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Original poster

'State schools are creating amoral children'

718 replies

BurgenSnurgen · 15/05/2014 10:16

...because state schools are under so much pressure to improve results that there's no time to teach them right from wrong.

So says Chairman of the Independent Schools Association

Bit speechless really. It's giving me the absolute RAGE.

OP posts:
Slipshodsibyl · 22/05/2014 16:38

Well yes - the imperfectability of humankind!

rabbitstew · 22/05/2014 16:36

Who says sports teachers always teach good sportsmanship? Grin

Slipshodsibyl · 22/05/2014 16:35

Don't the attributes of good sportsmanship teach morality?

Martorana · 22/05/2014 16:34

Definitively not more sport from a moral compass point of view. But as much Div and variations therein as possibl (hark at us with our arcane private school notions!)

Slipshodsibyl · 22/05/2014 16:31

Yes. He is interesting and accessible

rabbitstew · 22/05/2014 16:28

ps I don't mean in the moral sense. Grin

Slipshodsibyl · 22/05/2014 16:28

That was meant for Martorana. You are all typing too fast.

rabbitstew · 22/05/2014 16:28

Slipshodsibyl - No, I haven't. Is it good?

rabbitstew · 22/05/2014 16:28

One of the attractions of religion to many people is that it helps them in their quest for some kind of moral certainty, so people do seem to feel the need for it.

Slipshodsibyl · 22/05/2014 16:27

Ooh. Have you read Steven Pinker's 'the Blank Slate - the modern denial of Human Nature' ?

rabbitstew · 22/05/2014 16:24

So, it would all be cured by more sport, music and div. Best not to go too much into morality, though, or everyone will end up confused! Grin

rabbitstew · 22/05/2014 16:20

So morality is created by evolution? As the world evolves, we interact different with it and our blank slates are therefore written on differently? So we can't become more or less moral, we can just change our view of morality? In which case, the ISA Chairman is wrong, state school children are not being created amoral, they are just having a different morality built into them and the minority in private schools are out of step with current morality. Or are state school children not being written on, but simply writing on each other or remaining blank?! Grin

Martorana · 22/05/2014 16:12

I'm not- that's just what I think. I believe in the "blank slate" view. We are born blank slates, but everything that happens from the moment of our birth forms the people we are. A baby is not a moral being. In my view.

rabbitstew · 22/05/2014 16:02

Wow, Martorana. Really? Why are you so convinced in the rightness of your argument, then?

Slipshodsibyl · 22/05/2014 15:58

Sorry . I expect evolutionary psychology might put it down to something else.

Slipshodsibyl · 22/05/2014 15:57

But i

Slipshodsibyl · 22/05/2014 15:56

I am not sure what ev

Slipshodsibyl · 22/05/2014 15:56

Oh, I believe we do have some intrinsic morality.

happygardening · 22/05/2014 15:56

Not something I've spent hours thinking about but I suppose I thought morality is both intrinsic and extrinsic.

Martorana · 22/05/2014 15:50

No, I don't believe people have intrinsic morality,

What's subtle about that?

happygardening · 22/05/2014 15:45

Psychopaths (a group I struggle with) are sometimes thought to have no intrinsic morality as they lack empathy.

rabbitstew · 22/05/2014 15:37

Can you be human if you have no intrinsic morality? Grin

rabbitstew · 22/05/2014 15:36

So you don't believe in any kind of concept of natural law, then, Martorana?

I wonder whether the Chairman of the ISA was thinking of universal morality when he pondered whether this was possibly lacking in state educated children, or the culturally constructed bit? It's a bit frightening to think he is suggesting that state educated children are having part of their humanity removed from them, as surely it must be if it is otherwise an intrinsic part of being human, as per Slipshodsibyl's point.

happygardening · 22/05/2014 15:29

Too subtle for me too!

Slipshodsibyl · 22/05/2014 15:27

'But if you prefer dogmatism- morals are a cultural construct imposed on essentially amoral beings. '

Sorry you were too subtle for me.

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