Moral education has been a priority for educational outcomes in the academy for hundreds of years. Just as education in general is seen as more than an endeavor that takes place solely in the classroom, moral education is inherently more than just an intellectual exercise. As an educator I believe that morality begins in the heart. To that end, classroom learning offered in partnership with rich out of the class experiences and an opportunity to reflect on each activity inspire a student to begin to answer the question, “how ought I to live this life?”

“The heart is our entryway into the moral dimensions of experience.”
(Gula, 1997, p. 36)

Many of the ideas expressed in this article have everything to do with being an administrator at a Catholic college for almost twenty-two years. As the multitude of practicum students who have spent time with me know, my efforts to separate my professional life from my personal life were given up many years ago. I am committed to Saint Michael’s College and the education we provide “in light of the Catholic faith”. It is an education that challenges, comforts, instructs and compels. It is an education that is not value-neutral. It is an education of hope and a leap of faith. It is an education that exists in and depends on community. More importantly, I am proud to say, it is an educational journey that my son Mark has just begun.

Life is certainly not simple. My students find themselves negotiating a moral minefield as they try to make sense of their role in an increasingly complex world. They become increasingly aware that they are constantly faced with moral dilemmas. “Because the moral life is concerned with ordinary life, morality cannot be reserved to a few acts of great significance. Every human act is a moral act. The way we talk, the time we spend, the plans we make, the relationships we develop all constitute the moral life. Morals is not primarily the study of grave actions; rather it is the study of human living” (Keenan, 1996, p. 4). We have a responsibility to provide our students with sign-posts and touchstones that not only clarify but inform and inspire as students ponder the question, “how ought I to live this life?”

Robert Coles (1989) maintains that “moral virtues are not the inevitable reward of high academic performance” (p. xvi). My duty as a moral educator is to enable and ennoble students as they prepare for responsive and responsible citizenship. I believe that moral education must reveal how the heart (virtue), the head (duty) and the hand (service) can be woven together to produce a shroud of virtue that young people can feel comfortable wearing for much of their lives.

I believe that morality begins in the heart. Call it disposition, temperment, or intuition, our heart acts as our personal gyroscope that brings us back to what we know to be right. The heart is the essence of virtue ethics and clarifies for us that being a certain type of person is intrinsically more a determinant of character than doing a certain type of activity. Robert Nash (1995) calls this evidence of our first moral language, the language of background beliefs. I believe the heart is the anchor that tethers our emotional sensibilities and acts as our moral compass.

I believe morality is caught, not taught. As beings we watch, we observe and we imitate others. Parents are acutely aware of this and it is a humbling thought. Though we may not adopt all beliefs, attitudes and behaviors we observe, we begin to know at an early age that being a certain person is commensurate with doing the right thing. At Saint Michael’s College we invoke the term “witness” to describe those individuals who exemplify moral goodness. Individuals who manifest lives of moral excellence inform, instruct and inspire. In this way, Jesus of Nazareth, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, Oscar Romero, and Martin Luther King, Jr. are but a few individuals who provide testimonial witness to the virtuous life, a life of being good and doing right. We look to these people as ideal individuals, people whose good we aspire to. They are exemplars, individuals whose moral light shines across cultures, traditions and religions. “These saints and moral heroes are the salt by which the world is preserved” (Pojman, 1995, p. 170).

These stellar witnesses to the moral life are truly inspirational, but again, moral life is about the ordinary. Robert Coles writes extensively on the moral force of literature as both instructive and inspirational. He points to many literary works by authors such as Leo Tolstoy, John Cheever, Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy whose protagonists themselves bear witness to the struggle of “doing the right thing” in lives characterized by the mundane rather than the extraordinary. Morality conveyed through the power of a well crafted myth, legend, story or novel tend to have staying power. “A storyteller can exert a pull on readers strong enough to win them over to a way of getting on with others that is morally inspired” (Coles, 1989, p. 120). “You do it with a story because in a story--oh, like it says in the Bible, the Word becomes flesh” (Coles, 1989, p. 128). Literary characters become imbedded in our imagination and become colleagues and friends who accompany us on our moral journey. They provoke a visceral response in the reader that resonates long after the last page is turned. Exemplars, whether they be saints, moral heroes or literary characters, exert a moral influence that is inspiring, motivational and ever present. “Rules cut up moral reality in fragmented and unnatural ways, but lives exhibit appropriate attitudes and dispositions in holistic fashion” (Pojman, 1995, p. 169). Coles also reminds us that “a compelling narrative, offering a storyteller’s moral imagination vigorously at work, can enable any of us to learn by example, to take to heart what is, really a gift of grace” (1989, p. 191).

