In search of a vision of the good: Values education and the postmodern condition

Values education was transformed by these developments.3 Rather than initiation into faith communities with prescribed ways of life, its task became socialization to the norms of society (Durkheim, 1986), or clarification of personal values (Simon and Kirschenbaum, 1992), or advancement on a scale of cognitive-moral development (Kohlberg, 1981; Munsey, 1980). However, during the past quarter-century there has been disenchantment with the 'Enlightenment project’. Feminists have critiqued rational, rule-bound ethics and advanced a conception of education rooted in the ideal of a caring effect (Gilligan, 1993; Noddings, 1986). Communitarians have argued that we can only make sense of the individual self in the context of a communal vision of the good (Green, 1999; Taylor, 1989, 1991). Post-moderns and critical pedagogues have challenged economic instrumentalism and asserted that the preference for individual rights has underprivileged large classes of oppressed peoples (Mc Laren, 1997; Aronowitz and Giroux, 1991).