Moral Education: A Handbook for Teachers. Insights and Practical Strategies for Helping Adolescents to Become More Caring, Thoughtful, and Responsible Persons.

This handbook contains background readings, teaching strategies, and units of study for teaching moral education at the elementary, secondary, and adult levels. It offers practical strategies and insights for helping adolescents become more caring, thoughtful, and responsible persons. The intent is to help young people make more rational decisions and become more aware of value considerations when attempting to chart the courses of their own lives. There are three major parts to the handbook. Part 1 examines and discusses the pros and cons of both hard-line and soft-line approaches to moral education. The hard-line approach emphasizes teaching children the absolute, eternal principles of right and wrong. In contrast, the soft-line approach emphasizes teaching children to increase their self-awareness and to engage in more fulfilling human interactions. It also emphasizes the need of freedom for creative expression. The book argues that what's needed is a moderate approach to moral education, a creative tension between the good points of both the hard and soft lines. Part II describes and gives examples of five teaching strategies: the awareness strategy, the debate strategy, the rational strategy, the concept strategy, and the game strategy. The five teaching strategies are utilized to teach each unit. The units are: "Justice: A Social Studies Unit;""Property: A Business and Economics Unit;""Honesty: A Humanities Unit;""Integrity: A Behavioral Sciences Unit;" and "Relationships: A Marriage and Family or Personal Relations Unit." Self-contained units of study which can be used in the K-12 moral education classroom and with adults comprise Part III. (Author/RM)