Education in virtue
Writing to his children’s tutor on the vigil of Pentecost in 1518, St. Thomas More begged him to continually remind them “to put virtue in the first place among goods, learning in the second; and in their studies to esteem most whatever may teach them piety towards God, charity to all, and modesty and Christian humility in themselves.”¹

More’s emphasis on the primacy of virtue in education was based on the premise, re-stated over 400 years later by C.S. Lewis, that “certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.”² In the tradition familiar to More and Lewis, one attains happiness by discerning what is “really true” and conforming oneself to it by the cultivation of virtue.

A virtue is a firm and stable habit of doing what is good and avoiding what is evil. The good in each case is whatever contributes to or protects the true good of the person. A virtuous man has an intellect trained to search for the good, a conscience formed to recognize the good, and a will disciplined to choose it. His whole character has been habitually disposed or inclined to such activity by doing it continually. Simply put, one becomes virtuous by repeatedly performing virtuous acts.³ On this point, Aristotle and Vince Lombardi are in agreement: “Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.”

On the other hand, a vice is a habit that inclines one to shrink from the good and even to prefer evil. A vice is ingrained by repeatedly doing what is opposed to the true good of the person. It is therefore of critical importance in the formation of a virtuous character that one is taught from childhood to respond appropriately to experience,⁴ and accustomed to do good and avoid evil.⁵ The child learns “hands-on,” as it were, what reasonable conduct is, so that, when reason begins to awaken in the child, “he will recognize and salute the friend with whom his education has made him long familiar.”⁶

Properly managed, this early formation does not to limit the child’s personal freedom by imposing external religious, cultural or social constraints. Freedom is here understood as freedom for: for discerning the good that needs to be done, for choosing the good, for doing good.⁷ This kind of freedom is the condition necessary for the internalization of ethical and moral norms that shape the identity of the person. It is liberating, but it is also confining, for it imposes an obligation to distinguish true goods from false, higher goods from lesser. It demands that one form convictions about what is truly good, and live accordingly. One is not free to believe that truth doesn’t matter.⁸

Education in virtue emphasizes that some choices should not be made. Not only do some choices not deserve respect; some choices are reprehensible.⁹ This is obvious when the student chooses to use drugs, or to assault or intimidate others. But long before a student confronts a choice about illicit drug use he will face many choices about doing his homework, skipping class, copying assignments, etc. In making these lesser choices - the most common choices - the student serves an apprenticeship in freedom. He learns that the freedom to choose is accompanied by an obligation to discern the good and to choose wisely.

“Values” education
Against this concept of education for responsible freedom, the Ministry of Education’s Career and Personal Planning Programme proposed the radical autonomy of freedom from: freedom from external ‘constraints’ like truth, right reason, or moral standards (See Appendix “B”). CAPP meant to teach students to be autonomous and powerful, not virtuous. Virtue was never mentioned. The new word was “values.”

Writing at about the time that CAPP was introduced, social critic Iain Benson observed that the whole notion of “values” makes serious discussion of moral issues impossible. Benson’s point was that “values,” whether they are made, chosen, or assimilated, reflect nothing more than the preferences of an individual or group. Someone advocating the importance of “Christian values” will find support among Christians who agree with him, but not among those who think differently. “We all know,” he wrote, “that in contemporary usage, ‘You have your values and I have mine.’ A difference in values is virtually expected and no cause for concern.”¹⁰

Values language is the language of moral relativism. It suited Career and Personal Planning because the mantra, “you-have-your-values-and-I-have-mine” maximized the scope of personal autonomy, while offering the false hope that inculcating such an attitude would lead to peaceful co-existence among persons with different world views.

The evolution of values
CAPP defined “values” as beliefs that people live by, including, among a list of “values,” co-operation, hard work, compassion and respect. Others included “quick and easy solutions”, pleasure, and competition.¹¹ The examples - and 20 others proposed in an exercise that invited students to rank their “values” in order of importance¹² - made nonsense of CAPP’s definition of “values.” They were not beliefs, but personality traits, personal habits, attitudes, and desires and social institutions.¹³

According to CAPP, “values and beliefs” develop and exist as a result of social and environmental influences; they are inherited or learned from “significant others” and “family, friends/peers, school, social/religious organizations, and the media.”¹⁴ Moreover, the beliefs people live by are not and need not be constant. “[S]ome values change over time,” noted one lesson, because they can be “affected by changing circumstances. . . or with education (e.g., new socio-political awareness or understanding.)”¹⁵

If “some values change over time,” the implication is that there are others that do not change. But beyond this single clause, the existence of immutable standards or ‘values’ was not admitted, let alone seriously considered.

Instead, teachers were told to have students consider their own family’s values to determine which have changed, and which might change in future.¹⁶ It was also suggested that students debate the resolution, the family is the primary source of values education. Indicating the direction they wished to see the lesson take, CAPP designers provided the desired counterargument:

Opponents should argue that family values are more strongly influenced by the larger society than the other way around.¹⁷

It appears that CAPP’s notion of “values” was shaped by the metaphor of evolutionary theory.¹⁸ A Darwinist would explain that the eagle’s beak evolved from earlier forms by natural selection, a process involving hereditary and environmental factors, without any tendency toward perfection or pre-determined design. CAPP taught that a person’s values and beliefs are products of a similar process, socio-cultural constructs that evolve over time, without reference to objective truth, goodness or perfection.

