ABSTRACT
For the last 12 years, I, along with other academicians, have been involved in developing and researching an approach to moral education that we have called “the Just Community approach.” The first thing I want to stress is that the approach assumes a much different relationship between theory and practice than did our first efforts in moral education, i.e., classroom hypothetical dilemma discussion. These early efforts generated disputes and questions as to whether academicians should involve themselves in programs in the schools or prisons. Nevertheless there was a sense that moral education was a wave of the future in America. Foundations were eager to fund moral education projects and a number of school systems were eager to be the sites of such projects. None of us felt we had an established theory and research base for moral education but I at least felt such a base could only be developed through engaging in the process. I agreed with Dewey when he said of education, “One can never have a science of bridge-building before building bridges.”
