The introduction of an Ethics curriculum programme in our schools is explained in the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) document of 2012 as providing an alternative programme for students whose parents decide, for whatever reason, to withdraw their children from Catholic Religious Education (CRE). The latest statistic I have of children who do not attend CRE, which dates back to 2013 and is evidently outdated now, is of 1,411 Maltese and foreign students. The authors of the NCF obviously felt that these children should enjoy some substitute for missing out on the religion lesson but stated, without explanation, that Ethics was “preferred over a Comparative Religious Education programme”, which was another realistic option available to them. However, while they represented Ethics as an alternative to CRE, they continued to feature it in the same curricular area with CRE, and the same was the case with the recently concluded project to translate the NCF into a Learning Outcomes Framework (LOF).

In 2014, before the LOF project started, members of our Department of Education Studies at the University of Malta, myself included, were asked by the Minister of Education to work on an Ethics programme and train teachers to teach it. Our research found that nearly invariably in national programmes, Ethics was indeed taught in non-confessional comparative Religion programmes unlike our CRE. They featured faiths and belief-systems significantly present in their multi-cultural, multi-faith, societies and usually included secular outlooks on life, even the atheist, besides the religious. Hence we had to create our own Ethics programme which could not be confessional or the teaching of a particular religious moral doctrine; nor could it be comparative or about religions since the NCF had specifically ruled it out, so this was no easy task.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of misrepresentation about this programme, mainly by those who have neither read nor engaged with it. Hence I shall try to describe its main features as succinctly as I can while doing as much justice to it as I can. The main purpose in primary schooling, to begin with, is to socialize pupils from diverse belief and ethical cultures into the evolving multi-cultural and pluralistic reality which is Maltese society today to foster mutual-understanding and tolerance. It assumes that there are key ethical values that are shared and ‘uncontroversial’ which are cross-cultural and should unite people. Values like respect for truth, honesty, fairness, compassion, understanding, loyalty, courage, generosity, and so on. Students in the programme learn that in a multi-cultural society these values are understood and practised differently. Understanding this and the different moral cultures and traditions that feature in our society (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and secular humanism) is the first step towards bringing them together in their diversity, and eventually to see themselves as members of the same moral community despite their differences. This requires cultivating their moral imagination to get them to see others who are different, even significantly different, from them, even strangers, as one of us, as members of the same society and equally human, and therefore as worthy of moral consideration and respect. Respect is taught not just towards other human beings but also towards animal life and the environment they live in, natural and constructed. The students will learn to value friendship, sharing with others, fairness, justice, helping others, compassion, honesty, loyalty, solidarity, tolerance, rights, responsibilities, and so on. A strong case for friendship with others in the classroom community and the school, for sharing with others, and for solidarity is made from the beginning, for recognizing the right of everyone to play and participate in order to target bullying, to the extent that the class is encouraged to discuss and make a commitment against it.

The whole Ethics programme is taught through the numerous resources offered by philosophy, and it draws on considerable work done over the last decades in philosophy programmes with children in classroom settings. Central to these programmes is the representation of the classroom community as a ‘community of inquiry’, which is the responsibility of the ethics teacher to set up from the first years. A community of inquiry is one that values discussion, dialogue, debate, the exchange of ideas and outlooks in a social environment which is free and safe and where participants feel that they and their views are respected; it is therefore a community of friends. The community is a place where understanding is built and consensus valued, but also a place of non-violent struggle where arguments are won, if at all, by persuasion. Participants in the community learn value rules and an authority to interpret and enforce them, the teacher in this case. Participation cultivates their intellectual virtues like honesty, respect for truth, loyalty in debate and to the argument, fairness, tolerance, trust, moderation, courage, consideration of other views and ideas, and so on, and their intellectual and communicative skills like putting ideas, views, information, across economically (to allow space for others), reasoning, listening, weighing, exploring, arguing, evaluating, analysing, negotiating, and so on. These virtues and skills are obviously also democratic besides being ethical (the separation of ethics from politics is fine), so that the community of inquiry is also a democratic community (hence the Ethics programme is also an education for democratic citizenship). Finally, besides being a community of friends and a democracy the community of inquiry is itself ethical; its ethical values as practised in its way of life.

