| In 2006 the McGuinty Liberal government of Ontario issued the draft proposal for its new moral education program, titled Finding Common Ground: Character Development in Ontario Schools, K-12. The goal of the initiative was to address several perceived needs in Ontario's youth, including moral development, academic improvement, civic mindedness, job readiness, global and national citizenship, intercultural respect, and violence prevention. The overriding goal was to create a public consensus on values through educating youth in a set of values that the government assumed to be were universal and democratically-chosen.;What the government did not have, it seems, was careful theorists to work out an integrated, rational strategy. In the absence of time (or will) for sober thought, the government forged ahead; consequently, Character Development is premised on no rational worldview or philosophy, and is unlikely to conduce in any predictable way to the moral development of youth. The study that follows endeavors to trace key program deficiencies, and to perform some of the pressing critical and philosophical tasks that are necessary if moral education in Ontario is to be adequately rationalized.;Key Words: autonomy, character, education, ethics, developmentalism, legitimation, liberalism, neutrality, morality, philosophy, pluralism, spirituality, virtues.;However there are good reasons for skepticism. Firstly, the research the government cited to support its cause was astonishingly thin and contradictory. Additionally, the documents themselves contained questionable claims about moral development, the condition of students, the implications of pluralism, the purposes of schooling and the meaning of morality itself. Another problem was that the documents lacked internal integrity, frequently advancing contradictory positions. Moreover, they were marked by inflated, utopian claims of efficacy. No data collection or testing methods accompanied the program. In short, it was an exercise in political optics, and one of dubious consequence. |
