'State schools are creating amoral children'

[BurgenSnurgen]

...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.

Oh, I believe we do have some intrinsic morality.

I am not sure what ev

But i

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

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

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.

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?!

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!

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

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

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

ps I don't mean in the moral sense.

Yes. He is interesting and accessible

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!)

Don't the attributes of good sportsmanship teach morality?

Who says sports teachers always teach good sportsmanship?

Well yes - the imperfectability of humankind!

I've been the parent of serious sportspeople for 13 years now. The times when sportsmanship has been considered by parents, players or coaches to be more important than winning I could count on the fingers of a couple of hands.

Ah. Now I have a close relative who earned his living coaching sport at the highest levels to people up to about 22 years old. He was very concerned with beating the opponents but would have been unimpressed by what you have witnessed. He was very fond of a strong opponent. His obituaries were testament to this.

I don't believe much is innate either; sometimes I'd refer to 'human nature' as a lazy and, in my opinion inaccurate, way to indicate 'behaviour which is normative in our society', but I don't believe that human nature is really 'a thing', and certainly not that there is any innate 'morality'. Tabula rasa and materialism for me.

Been reading this and anytime I read your post Martorana you remind me of the woman this young Nigerian girl spoke about in 7:45 to 9:45

That seems odd, rude and stupid in pretty much equal measures, Nneoma

[backs very slowly away from the loon]

Slipshod- sadly, I think your relative was the exception rather than the norm.

' I'd refer to 'human nature' as a lazy and, in my opinion inaccurate, way to indicate 'behaviour which is normative in our society','

I would suggest that some fundamental human values have remained constant over huge tracts of time, despite changes in what is considered normative in our society and that suggests that there is such a thing as Human Nature. Whether it is more Hobbesian than Rousseauian, I do not know.