Moral Instruction and Story Telling

Stories are an excellent way to convey moral lessons. Movies are a good way to tell stories. I have shown The Keys of the Kingdom with Gregory Peck and The Inn of the Sixth Happiness with Ingrid Bergman in my home for moral instruction.

Upon a friend's recommendation I bought The Emperors Club in DVD. Because I was not personally familiar with it, I was watching it without requesting my son to join me. He wandered into the room, found the story interesting and stayed to watch it. I'm glad he did because it was a movie that conveyed moral instruction while entertaining us.

A good show or story is captivating and has full bodied, complex characters in challenging circumstances. They make an impression.

When I ran for the local school board I recommended Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans be incorporated into the curriculum, particularly in history. Plutarch's biographies are like stories, bringing to life famous and important people and giving insight into their characters. My 4th grade boy and I are presently going through the life of Alexander the Great. I ran for the school board because I wanted all the children of Plano, Texas, to have the same quality education as the Plano children whose parents provide tutoring.

The philosopher Richard Rorty has said that moral education is best taught by works of fiction that help us understand and sympathize with other people. The philosopher David Hume, in his work, Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, has also said that stories are a good way to provide moral instruction. But if we use stories for moral instruction in the schools we must be very careful.

A friend brought to my attention an article, Little Manchurian Candidates by Matt James, that describes a badly botched attempt by a school to provide moral instruction for the students through stories.

I have for a long time felt that moral education is the purview of the parents and the schools should stay away from that topic. Yet, the staggering amount of corruption in contemporary society indicates a lack of moral instruction in many households.

Education is an important ingredient in the glue that holds society together, so moral instruction should be included in education. Yet, we cannot depend on professional educators to assemble that part of the curriculum. Only the involvement of the parents will provide a system of moral instruction with community support and representative of community standards.

We parents must be more involved in the school curriculum.

Robert