Mireille Falardeau et Michel Loranger Le choix de stratégies ... - CSSE

DISCUSSION NOTES / DÉBAT 449
a coherent doctrine. He has already pointed out that our society is characterized
by pluralistic sets of beliefs. How will cordoning these off into separate communities
help us maintain common bonds? If Holmes believes in developing virtue,
then its public pursuit as a common good must surely be a key part of the exercise.
The alternative looks like small pools of goodness in the midst of swamps
of modern malaise, and in a highly interdependent world it is hard to see how
such a solution could long exist.
Holmes is concerned with the promotion of virtue — the education of citizens
committed to honesty, justice, courage — and suggests that what he calls a
MacIntyre School is the way to do this. Holmes does not really clarify what he
means by such a school, but from the preceding section of his paper we conclude
that choice and the absence of progressive educational practices would be among
its prominent features, as would emphasis on “content, substance, virtue, as
distinct from self, the learning environment, and learning process” (p. 433).
We, like Holmes, would rejoice in a world in which truth replaced therapeutics,
courage replaced public relations, and so on (p. 434). Most advocates of
progressivism since John Dewey would have no trouble embracing Holmes’ concern
for “truth, courage, justice, friendship, and humility” (p. 422), nor would
most Canadian teachers, we suspect. But can these changes can be brought about
through changes in school governance arrangements and a return to traditional
educational practices, whatever these may be?
We think not. Holmes seems to think that virtue is best achieved through
inculcation, which would include the authoritative transmission of values from
one generation to the next, modelling by teachers and administrators, and the
reinforcement of the school by the home as well as by agencies with cultural
capital, perhaps churches especially. As important as these inculcative strategies
(modelling in particular) may be, we do not believe them adequate to the development
of virtuous individuals or a good society.
It is not just that, in practice, the traditional approach has so often sought to
regiment and control students. The difference between merely inculcating
students with certain values, however humanely this might be done, and engaging
them with value issues is decisive.
Our argument with the inculcative strategies Holmes recommends is that they
may be necessary for the development of virtue, but they are far from sufficient.
We certainly would not quarrel with his emphasis on teacher and administrators
who model truth, honesty, and courage, although we do not see these as being
as rare as Holmes suggests. We too believe that schools function more effectively
with the support of homes and various institutions, although we are
unconvinced that choice is the best or the only way to achieve this. And we
agree that there are some values which cannot be negotiable, although we suspect
that our list would differ somewhat from his.
But we also need schools and classrooms that encourage students to develop
and to test their ideas openly, without retreating to authority. We need teachers