Moral education for beginners

ABSTRACT This article examines the issue of moral education and especially the role moral educators should take in schools. It critiques a number of well‐known positions, principally those of absolutism, the specification of content and relativism. The author suggests that, though the debate is an immensely difficult one, it is possible to suggest that what we should in fact be doing is giving children in school those attitudes, dispositions, abilities, concepts, skills and other qualities which constitute a good performer in the area of morality. He concludes by providing a list of demonstrably relevant features of this enterprise.