The Core Knowledge blog writes about a post by Diana Senechal at DoubleX. She writes:
“Schools should stop telling children to be nice and start teaching them to be good.”
Both the Core Knowledge’s commentary and the original post make some great points, and they are both worth reading. I do have two issues with it, though.
One is that it seems to be focused on seeing using literature as the primary way to do that, and I think there are plenty of avenues to help students learn this difference.
The second is that, unfortunately, she bases this idea on a quote from Charles Murray, a researcher who I think has done a fair amount of damage to education. It shouldn’t detract from the usefulness of the point but, as Claus von Zastrow says in a comment on the post, “the guy still creeps me out.”
I think Diana put it well and diplomatically: “I disagree vehemently with Murray on certain points,” she wrote. “Yet when he is right, he is awfully right.”
Her larger point, I think, is an argument for depth and reflection, appreciating nuance and complexity, and the value of going deeper than facile slogans like “be nice.” Literature, perhaps more than any other art or discipline is uniquely suited to this. She wrote a follow up comment this morning that notes it’s not “that literature necessarily breeds goodness–but it does allow us to consider certain moral questions more deeply and to become aware of our traits, temptations, and longings. ”
I agree.
While I agree that literature isn’t necessarily the PRIMARY way to teach goodness, I believe it offers a very rich way of doing so. Literature–properly studied–prevents us from becoming complacent in our notions of goodness. It requires us to follow complicated chains of moral cause and effect. A novel like the Brothers Karamazov, for example, reveals just how entangled good and evil can appear, and just how easy it may be to slip from one to the other when we don’t consider the broader effects of our actions. But I think it takes a deft touch to teach literature this way–a touch I don’ think I possessed when I was in the classroom.