7 - Re-Learning the Value of Direct Experience

Summary

Chapter 7 locates the ethical dimension of education within the students’ lived experiences in schools. It maintains that ethical education is concerned with providing relevant, intended and continuous direct experiences to enable young people to grow with a sense of respect and empathy for others and to engage, think and act ethically. It considers what changes in educational institutions would be essential in helping students to become more ethically aware, sensitive and motivated. These include engaging in peer and adult relationships characterised by care and reflection; and encounters with ethical issues and the relating topics of justice, fairness and equality. Reflecting on such practices in a variety of educational contexts such as in Ghana, Swaziland and Kenya, this chapter proposes a number of steps and practices towards ethical education in schools, including mapping out relational and ethical spaces in schools, integrating the ethos of building schools as ethical communities, consolidating curriculum activities and so forth. Examples can teach us principles to base our educative practices upon. It concludes that in doing so, students and teachers will not only learn about relationships but more importantly they will learn in relationship.