--- title: Yes, Schools Should Teach Morality. But Whose Morals? description: Belief that schools must teach moral values is older than public schools themselves. But defining civic morality has also been contested. canonical: https://time.com/6451192/history-civic-morality-schools/ author: TIME article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2024-01-09T14:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:50:40.672Z article:section: History og:title: Yes, Schools Should Teach Morality. But Whose Morals? og:description: Belief that schools must teach moral values is older than public schools themselves. But whose morals? og:url: https://time.com/6451192/history-civic-morality-schools/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta20d0d96a29818b7/698a433c16d8846142c3c94f/school.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Kindergarteners At School og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Yes, Schools Should Teach Morality. But Whose Morals? twitter:description: Belief that schools must teach moral values is older than public schools themselves. But whose morals? twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta20d0d96a29818b7/698a433c16d8846142c3c94f/school.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Yes, Schools Should Teach Morality. But Whose Morals? > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Ken Burns on How to Teach Dark Moments from History [Watch (HLS stream): Ken Burns on How to Teach Dark Moments from History](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/0cg5AtOX.m3u8) (9:36)  _Published 2023-09-08. In this video provided exclusively to TIME, Oscar-nominated documentarian Ken Burns discusses how to teach a complete history of America while still inspiring students with Katharina Matro, a high school history teacher in Bethesda, Maryland, who grew up in Germany. Produced by Burns’ website UNUM, the video features Matro explaining the lessons American teachers can take from how Germany deals with its history of the Holocaust in classrooms, while Burns talks about the state of the culture wars in the U.S. and the most engaging history class he took growing up._ by [Mallory Hutchings-Tryon / Made by History](https://time.com/author/made-by-history/) ## Mallory Hutchings-Tryon / Made by History Jan 9, 2024 2:00 PM UTC  View of children in a kindergarten classroom at the Horace Mann School, Tulsa, Okla., 1917. View of children in a kindergarten classroom at the Horace Mann School, Tulsa, Okla., 1917. Lewis W. Hine—Buyenlarge/Getty Images by [Mallory Hutchings-Tryon / Made by History](https://time.com/author/made-by-history/) ## Mallory Hutchings-Tryon / Made by History Jan 9, 2024 2:00 PM UTC As schools across the country experience book bans and attempts to limit the curriculum, in [Texas one group led by the spiritual adviser to former President Donald Trump fought in the past year to bring biblical values to the classroom](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/grapevine-texas-school-board-election-christian-nationalism-rcna82246). In support of such efforts, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz warned, "there is an evil agenda \[and\] we are the only thing that stands between the destruction of American or the revival America." Rather than a new occurrence, efforts to censor teachers, ban books, and control the curriculum are the newest chapter in a century-long battle over who gets to teach _their_ morals and who gets to see _themselves_ represented in public schools. In fact, the belief that schools have a responsibility to teach moral, ethical, and religious values—often encompassed by the term "civic morality"—is older than public schools themselves. Especially in controversial moments in U.S. history, these debates about civic morality in the schools have been enveloped in culture wars. But when pressure is put on schools to change with the ebb and flow of political whim, teachers and students are left with inconsistent curriculum and haphazard structure. Moral education has roots in colonial America. The Puritans of New England left a thorough record of their efforts to impart civic and religious values to children. Before there were schoolhouses, communities monitored the moral teachings in the home and could even impose criminal penalties for misappropriation or neglect of moral education. **_Read More:_** [_How Oklahoma Became Ground Zero in the War Over Church-State Separation_](https://time.com/6300200/how-oklahoma-became-ground-zero-in-the-war-over-church-state-separation/) In the early 19th century, free and low-cost schools emerged in the northern and middle states for white children to promote “[order and democratic harmony.”](https://www.tcpress.com/moral-education-in-america-9780807738207) The National Board of Popular Education, a group founded by Catharine Beecher in 1847 to expand mass education throughout the U.S., sent 600 single women Westward to [“insure children in these newly settled territories has access to proper Christian culture.”](https://www.tcpress.com/moral-education-in-america-9780807738207) By replacing the religious education of previous decades, these institutions began to shoulder the responsibility of defining what moral education looked like in public, non-religious environments while heavily relying on what they believed were “universal” Christian