The secondary school programme (especially in Forms 1 and 2) consolidates and builds on this primary programme; the level of inquiry is more sophisticated due to the further development of the students’ intellectual and communicative skills. The manner of teaching through discussion etc continues right through, but a new emphasis is made on the importance of self-reflection besides communication; reflecting on oneself and one’s own life personally and in its relation to others. The value of self-respect and respect for others becomes more pronounced and achieves a wider meaning between Forms 3-5. Students are encouraged to reflect in a critical way on their own ethical beliefs and conduct both towards themselves in their private life and towards others. In both cases they are sensitized to the ethical importance of the side-effects, the consequences, of what they do for themselves and for others. On the other hand a more critical outlook colours their participation in classroom discussions which are extended more outside the classroom to subjects and issues of a more general nature and encountered in the wider society including the media in its diverse forms where views, opinions, arguments of an ethical nature are encountered. The use of the social media itself is raised as an ethical issue. Students are encouraged to reflect critically on these views issues and so on, and taught to evaluate their validity, reasonableness, fairness, adherence to truth with the assistance of some elementary logic. They learn to regard the disagreement in ethical matters as endemic to a society that values freedom of belief and that tolerates cultural (religious, ethnic and other) and therefore itself to be understood, tolerated and debated (this is after all what they have learnt by belonging to a community of inquiry).

To expand a bit on these generalised objectives of the secondary programme. In Form 3, the general theme is ‘Respect for Self and Others’. Students are encouraged to value self-reflection, living an ‘examined life’ in Socratic language; with it they learn self-responsibility and ultimately self-mastery; the ability to be in control of their lives and to make responsible life-choices for themselves as they relate with others. They learn to distinguish good from bad role models, to promote a healthy regard for themselves, for their minds and bodies, and to distinguish self-reflection, which is healthy, from an unhealthy kind of self-absorption which is obsessive, narcissistic, and may lead to practices that are harmful to oneself and others; namely various kinds of addictions, and self-inflicted harm (which includes irresponsible risk-taking, self-exposure, and sexual activity). The whole Ethics programme’s thrust against bullying is more specifically addressed to the practice of cyber-bullying, and students are sensitized to the debates on cyber ethics. This focus on the meaning of ethical responsibility and the issues it raises is shifted to the ‘Ethics of Care’ as the general theme of the Form 4 programme. Self-care is represented as a fundamental personal responsibility and including care for others, particularly for the more vulnerable. Care for others is represented as an indispensable part of caring for oneself. One of its subsidiary module (there are three to each theme), ‘The Ethics of Dependence’ represents dependence as a feature of our humanity. It explores, from the perspective of the ethics of care, our dependence on others in childhood; then we pass into adulthood where others are dependent on us, then finally to old age where we may again become dependent on others. What is explored here is basically the ethics of mutuality and reciprocity, of giving and receiving, of care and generosity towards those who are temporarily or permanently dependent on us through their immaturity or disability. The last module, in Form 5 (which is time-restricted because of the SEC exam at the end of it) move seamlessly into ‘Life and Death Issues’, which are particularly sensitive and controversial, but which they have already come across in their lives and possibly experienced, and which they are now mature enough to consider and discuss responsibly with their teachers.

I’m sure I’ve done nothing approaching full justice to what is a very rich and complex, but not over-ambitious, programme which is intended to address issues of diversity and social cohesion and to contribute towards an ethics of understanding and respectful co-existence in our pluralistic, multi-cultural society, the democratic resolution of difference, an ethics of environmental responsibility, an ethical treatment of everything living, human or animal, an ethics of zero tolerance for bullying in whatever form, an ethics of cyber responsibility, and so on. I would very strongly discourage: (1) putting it in the hands of teachers not attuned to it and not specifically trained to teach it, and (2) encouraging the idea that this is another subject students can hook onto late to boost their SEC certification. I would, on the other hand, encourage parents who may consider choosing it for their children to commit to it early for the obvious reason that it is developmental, a series of building-blocks.

 

Professor Wain areas of specialisation in philosophy are chiefly education, ethics and political philosophy. He was also appointed Dean of the Faculty of Education at Malta’s university. Apart from playing a leading role in Malta’s national educational policy development, and in the setting of the national curriculum, he continued to contribute actively in the field as chairman of the Foundation for Tomorrow’s Schools, and of the Foundation for Educational Services.