A critical examination of the values and ethics of Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence (CfE)

Osborne, Terence Philip

Abstract

The thesis offers a new perspective through which to analyse CfE, by focusing on values and ethics, and the value pluralism of Isaiah Berlin.

The record suggests CfE is a blended, instrumentalist mix of values and ethics. I argue that ‘joined-up’ government policy seamlessly connected education to national political and economic priorities, so that the value of education itself shifted significantly from intrinsic, towards extrinsic neo-liberal ends; moral knowledge itself was instrumentalised.

I suggest a relativistic, ‘windowless box’ version of pluralism predominates, but that relativism works against social/cultural integration, because it becomes meaningless to ask which of the values are correct. Nonetheless, human differences are bridgeable and human understanding is possible.

CfE expresses no view at all about the good, avoiding the ethical kind of values as if there was something tainted about them. I argue that relativist accounts of pluralism led to ethical neutrality, and to the delegation of social moral values to schools, teachers and children, ultimately resting on a Scottish customary morality. I suggest it is not education’s job to tell children what to think, what is good or ethically the right thing to do, but it is, arguably, its job to discuss, explain, adjudicate between options, and make arguments for and against different normative ethical conclusions. It does not appear to do this, however.

I argue further that an assumed ‘beliefs-values-action’ moral continuum emphasises internalised moral reasoning not moral action, endorsing a cut-down Kantian moral law minus ‘duty’ and the ‘categorical imperatives’. Furthermore, its aspiration for children to develop their own social justice stances is too optimistic, unsupported by Kohlberg’s theory.

CfE’s delegation and consequent individualising of social moral values, arguably encourages infinite proliferation of moral and ethical viewpoints, making shared forms of social life that much harder to achieve, ultimately promoting the foreclosure of society.

Citation

Osborne, T. P. A critical examination of the values and ethics of Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence (CfE). (Thesis). Edinburgh Napier University

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Sep 3, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 3, 2024
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.17869/enu.2024.3789815
• Award Date: Jul 3, 2024