Pioneering Moral Education

This book is a biography of a leader of the campaign for moral education which had been conducted for several decades in Britain and in the USA. The campaign has culminated in the establishment of many programmes of ‘education for citizenship’, ‘values education’, ethics education’, ‘character education’ and ‘education for global citizenship’ – in effect, the establishment of moral education in schools throughout the world. But the book is also a history of the campaign in the UK since the 1960s, when Victor Cook, a millionaire engineer and businessman in Aberdeen, began to devote his remaining thirty years of life, and all his wealth, to persuading the educational establishment to give priority to this central area of the work of schools. Faced with indifference and even mockery, Cook and the small but growing band of professional educationists and philosophers recruited to the cause set up studies of the subject and its problems, commissioned research and development projects, and sponsored conferences and experimental teaching programmes. They also encouraged policy makers and politicians to take seriously the proposition that moral education, conducted along with or in addition to cognate subjects such as religious education and social studies, can and should be introduced as an important function of educational organisations. Set in the context of recent educational developments, this narrative, and the accompanying expositions of theories and practices, provides new insights into a complex but important subject, and a comprehensive account of the development of moral education and its role in the world of today.

W. A. Gatherer is a former member of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education and Chief Adviser in Lothian Region and a Founding Trustee of the Gordon Cook Foundation. He is a contributor to the textbook on Scottish Education edited by Bryce and Humes (EUP), and author of numerous articles on education.