and buildings serve as resource centers and for some kinds of skill development and as gathering places for planning, reflecting on the things observed and studied in their natural setting, comparing perceptions and understandings of phenomena with fellow-learners and with books and other second-hand material.

  5. Learning is never imposed, but grows out of each learner's own curiosity, questions, and explorations stemming from personal interests and motivation. In other words, learning must be a process of elicitation, of drawing out the unique potential within each student, and not, as in most of today's schools, inculcation or putting in of information which someone else has decided is necessary.

  6. Responsibility for guiding children and young people in this community based learning interaction is shared by parents, learning counselors, mentors, resource specialists, older students, and other adults in their varied community roles and specialties.

It is not possible within the framework of this chapter to consider all of the implications of such a perception and approach to teaching and learning, but let me note just two imperatives. First, in the traditional perception, a child's education is perceived to begin when she enters elementary school or, perhaps, kindergarten, and to be the responsibility of teachers and educational administrators. In the alternative perception, her education begins at birth and is her responsibility, guided and nurtured by her parents or other adult guardians.8 The child's learning, as she grows older and becomes aware of the larger world beyond her family, will essentially be an extension and expansion of the discovery and exploratory studies and activities she has been engaged in under the general guidance of her parents.9 There will be two differences: First, her exploratory activities will expand to include the larger immediate community in which she lives, later the region of which her local community is a part and, in time, her learning interests and activities, her "community," will become planetary, providing the early stages of her learning have been well grounded.

Another difference is that other persons will now begin sharing with her parents the responsibility of guiding her learning. Some of these other persons may be associated with a community resource center, where there will be mentors, librarians, counselors, and others who can help her, still in close coordination with her parents, to develop a program of learning, exploration, and community participation. Her program will develop naturally out of what she and others have learned about her interests and inner potential. The second imperative is that included in such a guided program of direct learning, there will be opportunity for each child to engage in some type of meaningful work in an apprenticeship or part-time work experience with a cooperating business in the community, an artist, a professional person, the community government, on a farm, etc. This is a crucial element. The opportunity to participate in the life of her community through sharing in its productive work will do two things for a child. First, it will enable her to feel and be an important, functioning, part of the natural world and understand its interrelationships. Second, it will give her opportunity to gain further understanding of and confidence in her inner self.

The nature of a child's work experiences will change as she grows older. At first, it will consist of sharing in the necessary work of her family. Wise parents will have permitted her to begin helping with real jobs when she was very small--setting the table, cleaning, taking out the trash, baking cookies, etc.10 She will have grown up understanding that everyone in her family community shares in doing the work necessary to the family's welfare and survival. Work experience in the larger community will build on and extend this earlier introduction to work and sharing of responsibility. In cases in which the early experience is lacking or inadequate, the community mentor's role--and the opportunity to make a crucial difference in a young child's life--increases in significance.

Every person who would seek to improve education--whether teacher, parent, or some other creative person--must do so in concrete situations, with whatever combination of constraints and assets the situation affords, but guided by sound principles of teaching and learning. The extent to which existing educational structures permit one to apply sound principles is a part of the situation which every change agent must deal with. But perhaps the time has come at last, as the flaws and dehumanizing dimensions of our centuries old scientific-industrial culture become increasingly apparent, when inadequate educational structures can be changed or transcended and all who bear educational responsibility will be freed to apply principles of teaching and learning which are compatible with the growth and actualization needs of learners. This can be our hope as we enter a new century and a new millennium.

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Notes

1.

A second source of the ideas and insights of this chapter is the writings of Tsunesaburo Makiguchi. His monumental work, Jinsei Chirigaku (A Geography of Human Life), published in 1903, together with later writings provide an outline for a holistic, community-based approach to education that is just beginning to be recognized in Japan.

2.

"Education for Moral Integrity," in Dayle Bethel(ed.), Compulsory Schooling and Human Learning (San Francisco: Caddo Gap Press, 1994), p.4. See also Norton's Personal Destinies, (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1976).

3.

Makiguchi, Jinsei Chirigaku, op. cit.

4.

David W. Orr, "Ecological Literacy: Education for the Twenty-First Century" in Ron Miller, ed., New Directions in Education (Brandon, Vermont: Holistic Education Press, 1991), p. 91.

5.

John Taylor Gatto, in Skole: The Journal of Alternative Education, Vol. 9, No. 2 (1992), p. i.

6.

Morris Berman, The Reenchantment of the World, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), p. 15.

7.

M. Scott Peck, The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987).

8.

Obviously, this implies the need for more effective education for parents. However, the realization that many parents are not presently adequately prepared to fulfill this role does not justify disregard of the principle involved.

9.

Invariably, this kind of statement is met with the observation that today's parents are just too busy to spend this kind of time with a child. I have found that an effective answer is that every family has to solve its own problems, but parents who love their child will take enough time to get intimately acquainted with that child. They may enlist the help of grandparents, older brothers or sisters, or perhaps close neighbors, under their guidance. Even good baby sitters or understanding nursery school teachers can help parents carry out their responsibility to their child. The main thing is that the child have parents (or parent substitutes) who understand and accept their responsibility for the child's learning through integration into its two worlds of nature and of people. This parental responsibility extends from infancy through adolescence.

10.

This, of course, does not happen in many families, and the reason it doesn't is easy to understand. Very soon after a child begins to walk and communicate, she is deeply motivated to model the behavior of the adults around her who are important to her. She wants to help. She wants to do the things those adults do.
She wants to be recognized as an important member of her social world. Here is where so many parents fail. When a child wants to help set the table, pour the milk, stir the cookies, or whatever, how natural--and routine--it is for a busy, tired, impatient mother to respond: "You can't do that, you'll break it." Or "No, you are too little, go into the other room and play." "No, this is for big people." How many of these precious, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities are missed! This is the beginning of miseducation.

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Table of Contents


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