Strengthening the responsibility in the school community between the concepts of civic and moral education

dr. Robi Kroflič

Summary:  As the starting point for thinking about the basic aims of moral and civic education in public schools, the author first presents M. Warnock’s views on the relations between personal morality, public morality, and human rights as a legally regulated concept; he then proceeds with the theory of social domains and the political ideas of H. Arendt to provide further argumentation for the basis of the central thesis of this article: Moral and civic education in the spirit of human rights and moral responsibility toward fellow human beings should be provided in accordance with ethics and emancipatory political ideas. The author’s considerations of the main goals of moral and civic education in public schools are founded on the assumption that – although a great many concepts are relevant to morality (e.g., virtues, values, a sense of duty, ethical principles) – there is no personal morality without a trace of altruism rooted in sympathy and imagination; and without such personal morality in the sense of desiring to act ethically, there can be no public morality oriented toward the common good or the rule of law based on human rights.