ABSTRACT
Schools have an important role in teaching young people about their society and the world around them. School also teach lessons about how to build relations and act toward others interpersonally, such as with classmates and teachers, strangers, and family members. This can be done formally or informally in schools. Lessons can be embedded into curricula and textbooks or be ‘hidden’, in comments teachers make, for example. This chapter investigates how schools teach young people about interpersonal relations. First, major theories on sociality and morality in interpersonal relations will be explored. Communitarian critiques of liberal individualism, as well as relational views from Confucianism, care ethics, and recognitive multiculturalism are examined. Next, the chapter considers how schools handle these topics, and teach students about interpersonal relations in terms of family, the school community, and strangers. Although most people do not consider such relations and education about them to be controversial, common practices have limitations. Problems associated with thinking and teaching about interpersonal relations are examined in the last section.
