On The Idea Of Teacher's Value Neutrality

The idea of teacher's value neutrality, which came to existence as the opposite ofthe idea of value authority in the traditional moral education in 1960s, maintains thatwe should define the morality and the moral judgement according to the form insteadof the content, i.e. the teacher should not praise highly some single morality and lifeideal and impose some moral belief on students, but should teach the value-formingmethods which help the students form special values on the basis of the lifeexperience and the reason of their own. The idea of teacher's value neutrality has hadan unprecedented impact on moral education in schools and compels us to re-orientateand rethink some fundamental problems, such as the essence and the function ofmoral education, etc. The theory and practice of the western idea of teacher's valueneutrality have brought us historical experience to go by and have become theunavoidable foreign reference in the current reform of moral education. But when itparts with the traditional ideological education in the radical form, the idea ofteacher's value neutrality goes to the extreme of nihilism. So aiming at obtaininspiration from the communication and dialogue in educational thoughts betweenChinese and foreign countries, the article expects to seize the historical line bygrasping and analyzing the idea of teacher's value neutrality on the whole and makethe teacher's value position in moral education clear by examining and indicating themerits and demerits of it, in the hope of promoting and helping the reform andpractice of moral education.The article comprises three parts:The first part discusses the background of the idea of teacher's value neutrality,including the era background, the social background and the educational background.The emergence of the multiculturalism places the schools in a dilemma as to whosevalues to be taught. So the idea of teacher's value neutrality makes a fresh start andsuggests that the emphasis of moral education is not to teach specific moral values butto help the students to acquire some reason of moral choice, which accords with theobjective demand of the times. Facing the prevalence of moral relativism, the schoolsare in a puzzle about what to be taught. The idea of teacher's value neutrality focus onthe process of teaching and avoids the content of teaching, which caters to the demandof the idea of relativistic values, so its emergence is appropriate to the currentoccasion. The appearance of the idea of teacher's value neutrality is also the results ofrebelling against the authoritarian and moral indoctrination, which follows the revivalof the progressive education.The second part emphatically expounds the basic views of the thought of valueneutrality. A great number of the theories of moral education, which spring up after1960s, advocate the idea of teacher's value neutrality. A great variety of educationaltheories came into being on the basis of the idea of teacher's value neutrality. Theauthor tries to survey some representative theories, such as values clarification,cognitive developmental theory and rational utilitarianism, and then summarizes thebasic features of the idea of teacher's value neutrality: opposing indoctrination,emphasizing cognition and valuing form.The third presents the critique of the idea of teacher's value neutrality. First, thearticle theoretically clarifies and defends the rationality of the idea of teacher's valueneutrality in the perspective of history, logic and reality. Then the author analyzes andcriticizes the limitations of it, such as the separation of the content and form,individual and society, moral education and spirit, etc. At Last, the author points outthat the idea of teacher's value neutrality has its limits: value neutrality should treatthe global ethics as the moral minimum and can only aim at the students of specificage.