values. ### More From TIME By the end of the century, a system of public education was in place that arose from the guiding belief that municipally-supported schools could enhance national cohesion and morality. In the development of this universal public school system, there was power in choosing what the single curriculum would be nation-wide. Indeed, school reformer Horace Mann believed that excluding workers and immigrants “was to weaken the school’s power to serve as a cohesive force in society.” In the name of civic morality, students from more varied backgrounds were included in the singular vision of “Americanism” and taught how to uphold certain behaviors and ideas in these schools. In the early 20th century, economic and demographic changes reinvigorated debates around education and its role in creating moral citizens. Illustrating xenophobic fear at the time, [Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1917](https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/feb/5) which barred immigrants from many regions of the world but allowed immigrants from Northern and Western Europe. Communities and politicians looked to schools and teachers to integrate and assimilate the [nearly 14 million immigrants](https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/immigrant-population-over-time) in the United States at the time. For example, Boston schools centered their moral instruction around the “law of obedience” and Nebraska schools included the extracurricular club “Uncle Sam’s Boys and Girls” to extend moral education outside the formal classroom. **_Read More:_** [_How the Surveillance of Immigrants Remade American Policing_](https://time.com/6336882/police-surveillance-history/) Beyond Americanization, politicians and community members alike looked to the public schools to pass on other moral codes—essentially lists of virtues presented in the form of pledges. For example, in response to a competition sponsored by the Character Education Association in 1917, William Hutchins’ outlined the “ten laws of right living” including self-control, good health, kindness, sportsmanship, self-reliance, duty, reliability, truth, good workmanship, and teamwork. His “[Morality Code](https://www.jstor.org/stable/42750282)” was published in education journals and actively marketed towards superintendents and Commissioners of Education across the U.S. During World War II and the Cold War, the use of public schools as patriotic propaganda and civic education received wide support. A 1951 education report titled [_Moral and Spiritual Values in the Public Schools_](https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/232566253.pdf) reaffirmed the importance of moral education in the postwar era and simultaneously defined certain values as central to the “American experience.” The report called for a set of courses that would “preserve basic American and Western values at a time when free, democratic societies were threatened by the specter of totalitarianism.” Who fit within these “American ideals,” taught in conjunction with civic morality, were narrowly defined and exclusionary—centering around Anglo-Christian values, at the expense of everyone else. Such narrowly defined conceptions of morality and citizenship were precisely why the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s prompted reevaluation of moral education in public institutions. In 1978, the intellectual Carl Bereiter declared, “education in the areas of personality and values is never free of authoritarian imposition,” addressing the intrusion of public-school value-based curriculum blurring the separation of church and state. Notably, there were more court cases challenging school practices between 1969 and 1978 than in the previous 50 years combined. Reform efforts continued to use the language of morality, though. They just redefined it. University of Notre Dame president Father Theodore M. Hesburgh spoke to the inclusion of civil rights as [“the concern for civil rights is not just another economic, political, social, or ethnic movement, but there is a deep moral dimension… to achieve full civil rights for all our citizens.”](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3823761?seq=1) In the subsequent years, the political demand for moral education persisted, especially as evangelical conservatives prioritized legislative changes to ensure it. Since the 1990s, many states passed legislation requiring some type of moral education in public schools. Indiana, for example, required schools to teach the virtues of honesty, respect for the property of others, and personal responsibility to family and community. **_Read More:_** [_A Charter School's Racial Controversy Reveals the Battle for America's Classrooms_](https://time.com/6122249/mystic-valley-controversy-critical-race-theory/) Questions of civic morality continue to play out today, even as many politicians shroud their calls in [the rhetoric of “neutrality](https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/education-political-neutrality-classroom-shortchanges-students).” After [Arkansas’ Department of Education warned its high schools](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/14/us/arkansas-college-board-advanced-african-american-studies.html?partner=slack) not to offer Advanced Placement courses in African American history, calling the curriculum "indoctrination," [many schools pushed back](https://apple.news/Av5g2ghHzRzWp0ezXhjskUQ) and are offering the courses anyway. In [Iowa, teachers have been pushed out of the classroom](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/04/iowa-critical-race-theory-curriculum-slavery-holocaust-teacher-quit.html?utm%5Fsource=headtopics&utm%5Fmedium=news&utm%5Fcampaign=2023-04-24) due to required “neutrality” in teaching curriculum. Using public education to teach universal values and strengthen society has always been central in the development of our education system. Our historical and current problem is that we cannot agree _what_ our nation’s universal values are and _who we need_ to strengthen our society. Indeed, there is an irony here, and conservative politicians like Cruz are not entirely wrong. [Recent evidence suggests that public schools across the nation are not providing an education in civic morality](https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/civics/). But the reasons they are not may have more to do with nature of the attacks on the schools by pundits like Cruz and others than anything else. As one RAND study revealed, many teachers are [“scared and anxious and worried”](https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/scared-anxious-worried-states-new-restrictions-have-teachers-on-edge/2023/01) about what they can or cannot teach. [Civic morality is needed in our schools today](https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/news/08/11/matter-civic-and-moral-education). When taught well[, civic education can increase students’ likelihood of voting, concern for community issues, social responsibility, and confidence speaking publicly](https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human%5Frights%5Fmagazine%5Fhome/the-state-of-civic-education-in-america/momentum-grows-for-stronger-civic-education-across-states/). But first, doing so requires an expansive definition of “Americanism” to reevaluate what our students—and our society—need to safeguard our future and democracy. _Mallory Hutchings-Tryon is a historian and educator with a decade of experience teaching throughout the country in K-12 secondary public, private, and charter schools. She is currently researching discriminatory dress codes and teaching at the University of Washington. Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians._ [_Learn more about Made by History at TIME here_](https://time.com/6317798/introducing-made-by-history-for-time)_._ ## Transcript I just was listening to NPR about the time until national monuments. That was just on veiled or made official and the executive director said that takes the best of us to talk about the worst of us. That's this is similarly, do you have to be strong and you have to study hard and know your facts and and then you have a blueprint to move forward. The other stuff is easy. I think that's so right in Americans like to talk about this particular thing called American exceptionalism. And to me, it it always assumed it in extraordinary responsibilities that if you were as Lincoln said in his message to Congress in 1862 the last best hope of Earth, then you owed it to yourself, as well as the rest of you manage to be as tough on yourself as anybody has ever been in order to maintain that exceptional. there's a great jurist name learning, and Is there a better name for a dress that Lauren and Hayden and he said, Liberty is never being too sure. You're right. But along with this sort of superficial patriotism comes in Assumption of perfection without examination and of just a superficial teaching of our history. And I'm so glad you brought up the Emmett Till story because one of the most courageous historians in a, in a way, is his mother. Who had the courage to leave, open the casket of her brutally tortured, son, so that the world could see. And it was a galvanic moment in which we're still attempting in the United States to own. And and at the same time, we're seeing all these movements, these kind of progressive movement to not teach that history that you can talk about Rosa Parks, without Rosa Parks, without mentioning race or that. I don't know how you do that, so that maybe I'd ask you, what are your thoughts on what's Happening Here? And what we might say to each other, and what we might, more importantly, talk to our children are students about When I get to ask a question. Now, the first thing I always say is I'm grateful. I'm a teacher in Maryland and that for now personally as a teacher I don't in my classroom day today I don't have to make these difficult called and I cannot possibly imagine what this would be like for a teacher elsewhere. You must be looking at themselves to the from above Warren constantly about what comes out of their mouth. I cannot imagine doing the job that we do on that kind of pressure. What I would say to Americans. Maybe worry about what's getting taught in classrooms around. The country is the things. The American historical Association has made that clear to. That children cannot be a doctrinated. They are especially not the middle school, or in high school. They, they want to know they have questions. If you don't give them the answers, they have devices in their hands and they're going to find them or east me more that they're going to find answers without adult guidance. But they will find answers and