Moral Education and Environmental Concern

This volume explores both some important ways in which moral values are embedded in much current discussion of environmental issues, as well as ways in which some conventional understandings of morality and moral education can be transformed by ideas that have emerged in the discourse of environmental concern. Contributions range from a variety of disciplines including philosophy, psychoanalysis, social psychology, and anthropology, and reflect a variety of cultural settings including Occidental, Oriental, African, and South American. The book discusses the moral character of our relationship with the natural world; the quality of the relationship between our ‘internal’ and ‘external’ worlds; the issues that arise when responsibilities towards future generations are considered; and the need for cultural change and the practical obstacles to achieving this in a school context. In the process, insights are drawn from Western philosophy, Buddhism, Daoism, Ubuntu, and Confucianism. The result is a collection that provides a rich backcloth for understanding, and in some cases reconceptualising, morality in an age of growing environmental concern, and its extensive implications for the theory and conduct of moral education.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Moral Education.

Michael Bonnett has held senior teaching and research posts in the Universities of Bath, Cambridge, and London, UK. He has written extensively in the field of the philosophy of environmental education, with particular reference to ideas of sustainability and education for sustainable development. His book Retrieving Nature: Education for a Post-Humanist Age explores the radical potential of environmental concern for contemporary education.