[Vision2020] "Virtues Project" In Public Schools: Chastity?

[Tbertruss at aol.com]

Linda et. al.

You wrote on 6/19/2005:

"The Virtues Project is not about the practices or beliefs of any particular 
religion. It's founded on the wisdom of the world's diverse cultures to bring 
out the best within us: courage, honor, justice, integrity, respect, tact, 
kindness and all the rest."

"The Virtues Project does not take on the values debate that can offend 
people of diverse belief systems, including religious and non-religious."

These statements may reflect the intention and thinking of those who created 
the Virtues Project, but if so, these statements express a naive and untenable 
view of ethics as the Virtues Project would be applied in real world examples 
in a school system.

As the application of the "virtues" promoted by the Virtues Project, based on 
whatever form of ethical reasoning employed, impacts real world behaviors of 
students and subjects studied in the classroom, profound and divisive 
disagreements will arise that do involve specific conflicts between religions and 
fundamental debates about values.

This is so obvious I am amazed to perceive well educated members of our 
community promoting the Virtues Project in the public schools with such apparent 
unthinking enthusiasm, seemingly dodging the divisive values debates and 
religious conflict the Virtues Project could inspire in the public schools.

Consider that sex education, or its avoidance, a controversial and important 
subject in public schools, obviously is central to the principles of "virtue" 
that many of the world's dominant religions and cultures promote.  Therefore 
it is transparent that the Virtues Project cannot avoid values debates and 
vehement religious disagreement on this issue, regardless of the clever strategy 
of not mentioning "chastity" as a "virtue" on their web site at the link below, 
a virtue among the most important across many religious and cultural 
traditions.  This divisive issue already has led school districts to bow to 
religiously sourced pressure to promote certain religiously derived values in sex 
education, chastity among them, in public schools.  A specific Virtues Project in 
the public schools could open the door for more injection of religion in the 
public schools under public pressure to promote the virtues of given religions 
who feel their virtues are being ignored.

http://www.virtuesproject.com/virtues.html

For those seeking to maintain a strong separation of church and state, the 
Virtues Projects raises serious questions regarding how the religious 
implications and future consequences of such a project can be avoided in the realpolitik 
world of public schools policy.  In fact, a good case could be made that the 
Virtues Project is another attempt to construct a "New Age" universal 
religion, based on the common values of the world's spiritual traditions.  The words 
"spiritual" and "sacred" are used numerous times in the info provided on their 
web site, and they explicitly state they surveyed the world's sacred texts to 
assemble their list of 52 "universal virtues."  Does this list transcend the 
moral guidance of the Bible?  If you are a Christian, you might wonder why they 
do not teach the Bible in the public schools, since to a Christian this 
document contains all the moral guidance on virtues that is required?  So the use 
of the Virtues Project in the public schools is questionable on the grounds it 
violates separation of church and state when it is not being taught as a 
purely academic subject.

Consider what happens when the Virtues Project listed virtue of "respect," a 
virtue that might be considered culturally more universal and applicable to 
secular values than "chastity," conflicts with the religiously derived virtue of 
chastity in a public school, a fictional scenario similar to what has 
happened in school districts in the USA:

A thirteen year old female student is subjected to harassment in school based 
on bringing a few condoms to school and giving a few to some female friends.  
Other students who believe fervently that sex before marriage is a grievous 
sin, backed by their parents, think they are only trying to discourage the 
female in question from a disastrous mistake in her personal life, or from 
influencing other students to engage in risk taking "sin."  

The school faculty and administration intervenes to stop the personal 
harassment of the female student in this example, only to find the parents of the 
students who fervently believe that sex before marriage is a grievous sin in an 
outrage over the "censoring" of their children's views by the school.  The 
school's sex education program had mentioned use of condoms as a means of 
preventing STDs and pregnancy.  The parents of the students who are against any sex 
among youth prior to marriage based on religious grounds use the fact of the 
mention of condoms in the classroom by teachers as a means for safer sex as 
evidence the school is "promoting" sex among teenagers.  In response, the school 
district decides to offer an abstinence (the "virtue" of "chastity") based 
program for sex education among teens that downplays or ignores condom use for safe 
sex, outraging other members of the community who view the school district as 
bowing to pressure from religious groups who wish to impose their religiously 
derived values on sexuality upon all the students in a public school 
supposedly following separation of church and state.

And what happened to our grand virtue of "respect," as this "virtue" might be 
applied to the female student's views and behavior in the example above?  One 
set of values recognizes that teens in the modern world will have sex, and it 
is best to provide them with the information needed to prevent unwanted 
pregnancies and STDs.  The female student in question under these values might be 
praised for helping to prevent her peers from coming to harm from rashly having 
sex without taking precautions.  She in fact might be shown "respect" for 
taking a bold stance ("courage" as a virtue) on a controversial issue, empowering 
her female peers to take wise control of their sexuality.  And even if action 
was taken to discourage her actions regarding condoms, the school could 
remain nonjudgmental toward the female in question, still maintaining academic 
discussion of the facts regarding the use of condoms in prevention of STDs and 
pregnancy.  But another set of values insists that sex before marriage is a 
grievous sin that increases risk taking behavior and destroys families, that is 
unwisely promoted when offering info on condoms and "safe sex" to youth in the 
schools, or allowing students to openly display condoms.  From this point of 
view, showing the female student "respect" might mean the school giving her a 
lecture on immoral dangerous sexual behavior, and insisting she no longer bring 
condoms to school under penalty of disciplinary action, in an attempt to save 
her and other students from the possible harmful effects of her thinking and 
conduct.  In other words, she would be punished for the condom incident:  "tough 
love," some call it.

Furthermore, should comments by fellow students made to the female student 
that her behavior is immoral, comments that some interpreted as displaying a 
lack of "respect" for the female students personality, be discouraged by the 
school?  And if so, does this show "respect" for the firm religiously derived 
views of the students and their parents who are against the conduct of the female 
student who brought condoms to school, who, they argue, is influencing other 
students to take immoral risks with sex, a situation that demands they speak 
out?

The female student in this example will find herself the center of a 
battleground of conflicting interpretations of how to apply the virtue of "respect," a 
virtue that though in the abstract may inspire much agreement, here fractures 
most profoundly as it impacts religious views on the virtue of chastity 
applied to a real world situation in a public school.

The Virtues Project may try to dodge the values debate and the fundamental 
disagreements among religions as to the nature of virtue, but in practice in a 
diverse school system this is impossible, as it is now impossible in the 
conflicts between many religions and value systems in our world.  If bridging the 
gulf between competing value systems and religious interpretations of virtue 
were as easy as the Virtues Project seems to suggest, the world should be a much 
more peaceful place.  But to ignore the profound and vehement disagreements on 
values and virtues between religious or secular based ethical systems, which 
it appears to me the Virtues Project does, exemplified in their glaring 
omission of "chastity" as a virtue, after they assert they researched the world's 
sacred texts to assemble their list of 52 "universal virtues," will not 
ultimately solve the problems created by these disagreements.

Ted Moffett
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