Mearsheimer The Aims Of Education Summary

Considerations of the role schools should play in moral development of students are always the subject of controversy. In the article "The Aims of Education", John Mearsheimer claims that many American colleges pay little attention on moral education; instead, their aim is to teach their students how to think critically. In contrast, Wayne Booth shows strong disagreement about Mearsheimer's claim in his essay "Introducing Professor Mearsheimer to His Own University". He argues that many elite universities, such as the University of Chicago, provide the students with many courses that discuss ethical and moral issues in considerable depth. Despite Mearsheimer and Booth have different opinions on how a college should be involved in moral education, in general they both agree universities should play an active role in educating their students about ethical and
moral issues.
Mearsheimer claims that the University of Chicago is an amoral institution and says, ¡§ ... we are silent on the issue of morality, and instead we concentrate on teaching you to think critically¡¨ (151). I strongly disagree with Mearsheimer that critical thinking is opposed to moral reasoning; in fact, critical thinking skills are essential for college students to find moral values in various ways. Mearsheimer believes that the University of Chicago is an amoral institution because it does not provide the students with moral guidance. He says to his students, ¡§I would bet that you will take few classes here at Chicago where you discuss ethics or morality in any detail, mainly because those kind of courses do not exist¡¨ (150). In contrast, I believe students could still find morals with their critical thinking skills, regardless of the number of courses that discuss moral
issues in the university. By the time students enter college at the age around eighteen, most of them have already developed their own set of moral beliefs which they learned from their parents, previous education, church, etc. If students have the capability to think critically, they will learn other more profound morals based on some basic moral beliefs they have already acquired. For example, many students have learned this fundamental principle of the most rudimentary moral education early in their age: "Do not do to others what you would not willingly permit them to do to you". Based on this basic moral belief, students will also find other morals if they have critical thinking skills. For instance, they will understand any type of discrimination is morally wrong because it is something they do not want others to do to them, even they have not taken any classes that talks about racial discrimination, or participated in a seminar about discrimination against gays and homosexuals. Therefore in a college level, it is less important if the school has classes or programs that discuss moral issues or give moral guidance to students, more importantly, students themselves have to have critical thinking skills in order to reach a more profound insight of deeper moral values. Different people have different moral values and beliefs due to differences in their background such as religion, race and culture. Thus, college students are exposed to different morals from different professors, textbooks or programs that deal with morals and ethics. It is possible for them to get divergent opinions on a controversial issue. For example different people have different opinions on whether abortion is morally right or not and students might hear different views about the moral concerns of abortion. Therefore students must think critically to evaluate which of these opposing ideas is actually right in a moral viewpoint. They may have to do research, discuss with other people, and ask questions to them and also to themselves. It requires critical thinking and reasoning for them to analyze the information gathered from different resources and to finally reach a thoughtful and well-justified conclusion. While Mearsheimer argues that a university that only teaches students how to think pays little attention on moral issues, I think critical thinking could lead to moral reasoning because there are always controversies on moral issues and it is necessary to think critically about them.