The Ethos of the 'Technological Era,' the New Era of the Sociology of Morals, and the Ethical Education in Contemporary Societies.

Focusing on Rumania, this paper studies the relationship between the values system of the technological era and the implications for education. With increasing industralization and technological development, many societies have emerged as highly utilitarian in which all values are subordinated to acquisitive behavior, materialism, and individual egotistic achievement. Yet the fundamentally antiutilitarian ethical, Marxist humanism retains as its highest ideal the transformation of man from a means into a goal. A survey of Rumanian youth indicates a commitment to the humanist ideal of socialism based on equity and social justice. According to Marxist humanism, the principal requirements of contemporary education should be the stimulation of creativity within the student, placing him in a position of choice and guiding his free and conscious option toward the most advanced alternatives, the increase in the role of self-education, the education for many-sided student personalities and their filfillment, the permanent assertion of freedom and autonomy of personality as the basis for socialization, and the development of human values. (Author/DE)