Schools and colleges may say that they simply impart knowledge and don’t mess around with values. In today’s Martin Center article, D. P. Curtin argues against that notion.
John Dewey, the famous education theorist, advocated value-neutral schools. Curtin writes,
Historically, according to this view, teachers should not shape the moral life of their students’ interiority, but only transmit the fundamental and pertinent information. As a rule, they should present competing perspectives without sectarian, partisan, or ideological preference, and in doing so, cultivate critical thinking without providing moral direction.
The ancients understood that education was vital to character formation, but we have (or at least think we have) gone beyond that with our modern schools. Curtin disagrees:
Education cannot escape values because education itself is a deliberate act of the selection of virtue. Every curriculum is built upon the sundry judgments about what is worth knowing. Therefore, it is impossible to separate education from the question of virtue, for the very process of becoming educated requires the cultivation of certain intellectual and moral habits.
Our schools and colleges instill values — just not good ones, for the most part.