Isaac Massey
Supervisor: Dr. Christopher Martin
City: West Kelowna
Occupation: Teacher
Year: 2024
Subject:
- Curriculum
- Education Policy
- Other
Description
The British Columbia curriculum was redesigned in 2016 with aims of fostering competencies such as personal responsibility and social awareness. With the BC government planning on rolling out mandatory Holocaust graduation requirements in 2025, it is time to consider conceptions of moral education. In this book, I argue that moral knowledge is an epistemic good compatible with contemporary aims of compulsory education. In the Introduction, I situate this discussion in the broader context of moral and educational philosophy, and posit that public schools should ground moral inquiry in moral realism. In Chapter 1, I survey the traditional goals of education and attempt to demonstrate why metaphysical realism is necessary to those relevant to the BC curriculum. I then aver that learning and understanding moral knowledge, alongside other epistemic goods, is educationally worthwhile. In Chapters 2 and 3, I dissect the constituents of “knowledge” using JTB theory, in an effort to show that a justified true moral belief is plausible. In particular, I ascribe five criteria to propositional morality, and try to operationalize the discovery of it through an epistemic process involving reflective equilibrium. In Chapter 4, I reify this theory into conceptual practice with examples of how moral education can correct common moral mistakes. I explore a few options for the implementation of such programs in our current educational system. Finally, in the Conclusion, I address some remaining objections and implications for further research.
Student Biography
Isaac Massey is a Humanities teacher in the Central Okanagan School District, on the traditional, unceded territory of the Syilx Nation. He has taught and coached for the last five years at Mount Boucherie Secondary School. His research interests are in the philosophy of ethics and education.