Cole’s writing has a strong religious dimension to it and many of the individuals he writes about and the authors he frequently references with respect to the moral life are acknowledged Catholics. I am particularly grateful for his efforts to weave the faith life into his scholarly writings. The language he brings to bear in his moral messages is rich with Catholic teaching. Coles is able to bridge the secular with the sacred in the most magical of ways. “Religion provides a rich and pervasive context that provides a way of seeing the world and the individual’s place in it. One need not profess belief in or practice a particular religion or faith to find religious overtones in one’s worldview. Every culture’s ethical system incorporates at least some religious values” (McGrath, 1994, p. 65). The universality of the lessons gleaned from parables such as the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son bridges cultures as well as religions and is embedded in the human soul of what it means to be good.

Morality begins in the heart. It is the silent sentinel that continues to light our way. It will always be the Siren song that beckons us to what we know.

Not much has changed in my thinking since I took Robert Nash’s course in ethics almost four years ago. Through this course I realized the necessity of finding a way to intellectually support and publicly defend the moral decisions I make. “We turn to the language of the mind when we want to support, analyze and communicate what we grasp by heart” (Gula, 1989, p. 16). At that time I was introduced to “rule deontological theory” which holds that morality has a universal prescriptivity about it regardless of the end result. “Such rules as ‘we ought never to lie,’ ‘we ought always to keep our promises,’ and ‘we ought never to execute an innocent person’ constitute a set of valid prescriptions regardless of the outcomes” (Pojman, 1995, p. 136). I believe in this with my personal and professional soul.

Universalizability and duty are baseline tenets of Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative. “I am never to act otherwise than so I could also will that my maxim should be a universal law” (Kant, 1988). Kant contends that there are suitable moral principles that everyone can and must live by. A person of moral worth acts from no other motive than the motive of doing right (Sommers, 1993, p. 149). Kant’s Categorical Imperatives are not means/ends imperatives but are “unqualified and showing the proper recognition of the imperial status of moral obligations” (Pojman, 1995, p. 139). In today’s pluralistic world both the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and Amnesty International have almost become synonymous with this notion of the universalizability of moral principles.

A few short weeks ago this struggle with moral obligation was best illuminated by a debate at one of our Student Association meetings. A number of our students in the Political Science Club planned on using funds allocated to them to purchase four plane tickets to Georgia. Their intention was to accompany two of our faculty members to protest at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning. The protest would mark the 10th anniversary of the massacre in El Salvador of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter. A congressional task force was sent in 1989 to investigate the incident and reported that the soldiers responsible for the killing were trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas. The School of the Americas has long been perceived as synonymous with human rights violations and atrocities in Latin America. Protesters risk arrest as they “cross the line” into federal property. A member of our Student Association put forth a resolution mandating that our students not use school monies to intentionally violate federal law. A heated debate ensued. The resolution was defeated with the call that the duty to prevail is often greater than that of the written law.

Inherent in the word “ought” is the concept of moral obligation or duty. Duty-based ethical theorists claim that “whenever there is a virtue, there must be some possible action to which the virtue corresponds and from which it derives its virtuousness” (Pojman, 1995, p. 174). The virtue of conscientiousness directs that we always be alert and attentive to doing our moral duty. We are called to do our duty for duty’s sake. At first blush this sounds rather circular and resistant to definition. It is our duty to obey the moral law without exception and to be constantly vigilant towards its fulfillment. Kant states, “although many things are done in conformity with what duty prescribes, it is nevertheless always doubtful whether they are done strictly from duty, so as to have moral worth” (Kant, 1988, p. 33).

Robert Coles (1990) writes of Martin Luther King, Jr. as a reluctant hero who regarded himself finally, with his back to the wall, with no choice but to act in the way he did. An individual of high and demanding conscience -- “I can’t not do what I am doing! There is no alternative, you see.” (p. 115). King was a man of moral worth because he acted from duty.

