| Moral education is a responsibility of home, state, and Church. This study used Dewey's conceptualization of moral education as aiding students to strive for, choose, and act in accordance with the common good. Historically, the Catholic Church and its schools have been dedicated to this end. The Catholic Church has depended greatly upon its teachers, to partner with parents, to achieve this responsibility.;Traditionally, Ugandan parents, relatives, and elders morally educated their young. The Church and the state aided in this process with the introduction of Christianity and formal education to Uganda in the late 1880s. In the 1990s, the Uganda Government (1992) and the Uganda Episcopal Conference (1997) published policies mandating Ugandan teachers to address the moral education of students.;This study surveyed perceptions of 237 Ugandan teachers from seven randomly selected coeducational day and boarding Catholic secondary schools within the Diocese of Kabale, Uganda regarding the degree to which and the manner in which the teachers responded to the moral education mandates of the Catholic Church and state. The study determined the degree of which teachers utilized Ryan's (1995) six E's of moral education (Example, Ethical Environment or Ethos, Exhortation, Explanation, Experience, and Expectations of Excellence) to promote six moral skills (Care, Empathy, Fairness or Justice, Respect, Responsibility, and Service) Jones (2000) identified as essential to students' moral growth.;The survey results suggest that the respondents (N=273) as a whole are fulfilling their duty as moral educators for their students, and have responded positively to the Church and state mandates relative to this task. In addition, the respondents perceive moral teaching to be the fostering of moral goodness in students cognitively, affectively, and behaviorally. The data revealed that the respondents addressed the moral education of students very often (at least weekly) in their classes using a variety of strategies, namely the six E's advocated by Ryan (1995): Example, Ethical Environment or Ethos, Exhortation, Explanation, Experience, and Expectations of Excellence. Moreover, the teachers reported that they are using these six E's to fostering the essential moral growth skills of Care, Empathy, Fairness or Justice, Respect, Responsibility, and Service. |
