In recently considering how to further value, in my classroom, what David Brooks refers to as eulogy virtues – those virtues developed by our internal moral logic – I returned to Dr. Robert Boorstrom’s article “What Makes Teaching A Moral Activity” (1998). Boorstrom recognizes that teachers will unanimously agree that education is a moral activity, but for different reasons. Some will point to professional ethics, others to character education. Some will point to moral dilemmas that teachers face in their day-to-day teaching, while others see the moral aspect in the question of what aim does education fulfill. Some teachers feel that education is needed to help build a strong sense of morality in order to guide students toward becoming contributing members of society.

Without trying to deny the moral nature of any of these aspects of teaching, the problem is that if these are the specific times when morality enters into teaching – when a student is suspected of plagiarism, when it’s time to teach a lesson about issues of race or sexuality, etc. – then that means that there are other times when teaching is not a moral activity. While it is easy to get your back up at the idea that our notions of what makes teaching a moral activity at once define certain portions of teaching as not moral activity, it is a bit more challenging to think of a better way of defining what then makes teaching a moral activity. 

According to Boorstrom, it comes down to the teacher’s power to decide “what will be done, how it will be done, and what the doing means”. First and foremost, the teacher has the power to decide the official business of the classroom. Which topics will we cover, which texts will we read, and how much choice will students have in this regard are all choices made by the teacher – choices that help to create a moral world within the classroom.

Teachers also help to create this moral world through their interpretation of academic standards. As an English teacher I deal with this situation all the time. In younger grades, teachers often prescribe a fairly rigid form for essay writing – the “hamburger technique”, 5-paragraph, etc. – while, in senior grades, I tend to move away from these rules into the much more vague task of teaching things like clarity and coherence without a strict, style-limiting template. However, students may still be taught a stricter “rule-based” interpretation in another course even though that teacher also desires the same standards of clarity and coherence. So suddenly, in trying to achieve the same standard in our students, we have helped reinforce that ever-so-frustrating challenge of students seeking our approval of their work to see if how they have decided to put things is how I would put things. The dreaded “Is this what you wanted?”. 

Finally, teachers create a moral world largely through the use of language in the classroom. A teacher’s common request for less talking and more working sets talking into contrast with working. Whether intentional or not, the teacher has contributed to creating a moral world where working is not a social activity. 

… the truth of the situation is that everything we do in our classrooms is a philosophical and moral choice, whether we have chosen to consider the implication of those choices or not.

Boorstrom has helped cast a light into the less talked about aspects of morality in education. It is easy to get caught up in carving out some kind of “moral time” in our practice, admitting that other times are somehow for something other than morals –maybe math, or physics. This challenge is no doubt important, but the truth of the situation is that everything we do in our classrooms is a philosophical and moral choice, whether we have chosen to consider the implication of those choices or not. Every choice – choosing to put up one type of poster in your classroom over another, choosing to have students raise their hands to answer questions, choosing how to arrange the desks, choosing what texts to read, choosing how to interpret assessment standards, choosing how much control to give students – creates one possibility at the expense of another. Every choice helps build the moral world of your class.

From experience, trying to consider every possibility can be a frightening and paralyzing exercise in futility. As Boorstrom points out, “to say that teachers define the social quality of conduct does not tell us how to control this power nor at what ends to aim it”. It is up to us to figure this out. Being a mindful practitioner, realizing that each action represents a choice, can helps us to hopefully track those choices to their logical, or frequently seeming illogical, ends and, through reflection, help create a truly upstanding moral world for our students.