ABSTRACT
Liberal educators have long insisted on a fundamentally moral purpose in fostering understandings and capacities that will enable the young not just to take their place in the world but to respond to it critically and creatively. The aim in moral matters is thus to equip them to reflect critically on the values they meet, and to develop and exercise a capacity for autonomous moral judgement so that they can lead their own lives authentically and play a role in the progressive refashioning of the social world. In recent years, confidence in this neutralist vision has come under attack from two quarters. On the one hand, some philosophers and educational theorists see critical reflection as a necessary but not sufficient response to the cultural pluralism and existential anomie of the modern world, and urge the claims of shared normative frameworks or of virtue ethics in the formation of moral dispositions (see Carr 1991). On the other, politicians and pundits call for directive moral guidance to combat a perceived decline in personal conduct and a claimed erosion of the moral fabric of society. Whilst neither concern reinforces the claims of the other, their twin implication - that there are real current problems of moral motivation and disposition and that these arise in part from a flawed theory and practice of moral education - demands a considered response.