they will have access to information that I think adults don't even have a sense of what they have access to. So curtailing, knowledge in any way in this day and age, I think is a silly proposition to begin with and then the other thing is, you know, this there is this fear out there that kids would somehow be ashamed of their country or, you know can feel proud to be American or When we talk about white Americans that they have to feel shame that their white, right answer that I would say. No, that's that's not the goal of history education mother. The goal of history education is to Figure out, you know, where we are and why we are where we are and here are some tools to help you, think about what you want to do, right? History is about Learning how people make decisions in difficult or less difficult circumstances and then deciding. Okay, how did I act would you ask as a learning how to decide what I have acted in that same way in the, in the United States, in the Holocaust at the very beginning, one of the historians say, you know, that the Holocaust basically forces us to ask that question all the time, how would I have backed it? What would I have done? And I think we can ask a question and all kinds of circumstances and give those tools for making decisions ourselves and interrogating ourselves and holding ourselves, you know, accountable. And that's what I would want children and students to take away from history education, not shame and guilt which can be paralyzing, but the opposite. Okay? Now I know this is how people Acted in the past and I can draw my conclusions and this is how I'm gone. Oh it was, thanks better. Or maybe I'll be inspired by you know one of the heroes of history and I'm going to emulate them. So I think it's it's some more hopeful Enterprise not, not not, it shouldn't end up in shame or or cynicism. I feel that in many respects, a lot of this has become politicized. So, this idea that if you could teach a complete history, your woke and therefore somehow a grooming and subjecting people to a kind of manipulation that ignores the even worse manipulation. If you don't tell it if you sanitize it, we've had the example of the Soviet history. Most recently, an important person in the Chinese leadership has just been disappeared and erased for crimes. We don't know what the what it was and what we want and Democratic societies. Open history that can teach all of these things that you did say. So, you know, I'm not asking you to address those other states. We're so happy that you're teaching in Maryland but also which would you find most impactful? So how do you address these? These the the end of the need for some people to narrow. It seems political and not historical. So what you're finding most impactful as you're teaching the most impactful things especially when you talk about difficult history. Is to learn about everyday individuals, right? So I think that the Holocaust was a great example there because of the numbers just completely defy the human than human imagination. But I think you could say the same thing of chattel slavery. You could say the same thing of Native Americans that you know how many were there before and ization and how many were left, a few hundred thousand at most? It did those numbers don't mean anything to set up two children to students, But once you start breaking it down and start telling individual stories. So I think that's when it becomes impactful and and that's what I think. Good teachers still, they they they look at the face of individuals and how they fit into the larger picture to make it. Graspable is biography and I agree with you completely that the lives of other people are are part of the places where we Bond, like molecule separate chemicals bond to each other and it's the way you started the story. I remember in 11th grade, I had this wonderful history, teacher named Randy peacock who was going to teach his Russian history from the freeing of the serfs and 61 to the Russian Revolution. But the first day he was going to tell about how Rasputin was murdered. Since for the next 40 minutes, every bone in class, even the people who didn't usually pay attention had their mouth is open as he told a riveting story. And I think somehow we forget that history is mostly made up of the word story and I found in my own work that that's important. I think the biggest point that I take from your last answer is that when we just deal with Statistics day to Vance we lose track of the human Dimension to it. We say 6 million and that has no platter opacity to it we talk about slavery in the abstract more recently. The guidelines in Florida suggested that you could acquire good skills as a slave you know thinking that this is a country which articulated for the first time in human history and put into place a government dedicated to the idea of human Freedom that you could not see the absurdity in. That is where I think many of us are are so fearful and where we all wish you would many ways that we could go back to school and have you as a teacher, it would be really, really great. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6451192/history-civic-morality-schools/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6451192/history-civic-morality-schools/"},"headline":"Yes, Schools Should Teach Morality. 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