ABSTRACT
Mere justice is, upon most occasions, but a negative virtue, and only hinders us from hurting our neighbour. Traditionally throughout the whole Western world the main moral teacher has been the family, usually reinforced by the church. In the UK, during the last forty or so years, there have been developments that make both the need for and the difficulty of effective moral education in the schools greater than ever before. Crime did not pass the million mark until 1964, and it climbed steadily until it reached a peak of nearly 5.6 million in 1992. It currently seems to have reached a plateau of about eleven times the rate in the early 1950s. This chapter explores whether there are any further essentials that must be included in any syllabus for secular moral education. And whether it is possible and desirable to include anything more than essentials in what it is hoped could become an agreed-upon syllabus of moral education.