If being other-centered is the manifestation of duty, then caring for one’s community has moral worth. Community service has been at the top of the co-curricular agenda in higher education for a number of years. “The Judeo-Christian tradition has long emphasized virtues leading to service. In the well known 13th chapter of I Corinthians, Paul concludes by listing some of the cardinal virtues of the tradition: “and now abideth faith, hope and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity”(Hendricksen, 1994, p. 3).

At Saint Michael’s College, service has been a requisite since the founding religious community chartered the College in 1904 to educate young people for lives of Christian service. In speaking to groups interested in hearing more about our institution I fondly point out that Saint Michael’s College (SMC) stands for “Serving My Community”. Almost 75% of our students engage in some form of service through our M.O.V.E. (Mobilization of Volunteer Efforts) program as part of their undergraduate experience. Our goal here at Saint Michael’s is to extend the invitation to each and every student to have a “significant brush” with our Mission. “Each community has built-in moral messages about what is expected of a good member”(Gula, 1997, p. 65). With our strong religious traditions, Saint Michael’s College instructs, informs and inspires our students to make positive contributions to whatever communities they find themselves.

Not too long ago we were having one of our frequent “hen” (not bull) sessions on the couch in my office. Sooner or later the talk turned to the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. My son Mark happened to wander in just as some students and I were sharing favorite foods and memorable times. Out of nowhere Mark mentioned that his best Thanksgiving memories surrounded the times we -- the Cernosia family -- made dinner for the “grandmas and grandpas.” He remembered baking soda bread, going in the van to pick up the “grandmas and grandpas” from the various apartment complexes, serving them pie and just sitting with them until it was time to go. “I will never forget it” were his exact words.

This story helps me to “know” that there is a certain spirit to service that is life-giving and life-changing. “As the fundamental virtue charity is concerned more with the interior than with the external act, more concerned with the heart than the deed” (Kennan, 1996, p. 49). And as Elizabeth McGrath (1994) points out, “far from being an onerous task or too weighty and assignment, fulfillment of duty can actually bring the individual constant improvement and deeper satisfaction” (p. 103). I have staked my personal and professional life on the belief that morality does, in fact, begin in the heart and that a heart well directed DOES yield a life of virtue. I am humbled to be able to witness the beginnings of this process with my own son.

If being good and doing right is the ultimate duty of the moral person we must consciously and conscientiously be attentive to the moral authority of the “knowing” that Welch (1994) called an “informed intuition” (p. 148) and Gula (1997) terms “moral discernment” (p. 48). It provides the answer when logic seems to fail. It gives us guidance when our sensibilities, experience, and dispositions all come together to provide the only response, the one that begins and ends in the heart of the believer.

Coles, R. (1989). The call of stories: Teaching and the moral imagination. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Coles, R. (1990). Harvard diary: Reflections on the sacred and the secular. New York: Crossroad Publishing.

Coles, R. (1993). The call of service: A witness to idealism. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Elias, J.L. (1989). Moral education: Secular and religious. Malabar, FL: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company.

Gula, R.M. (1989). Reason informed by faith: Foundations of Catholic morality. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.

Gula, R.M. ( 1997). Moral discernment. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.

Hendricksen, D. (1994). Some reflections on service-learning and the heritages of liberal arts higher education. Unpublished manuscript.

Kant, I. (1988). Fundamental principles of the metaphysics of morals (T.K. Abbott, Trans.). New York: Prometheus Books. (Original work published 1785)

Keenan, J. F. (1996). Virtues for ordinary Christians. Kansas City, MO: Sheed and Ward.

McGrath, E.Z. (1994). The art of ethics: A psychology of ethical beliefs. Chicago: Loyola University Press.

Nash, R.J. (1996). “Real World” ethics: Frameworks for educators and human service professionals. New York: Teachers College Press.

Pojman, L.P. (1995). Ethics: Discovering right and wrong. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Sommers, C. and Sommers, F. (1993).Vice & virtue in everyday life: Introductory readings in ethics, Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace & Co.

Welch, D.D. (1994). Conflicting agendas: Personal morality in institutional settings. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press.

Jennifer F. Cernosia is Assistant Dean of Students and Director of Student Activities at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont. She received her Master’s Degree in Higher Education/College Student Personnel from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in 1976.