Both the eagle’s beak and a family’s values and beliefs are, from a Social Darwinist perspective, accidents of nature. Neither have any moral significance. An eagle’s beak is fit for the life of an eagle and cannot be judged outside that context; it is meaningless to say that an eagle’s beak is better than the beak of a crow. Similarly, a particular belief can be understood and judged only within the context of the “belief system” in which it is found. The conclusion invited by such instruction is that objectively true or absolute moral standards either do not exist or cannot be ascertained with confidence. Notions of right and wrong - like bird beaks - may be different, but one cannot be said to be better than another.¹⁹

In short, CAPP demanded that students shelve their intellectual capacity for critical thinking with respect to moral issues. How, then, could they be expected to deal rationally with conflicts involving irreconcilable moral differences?

A morality of sentiment
CAPP taught that such conflicts be resolved according to students’ feelings about consequences, not according to what they thought about right and wrong. The focus was not on the truth of an opinion or belief, but on identifying true feelings.²⁰ CAPP correctly described this process as confusing, because different feelings are often layered like the skin of an onion, or expressed indirectly. Despite this, it held that feelings provide a sound basis even for decisions with serious moral implications:

Trust your feelings . . . go with the part of yourself that says, “I’m not sure” or “I don’t know.” Saying yes to sexual involvement means that you must be aware of all the consequences and be prepared to deal with them.²¹

CAPP properly noted that recognizing one’s own feelings can provide some personal insight, permit one to empathize with others, and become “stronger in the face of pressures, attacks and challenges.” But the primary reason given by CAPP for the need to be in touch with one’s feelings was that “fear, guilt, embarrassment and self-criticism often block a person from acting in an authentic and spontaneous manner.”²²

The goal, then, was not to encourage students to conform their actions to truth, to moral imperatives or to right reason, but simply to liberate them so that they could act in an “authentic and spontaneous manner.” It offered the following advice:

Rather than responding to “shoulds” and “oughts,” a person who is more aware of his or her own feelings can more easily identify what he or she desires.²³

Professor Donald De Marco predicts just such “an immersion into feelings” when, as a consequence “of a distrust in the capability of the intellect to know truth,” man is left with “only his feelings to serve as a moral compass.” De Marco is aware that excessive preoccupation with rationality can lead to “abstraction which is insensitive to human existence,” and his concern is well-founded. Nonetheless, he believes that man, alienated from reason, “will immerse himself in the darkness of his own private feelings.” And these, he warns, “are often blind and indiscriminate.”²⁴

The incoherence of relativism
The substitution of potentially blind and indiscriminate private feeling for rational judgement reflected the fact that its underlying premise of moral relativism was essentially incoherent, since the central tenet of relativism - that it is certainly true that nothing is certainly true - is self-contradictory.

The contradiction became evident at several points in CAPP lesson plans. For example, students were advised to be true to their own values and beliefs, and asked to consider if premarital sexual involvement would be true to their family values.²⁵ Surely this makes little sense if values and beliefs are constantly changing. Why hold fast to today’s beliefs when they might change next week, next month or next year? Why honour family “values”?

Similarly, teachers were advised to teach students that “abusive physical contact is never appropriate,” even though “physical and verbal abuse are natural ways of expressing anger towards someone.”²⁶ They were told to help students see that “violence is not an acceptable part of any relationship,”²⁷ and to understand that “no one has the right to abuse another person.”²⁸

Why is this? If judging values is not appropriate, and a relationship exists in which violence is tolerated and accepted, why make the absolute judgement that violence is unacceptable? Is the violent person not “acting in an authentic and spontaneous manner”? Why should students not be permitted to “approach these issues in a non-judgemental fashion” and to reach their own conclusions after freely exploring the options?

It may be argued that CAPP’s stand against violence reflected an unchanging value or belief. After all, if “some values change over time”²⁹ the implication is that there are others that do not. But not all people or societies now disapprove of violence, and history provides plenty of examples of societies that have used violence extensively. That many or even most Canadians now disapprove of violence does not prove that violence is objectively wrong. Their disapproval may be nothing more than a contingent fact of history. Besides, at no point did CAPP propose means by which students might distinguish between changing and unchanging “values.”

Deep structure of CAPP³⁰
This fundamental contradiction was never addressed in the curriculum. Indeed: it is not clear that it was even recognized. Instead, the soundness of CAPP’s incoherent relativist view was assumed, and the curriculum and lesson plans structured to impose that view by creating a learning environment with a distinct control orientation. This was masked by the appearance of neutrality created by relativism, values language and “non-judgementalism.” In this it illustrated the point made by Kathleen Gow, who, writing in 1980, challenged the notion of values/morals neutral curriculum:

There is every indication that we have not succeeded in eliminating doctrinal bias from the curricula at all, but are simply trading former models for indoctrination in the ideology of the Sovereign Man and moral relativism.³¹