In this chapter, we will explore some suggestions for incorporating the development of children's conceptions of morality, convention, and personal issues into the existing academic curriculum. The goal is to provide teachers with some guidance for how to engage in domain-appropriate moral education that will complement, rather than compete with, teachers' more general academic aims. The suggestions and examples provided here are not meant to serve as a curriculum per se but, rather, as a template for teachers to use in adapting their course materials and syllabi for moral education.

The purposes of this curricular approach are (1) to stimulate the development of students' moral conceptions of fairness, human welfare, and rights, and (2) to develop their conceptions of societal convention and social organization so that they may (3) participate as constructive citizens and moral beings and (4) develop a critical moral orientation toward their own conduct and the norms and mores of society.

The first three stated purposes of this curricular approach are noncontroversial in that they are resonant with the goals of virtually all traditional forms of values education. In and of themselves, however, those three goals fall short of what is required of a genuinely moral person. In the absence of the capacity to employ one's moral and social judgments in a critical manner, an individual cannot reflect upon the possibility that his or her own moral perspective within certain situations is at odds with what is most fair and right. As we saw in Chapter 5, the dynamics among morality, convention, and informational assumptions are such that they may form a conceptual framework with immoral consequences.