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Michael Hand, A Theory of Moral Education. Routledge, New York, 2017. 126 pp. ISBN
9781138898530, $38.95 (pbk)

Reviewed by: Bruce Maxwell, University of Quebec Trois-Rivières, Canada

Here is a rare work that continues faithfully in the analytic tradition. A Theory of
Moral Education is a reminder of both the strengths of conceptual analysis brought to the
problems of education and of its limitations. This book is nothing if not clear. The lucid
writing and the care with which the arguments are laid out, however, make the book’s
natural seams all the more apparent and reveal what can happen when the tidiness of
philosophical analysis meets the untidy world of education.
Some adults, the book begins, have misgiving about the very idea of engaging in
“moral education” in the sense of getting young people to accept that certain rules,
behaviours or norms are categorically right or wrong in the face of reasonable
disagreement on why this is so. In Hand’s analysis, the source of this disquiet is not
scepticism about whether there really are universal standards of conduct to which people
should subscribe. Indeed, one of the book’s premises is that none but the most
philosophically minded ever seriously call into question the common prohibition on such
things as stealing, lying and killing. The problem stems, rather, from a nagging
uncertainty that it may not be possible to provide moral norms with satisfactory rational
justification. “It looks as though any attempt to persuade children of the authority of a
selected moral code, when there are perfectly respectable alternatives available, is bound
to be indoctrinatory,” Michael Hand writes (p. 1).
We live in a society characterized by fundamental disagreement over moral issues
and one in which people subscribe to radically different ideas about what is most
important in life. In this context of moral decentralization, what rational basis could there
be for an adult’s—much less a public school teacher’s—authority to dictate a set of moral
standards to which every child must adhere?
Of course, this question (or some variant on it) was, if anything, the question that
gave rise to the vast theoretical and empirical edifice of classical cognitive
developmentalism (cf. Kohblerg, Levine & Hever, 1981) and its intellectual successor,
the domain-theory based approach to moral education (cf. Nucci, 2001). Whether or not
one agrees with the solution these research programs proposed to the “problem of moral
education”, as Hand calls it, it is tempting to think that there can be little to add to a
debate that vexed a generation of psychologists and philosophers from the 1960s to the
‘90s.
Casting off this baggage, Hand strikes out on a line of inquiry inspired by
evolutionary psychology and David Copp’s (1995) so-called society-centred theory of
morality. According to this theory, there is an intrinsic link between the social purpose of
moral norms and their rational justification. As political philosophers have long observed,
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certain inherent features of the human condition render society prone to instability and
breakdown. What keeps this entropic tendency in check are certain standards of conduct
that work to reduce conflict and maintain cooperative arrangements. Copp’s idea is that
this social function explains the universality of certain moral norms while providing them
with a justificatory base. Insofar as cooperation and stability are in everyone’s interest,
everyone has a good reason to subscribe to moral standards—or at least to those that
really are favourable to stability and cooperation.
The central insight of Hand’s book is that the society-centred theory of morality
contains the seeds of a solution to the problem of moral education sketched above.
Specifically, Hand puts Copp’s theory to work as an analytic device for dividing the
messy genus of real-world moral standards into three distinct species and assigning to
each a particular pedagogical approach: First, there are justified moral standards that
demonstrably do contribute to stability and cooperation (e.g., “do not steal”). Then there
are unjustified moral standards that some people treat like moral standards but whose link
to stability and cooperation, on closer inspection, turns out to be specious (e.g., “do not
masturbate”). Finally, there moral standards whose contribution to stability and
cooperation is a matter of reasonable disagreement (e.g., “vote in elections”). The first
two are the appropriate objects of the approach to moral education Hand refers to as
“directive moral inquiry” (p. 37). Its method is adult-led examination of the justificatory
basis of the moral standard in question with the aim of demonstrating that the standard is
justified or not, as the case may be. The third category of moral standards, by contrast, is
the proper focus of an open-ended justificatory investigation that the adult enters into
with no persuasive intent. Hand refers to this pedagogical approach to moral education as
“nondirective moral inquiry” (p. 37).
In theory, this all seems very convincing but, as always, the devil is in the details.
Hand attempts to provide teachers and parents with concrete guidance on “when they
should be cultivating full moral commitment, when they should be discouraging it, and
when they should be equipping children to form their own considered views,” applying
the framework for rational moral education developed earlier in the book to three discrete
moral standards: “do not give offence,” “do not privately educate your children,” and “do
not engage in homosexual acts” (p. 91). It quickly becomes apparent that there will be no
detailed illustration of moral standards about whose justification there is no reasonable
disagreement, the most contested of the three kinds of moral standard Hand had set out to
elucidate in this book. What at first appears to be a perfectly decent example of such a
standard— “do not give offence”—turns out to be the subject of “reasonable
disagreement among reasonable people […] and for that reason [it] should be taught
nondirectively by moral educators,” Hand says (pp. 98-99). It is a matter of speculation
whether Hand’s analysis of giving offence didn’t work out as intended. Regardless, the
result is so unexpected that it makes one wonder: would the same detailed study of any
other justified moral standards Hand names elsewhere—“do not steal,” “do not lie,” “do
not kill,” etc.—arrive at the same troubling conclusion?
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If so, this would be a serious problem for the theory of moral education put
forward in this book. However, I doubt it would matter much to the “practitioners” of
moral education—i.e. parents and teachers—the book is putatively intended to help (p.
13). Although the reasons for teachers’ reticence about engaging in directive moral
education is an empirical matter, I for one do not see many educators wringing their
hands over the justificatory status of moral standards. In Hand’s reading, moral pluralism
makes educators worry about being “indoctrinatory,” about leading children to believe
that there are legitimate rational grounds for subscribing to certain moral standards when
there are none (p. 9). But what if educators are instead reluctant to engage in directive
moral education as a way of showing respect and tolerance for pupils’ and their families’
personal moral commitments, however nutty those beliefs might seem to educators
themselves? In other words, what if, as far as practitioners are concerned, the “problem of
moral education” is more of an ethical problem than an epistemological one?
Corroborating this alternative reading are the apparently unanticipated but entirely
predictable negative consequences of the theory of moral education for school-family
relations. Without necessarily disagreeing with Hand that schools and teachers should
have a mandate to take a clear and strong stance on the moral status of such private
matters as non-marital sexual acts and homosexuality, I can sympathize with a teacher
who, putting epistemological considerations temporarily to the side, elects to avoid a
directive approach to dealing with these issues. Particularly in the state-funded sector,
promoting views in class that radically depart from parents’ known moral standards risks
undermining parental confidence in the school. It would almost certainly elicit
complaints. For this reason, even if Hand’s theory does not misdiagnose the problem of
moral education, a teacher can be forgiven for being reluctant to adopt the remedy Hand
proposes for fear of its iatrogenic effects.

References
Copp, D. (1995). Morality, normativity and society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kohlberg, L., Levine, C., & Hewer, A. (1981). Moral stages: A current formulation and
a response to critics. Basel: Karger.
Nucci, L. (2001). Education in the moral domain. New York: Cambridge University
Press.