Reaction against the naive moral absolutism of past historical writing has frequently led to unconditional moral and cultural relativism which is equally dangerous. A viable solution is contingent relativism in historical judgments, combining explicit and examinable criteria of human values and concern for contexts of time and place. (Author/SJL)

The inventory contains three factural scales: independence of judgement, moral relativism, and adventurousness. The item pool was based upon descriptions of the need for autonomy (positive) and for independence (negative). The preliminary English form included the Crowne-Marlowe Social Desirability Scale, and was completed by 233 English-speaking…

Contemporary educational institutions have been faced with emerging social-cultural, spiritual and moral issues that have brought with them new choices in views, cultural orientations, and philosophy. Ultimately, their health well-being is affected. This has created a contextual social crisis that necessitates the need to guide young people in…

For the last 15 years and across Fiji's three universities, over 40,000 students have completed mandatory courses in Ethics and Governance. Emerging from growing perceptions of graduate misconduct, Fiji's 2006 'clean-up' military coup and corporate scandals from Enron to the Fiji National Bank, these courses explore personal, political and…

Although in favor of developmental psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral development, the author cautions about possible results of using moral reasoning discussions in the classroom. These include: (1) indoctrination, (2) moral authoritarianism, (3) relativism, (4) the "morality as medicine" syndrome, (5) and the "doing Kohlberg"…

Collectivist versus individualistic attitudes in China and the United States are compared with particular emphasis on the effects of these attitudes on educational objectives and practice in China. Individualism is interpreted to include attitudes such as personal liberty, individual initiative, moral relativism, and self-direction. This…

Character education in higher education is a challenging enterprise. There are concerns regarding academic freedom, debates about the role of the university, and criticisms of purported indoctrination. Character education initiatives in the past have often erred by neglecting what is known about individual human development, at one extreme, or by…

This paper recommends that the high school journalism curriculum assume a prominent position in the teaching of ethics in the public academy. The paper proposes to lay the foundation for strategies that will foster student journalists' skill and enthusiasm in covering controversial issues, while requiring them to justify their…

This book chronicles, from the point of view of students who are unwilling participants in the process, the transformation of Stanford University from an institution committed to preserving the values of Western civilization to one intent on engineering social change on campus to promote the dogmas of multiculturalism. The book is an insider's…

The search for presuppositions of a people's thought is not new. Octavio Paz and Samuel Ramos have both attempted to describe the assumptions underlying the Mexican character. Paz described Mexicans as private, defensive, and stoic, characteristics taken to the extreme in the "pachuco." Ramos, on the other hand, described Mexicans as…

The project of which this paper is a part consists of three steps. The first step (an American Educational Research Association (AERA) Conference 2000 paper subtitled "Clearing the Terrain") provided a critical overview of current debates on moral development and education, focusing on the relationship between empirical and theoretical…

For a professor who is also an evangelical Christian, it is one of life's ironies that despite her graduate school plans to teach at a large research university, she teaches instead at a small evangelical Christian college. Her concern as an academic is to discover how a person who professes evangelical Christianity can transcend the confines of…

There have been persistent criticisms of Rorty's "liberal ironist" as the postmodern picture of the educated in the liberal utopia. While the modernist (Enlightenment) liberal Thomas McCarthy, who believes in universal rationality as the basis of public morality, criticizes Rorty's view of the liberal ironist for fostering the poverty of public…

Assesses the reliability and validity of the Ethics Position Questionnaire: an instrument with two scales, one measuring idealism and another measuring the rejection of universal moral principles in favor of relativism. (Author/SS)

Noting that our culture has accepted some dangerous beliefs about raising children which is resulting in a generation of poorly educated, apathetic, and amoral children, this book discusses the moral development of children. Drawing on ground-breaking research and the author's years of work in schools, the book presents a program to reintroduce…