Amitai Etzioni's Moral Education: But How?

Education plays an important role in our society by expanding the horizons to a brighter future and a smarter generation. With education used to teach society about new concepts, there are variety of different approaches that can be used to teach pupils. In the essay, “Moral Education: But How?” written by Amitai Etzioni, a professor of sociology at Columbia University, he discusses about the search of an appropriate way to teach moral education in primary and middle schools with a variety of different approaches being tested. The two approaches, the moral education and moral dilemma, in the essay give students the ability to make decisions on the situation presented with each choice affecting the result. There have been many people criticizing the approaches others have used to teach morality in classrooms. But with the different approaches to moral education, people will have different perspectives on each unique situation. Throughout the years, people have come up with different approaches, such as the moral education and moral dilemma methods, to teach morality in schools that can be applicable in today’s society. The moral education method was proposed to a group of third graders in public a elementary school, Community Elementary School, in Riceville, Iowa. The teacher, Jane Elliott, …show more content…
Etzioni talks about the two particular methods, the moral education approach, going through an extreme change, and the moral dilemma approach, a thought provoking situation. With the moral dilemma approach being more widely accepted, it teaches students respect towards one another and how to be responsible citizen. Moral education lays the foundation for a creative mind allowing the students to respond depending on the situation. Even though these two methods contrast each other, they both achieve the same goal of educating students about