moral values

Human flourishing is a term that relates to the full development of people and societies, something we all long for, especially in times of crisis. It is widely accepted that education is an indispensable resource to promote human flourishing. The main aim of this article is to investigate whether human flourishing can be considered as the aim of character education in the virtues development approach. Publications on the subject of flourishing have proliferated in recent years. For this study we select ones that link flourishing and the aim of moral education from the perspective of the philosophy and theory of education, developed in the Anglo-American field. Assertions by David Carr (2021) and Kristján Kristjánsson (2020) on the subject of flourishing and character education provide a starting point and guide for the discussion that mainly revolves around the following questions. What notion of flourishing can be theoretically sustained as an educational goal? Why is character education not considered sufficient to promote flourishing? Why is it not considered necessary either? We conclude by underlining the value of educational theory based on a realistic view of flourishing as an attainable aim of character education. Some essential components of flourishing and moral education are absent from the theories reviewed.

Please, cite this article as follows: Bernal Martínez de Soria, A., & Naval, C. (2023). El florecimiento como fin de la educación del carácter | Flourishing as the aim of character education. Revista Española de Pedagogía, 81 (284), 17-32. https://doi.org/10.22550/REP81-1-2023-01

Education on moral values is an area that has caused controversy in the 20th and 21st centuries, in particular due to the social rejection of the possible indoctrination of students. Louis Raths’ Values Clarification methodology was one of the most represen-tative proposals that attempted to outline a moral education free of indoctrination. With­out further examining philosophical argu­ments that have already been dealt with in numerous publications, this article holisti­cally studies the history of this approach in order to learn from the efforts, challenges, victories, and failures of those who have preceded us in the task of educating citizens with moral convictions. The article begins by presenting the main points of psychologist Carl Rogers’ theory that most influenced the origin of this methodology. It then intro­duces the social context in which the Values Clarification programme arises, a detailed description of its key points, the warm recep­tion it received and, finally, the criticism and assessments that led to its dizzying downfall. To conclude, three brief reflections on moral education are presented, which, although not new, are reinforced by the study undertaken in this article.

Please, cite this article as follows: Dabdoub, J. P. (2021). Apuntes para una historia de la Clarificación de valores: origen, desarrollo, declive y reflexiones | Brief history of Values Clarification: Origin, development, downfall, and reflections. Revista Española de Pedagogía, 79 (279), 289-304. https://doi.org/10.22550/REP79-2-2021-06

This study has been undertaken within the context of education for human rights, in order to identify, collect and analyse the values of a multicultural and cosmopolitan education.

Educating in values is always essential, but finding the strategies that are needed to acquire this education is nowadays fundamental. Humans with education should grow as a person: the more knowledge they acquire to become more person, the more educational values will be achieved. However, in the opposite way, all the knowledge that does not help them to grow as a person would become a contravalue. It is important to acquire right habits and values. Growing can be only conceived as a capacity of constant adaptation to the changing world that we are living in, and, of course, in the evaluation of habits and values.

Key words: Learning strategies, moral values, contravalues, values education, habituation, learning to be.