Public schools should cultivate ethical thought about cultural patterns harming life

Evidence

We begin from the basic idea that the purpose of public schools ought to be to help develop citizens who are prepared to support and achieve diverse, democratic and sustainable societies because these are keys to our very survival. Further, these principles support ways of living with each other that are the most fair to all living beings. That means that we must help to prepare students at all levels to think critically and carefully—that is to say ethically about the patterns of belief and behavior in our culture that have led to destructive relationships and practices harming the natural world as well as human communities. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 226

Categorization

• DEFINE: States the book’s foundational premise: equating critical thinking with ethical thinking about culture’s destructive patterns.
• XREF: connects to: Education should both serve the well-being of actual places and confront dominant cultural assumptions. — David A. Gruenewald, The Best of Both Worlds: A Critical…, 24; Teachers must consciously impose their culture against pupils’ home culture — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 354; School instills state-centered worldview to displace folkloristic traditional conceptions — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 339 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Teachers must consciously impose their culture against pupils’ home culture #contradicts (0.90) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 354
• Education today ought to place many cultures and their shared heritage at its center #complicates (0.80)
• Eco-ethical consciousness requires analyzing cultural roots of ecological harm #expands (0.80) — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 228
• Cultural synthesis means educators learn with people rather than transmit anything #expands (0.80) — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 579
• School instills state-centered worldview to displace folkloristic traditional conceptions #contradicts (0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 339
• Cultural survival must not be equated with moral superiority #qualifies (0.75)
• Moral values may have a shared universal core beneath cultural variation #qualifies (0.72) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 955
• Elite education requires deliberate unlearning to avoid ethical blindness #expands (0.70)
• Moral-poverty framing revives discredited cultural pathology arguments #complicates (0.70)
• Cultural study needs to decanonize categories while retaining critical judgment #expands (0.70)
• Cultural tradition outside school, not the subject itself, does the educating #complicates (0.70) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 362