How I Taught Values

by Annis Pratt

The Values Debate—Historical Background

The question of whether values can or should be taught to college students has been debated for decades, with the pros incorporating moral concepts into curricula and the antes scorning such efforts as not only inappropriate but also intellectually jejune. In his "Beliefs" column in a June 2004 New York Times, Peter Steinfels's subhead reads: "The university's role in instilling a moral code among students? None whatever, some argue." He cites Stanley Fish, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, telling "his fellow university teachers that when it comes to having an effect on students, 'you might just make them into good researchers. [ . . . ] You can't make them into good people.[ . . . ] and you shouldn't try.'" He also quotes John J. Mearsheimer, a distinguished professor of political science at the University of Chicago, stating that "the university also makes little effort to provide [students] with moral guidance. Indeed it is a remarkably amoral institution. [. . .] Today, elite universities operate on the belief that there is a clear separation between intellectual and moral purpose" (qtd. in Steinfels).