CARE ETHICS AND CHARACTER EDUCATION: A WOMAN’S PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The ethics of care is Carol Gilligan proposal after noticing the gender bias contained in the table of moral development proposed by Lawrence Kohlberg. Gilligan states that, while men tend to solve moral dilemmas in a rationalistic way, appealing to the idea of justice, women also use attachment and empathy. For this reason, she proposes to add in the moral judgment everything that women grasp better to correct Kohlberg’s system’s bias. Nel Noddings, from another approach, turns the ethics of care into a pedagogical proposal in dialogue with the character education movement. Her model contemplates four essential components: modeling, dialogue, practice, and confirmation. Noddings sees that, overcoming gender bias implies that moral judgment should not be reduced to instrumental rationality but proposes to avoid falling into emotivism. Hence, her proposal appeals to a proper education of the heart, seeking a balance between heart and head. In this sense, both thinkers launch a positive challenge to the actual currents of character education, just at a time when this educational field is expanding its fundamental reflections, while seeking to reflect all aspects of the human person.