[lit-ideas] Re: virtue-practical example of being taught
- From: John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 13:58:06 +0900
On 1/2/06, Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>I wonder if whatever the Academy does it would
> be possible really to teach 'virtue' (or morality) to those who had no
> conception of it in the first place. How are moral concepts to get a
> foothold among those who are entirely innocent of them (who have to have
> it pointed out to them that a promise is what one ought to keep; that
> gratuitous harm is more than imprudent, for example)? Discussions of
> conflicts of duty assume a prior notion of duty; discussions of moral
> dilemmas assume a prior understanding of what it is about certain
> situations that makes them dilemmas—and so on.
I couldn't agree more. The Academy apparently does, too. That is why,
like other schools with elite pretensions and reputations that attract
enough applicants to make rejection possible, it screens those it
accepts, using a variety of criteria besides academic excellence and
athletic prowess. One outcome that may be of comfort to those who
believe in "traditional family values" is that, again like other elite
schools, the proportion of those accepted who grew up in intact
nuclear families is statistically larger than in the population as a
whole.
Another interesting point note is that the drop-out rate is on a par
with other elite schools. The major difference is that Academy
drop-outs are concentrated in plebe summer and plebe year when, as we
heard at the parents' briefing, our wonderful children are "stressed
until they drop, picked up brushed off and stressed until they
drop....over and over again." From the student side, the process was
described in the Trident, the student newspaper, by another female
midshipment (not my daughter) as follows: "The dean wants me sixteen
hours a day, the coach wants me sixteen hours a day, and the
commandant wants me sixteen hours a day. We learn to prioritize."
Re Robert's remark that taking care of others should be more than
prudential. Here again, I certainly agree. But isn't it, I wonder, one
of the roles of institutions to make doing what's right doing what is
prudential as well? Habits born of prudence may ripen into principles.
Principles proclaimed—even skillfully defended—in classroom settings
alone remain where classroom exercises leave them.
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd.
55-13-202 Miyagaya, Nishi-ku
Yokohama 220-0006, JAPAN
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