ABSTRACT
The just community approach assumes a much different relationship between theory and practice than did our first efforts in moral education, which took the form of classroom discussion of hypothetical dilemmas. The philosophic rationale for the practice of Socratic dilemma discussion also seemed theoretically sound. It rested on two arguments about moral development as the aim of moral education. The first argument, which is reminiscent of J. Dewey, considers that development defines the process of education. It claims that the developmental approach is a third alternative to relativistic individualism on the one side and indoctrination on the other. The second argument is that a higher stage is a better stage, culminating in stages of principled moral reasoning. Some teachers were quite innovative about curriculum, and would include moral discussion, not with the purpose of increasing the level of moral reasoning, but in order to relate moral discussion to the way in which children experienced and thought about literature and history.
