The Moral Curriculum

"The most important product of education is a constructive, consistent and compelling system of values around which personal and social life may be organized. Unless teaching and learning provide such a focus, all the particular knowledge and skills acquired are worse than useless. An 'educated' person whose information and ability are directed to no personally appropriated worthy ends is a menace to himself and to society. A highly sophisticated society educated to no coherent way of life is likewise by its very learning made the more prone to disease and degeneration."

This blunt statement comes from Philip H. Phenix, 46, professor of education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Most U.S. schools firmly believe that they do provide the values he demands. On the premise that happy men create a healthy society, they teach and beseech children to use their abilities. By thus stressing self-realization, the schools in theory promote "the greatest good to the greatest number." It is Philosopher Phenix's jarring argument that all this is morally shallow--that U.S. schools in fact promote selfishness.

Desire v. Worth. By training up children in "a democracy of desire." he says in a provocative new book titled Education and the Common Good (Harper; $4), the schools heighten "a gnawing sense of meaninglessness" in U.S. life. Does Phenix then mean that secular schools should actually teach "religious" values?

Phenix means just that, and it is his book's aim to specify how such values can enter U.S. schools through the front door instead of being smuggled through the back. As he sees it, training for "a democracy of desire" can be changed to training for "a democracy of worth." By emphasizing giving, not getting, the entire curriculum can be suffused with self-transcending "devotion to the good, the right, the true, the excellent."

If that is a resounding ideal, Denver-born Author Phenix backs it up with rich personal experience. A Quaker turned Presbyterian, he majored in mathematical physics at Princeton ('34), became a life insurance actuary, a student at Union Theological Seminary, an Army meteorologist, an Army chaplain and a Carleton College professor of religion. He earned his doctorate at Columbia University with a thesis on theology and physics. He is married and the father of sons 15 and 16 years old. Last year he quit his deanship at Carleton because "I don't think college administrations are fertile sources of profound ideas."

Commitment to Truth. Phenix's moral curriculum goes far beyond mere mastery of traditional subjects. His aim is the moral application of knowledge. In short, his students would be taught to uphold "worth" in every area of life.

Morally speaking, for example, the proper use of intelligence is "commitment to truth." Hence schools should emphasize scientific methods of inquiry. For their part, scientists and scholars have "an obligation to render their knowledge in the most intelligible possible form; they should not glory in obscurity." Equally accountable are newspapers, magazines, radio and TV, which Phenix calls "the real public schools." It is their duty not to give the public what it wants, but to improve critical standards and disseminate the real facts of life.

Work for Others. One of Phenix's most promising approaches to "worth" is through esthetics, as applied to everything from art and science to manners, work and recreation. His students would be thoroughly trained in the esthetic meaning of integrity--the harmony of contrasting parts in one pleasing whole. They would practice and expect it in carpentry and cookery as well as architecture and mathematics. Instead of politely hoodwinking others, they would learn manners as basically self-respect, "an outward sign of inward devotion to what is true, just and appropriate to each occasion." Instead of toiling for money "to get out of work"--modern man's self-defeating treadmill--they would choose jobs entirely on the basis of "tasks that most urgently need to be done."

To build conscience, Phenix would teach respect for all forms of life. Geography, for example, would go far beyond maps and place names to the responsible use of air, earth and water. Lessons in health would illustrate abuses in everything from alcohol to industrial waste. Since sex "provides the crucial case of desire at odds with devotion," Phenix would encourage "a fresh acceptance of the ideal of sexual purity" as one method of fostering "dedication to standards of worth."

Phenix's ideal school would shun all social stratification, from numbered grades to skin color. It would emphasize learning as "preparation for the good life," not "the cash value of more education." It would stress the rule of law in national and world affairs, and forcefully analyze "the extreme destructiveness of modern weapons of war." From the consequences of protective tariffs to the advantages of foreign languages, it would always presuppose "universality and world outlook."

Grateful Dedication. Drawing all this together, Phenix contends that "the central task of education is religious conversion." He does not mean that religion as such should be taught in public schools; he fully accepts the First Amendment's separation of church and state. He does mean that "public education can be religious" without violating laws or liberties. In sum. he says, schools should emphasize and demonstrate:

"That the world, man and his culture are neither self-sufficient nor self-explanatory, but are derived from given sources of being, meaning and value. That the supremely worthful is not finite or limited but transcends all human comprehension and every human achievement. That the life of selfish ambition, the struggle for autonomy, acquisition and success, and attachment to finite goods, lead in the end to misery, conflict, guilt, despair, boredom and frustration. That every individual has a personal calling to turn from following after desire to a life of loving and grateful dedication to what is of ultimate worth."

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