Directive teaching in the community of moral inquiry

Is there a place for directive teaching when it comes to moral education in the Community of Inquiry? Michael Hand think s that we should make room for it. While some common restrictions on the role of the teacher in the Community of Inquiry and the kinds of questions with which it deals appear to militate against it, he argues that they either have no force or are intellectually or educationally misguided. In evaluating what Hand has to say, I examine the justificatory framework of moral standards within which he sets out his arguments and then look at how those arguments fare in light of that examination.


Introduction
In this issue of the Journal of Philosophy in Schools, Michael Hand argues for an expanded conception of the philosophical classroom Community of Inquiry (CoI) to certainly result from doing so, or when it conflicts with other established moral standards, as in having to lie to a third party in order to keep a promise? In other words, there are circumstances in which adherence to them becomes controversial.
Setting this issue aside, it is not obvious that we have the decisive arguments upon which Hand depends. A glance at the history of moral philosophy makes this clear.
Think of Kant on the standards just mentioned. Kant is a good example here, as he also has no truck with caveats and qualifications. You should always keep your promises, no matter what! Although Kant takes his arguments to be decisive and generations of Kantians have promulgated them, they are otherwise regarded as controversial, at best. The same is true for all the other arguments with which students of moral philosophy will be familiar, from those associated with Divine Command Theory through to Rule Utilitarianism and beyond. 2 If the best arguments in philosophy are hardly decisive, commonplace reasons for subscribing to these moral standards are almost certain to fail the test. At their best, they are rudimentary versions of arguments to be found in philosophy. More commonly, however, they tend to be circular or question-begging, as in the following argument: You should not do things of which society disapproves. Society disapproves of cheating and lying. Therefore, you should not cheat or lie. That's a logically valid argument, but it isn't rationally compelling. While the second premise is fact-stating, the first is a moral imperative, so that the argument relies on one moral imperative to derive another.
Hand's examples of unjustified moral standards, such as those proscribing masturbation and homosexual acts, raise a further worry. While injunctions against these things have largely been rejected by Western societies, it is an open question whether the reasons for this are more rationally compelling than arguments to the contrary in other societies. Even if we think they are, it is salutary to remember that arguments against such things were commonly taken to be decisive in our own societies only a generation or two ago. We may have good reasons to disagree with our forebears, as we do with moral standards that pertain in societies quite different from our own, but we should be slow to judge our attempts at justification to be superior to theirs. What we take to be decisive arguments may strike them as 2 In his book A Theory of Moral Education, Hand (2018) presents his own argument to justify accepted moral standards like the ones he mentions here. I have dealt with that argument in my 2019 review for this journal and this is not the place to rehash the matter. Suffice it to say that, while I have sympathy with his argument, I remain to be persuaded that it at last provides the decisive argument for subscription to these standards. rationalisations of standards that pertain in our milieu. The proper starting-point, therefore, is to treat these matters as intellectually controversial.
In sum, we should not regard generally accepted moral standards as blanket prescriptions that never occasion controversy. The best arguments for them are inconclusive and themselves subject to controversy. We should also be mindful that reflective people have rationally endorsed standards that we have come to think are unjustified. Rather than taking some standards to be justified and others to be unjustified in that we, unlike others, have the decisive arguments, we should regard them as matters for thoughtful deliberation.
Bearing these things in mind, let's now turn to the issues of indoctrination, open questions and philosophical reticence.

Avoiding indoctrination
Hand is completely in agreement with the need to avoid indoctrination, but points out that persuading students to endorse or reject a moral standard by presenting decisively good reasons for or against them is not indoctrination. To the extent that we lack such arguments, however, the threat is perfectly real. The teacher who is convinced that these arguments are decisive when they are not faces this danger, especially if the teacher is not schooled in philosophy and the critical examination of arguments.
This does not prohibit the teacher from seeing to it that the students consider what she or he regards as compelling arguments, so long as they are dealt with in the spirit of inquiry. I am in agreement with Hand (2020) when he endorses 'the benefits of enabling pupils to work out the justification for themselves, through a dialogical process of proposing, testing, critiquing and refining arguments' (p. 12). What worries me is that Hand presents his case in a framework likely to encourage teachers to think that certain arguments are rationally compelling and to explicitly or implicitly present them as such. Many students would be susceptible to this in regarding the teacher as a figure of authority and trust.
We should never forget that indoctrination can take many shades and forms. Such things as brainwashing in cult groups and relentless state propaganda lie at an extreme, but it can take far more subtle and insidious forms, including inadvertent use of a desire to conform and the presumptions of authority in the classroom. have found persuasive, but only to point out that the best of them remain controversial. The appropriate response to this, it seems to me, is to approach those arguments in an open-minded way and to treat claims to indisputable knowledge with caution.
None of this is to deny that we have reason to adopt certain moral standards and reject others. We may even allow that those reasons are good enough for practical purposes.
After all, we need to get on with our lives and the best that we have got will have to do. To talk about decisively good reasons in philosophy, however, is to appeal to a higher standard. While professional standards of argumentation obviously do not apply to the school classroom, there is no case for presenting arguments as logically conclusive when they are not.
Things like epistemic modesty and open-mindedness also speak to what we may call a philosophical attitude. It can make us hesitate to lay claim to knowledge where others do not fear to tread. There is good reason for this. As Plato's Socrates shows over and again, to realise that you don't really know something on the basis of decisive good reason is often the beginning of wisdom in regard to the matter and the startingpoint for educating yourself about it.

Conclusion
The examination of moral standards is a proper part of moral education and that includes inquiring into their justification. The classroom philosophical CoI clearly provides a venue for this. In addition to controversial cases and moral dilemmas, it affords the opportunity to examine the rational foundations of existing moral standards and those to which our society no longer subscribes.
To explore the strengths and weaknesses of various lines of argument in the spirit of inquiry does not preclude the teacher from directing students' attention to particular arguments and helping them to examine them. It is important for students to be able to see why an argument fails, remains inconclusive, or is decisive. At the same time, the teacher should be careful not to overestimate the strength of an argument because it leads to a socially approved or rejected conclusion. That is both a logical error and a step down the slippery slope of indoctrination.
It can be challenging to question existing moral standards, but it is a very good way of beginning to see what is to be said for them. Likewise, entertaining standards that have been rejected can help us to appreciate what is to be said against them. Such critical scrutiny is certainly of educational value and may lead students to endorse or reject a standard by appeal to reason rather than simply because of the social pressure to conform. The danger of it lies not in turning students into moral sceptics, but of teachers unwittingly leading them to overestimate the strength of an argument which, as novices, they may all too easily do. That risk is all the greater if the teachers do likewise. If anything, an argument of which you are convinced calls for even greater scrutiny and a preparedness to find error.
There can be a case for feigning ignorance, as in Socratic irony, but teachers must actually know their way around their subject matter far better than their pupils if they are to instruct them in it. Even so, they still need to exercise epistemic humility and open-mindedness and not to pretend to knowledge that they do not possess.
Philosophers have spent centuries inconclusively debating the relevant arguments in ethics and so teachers should proceed with caution.