Apology:Re: [Vision2020] Ted on the Virtues Project

[Phil Nisbet]

Ted

Excellent post.  Teaching civic virtues is something that would classify as 
things that would not bring up particular religious views and those are 
perhaps those things which are indeed worthy of inclusion outside the venue 
of virtues taught as comparative religion.

On one of your earlier postings you noted that certain genetic traits are 
not universal, but tend to be spread in terms of behavioral characteristics 
to insure survival of a species under variable ecological conditions.  Its 
would be possible to engineer a universal traits set from a species that 
would result in a clone like response to stimulas, but that would reduce the 
survivability of the species so engineered.

Culling selected virtues into a universalist format looks deceptively like 
engineering to create mind sets similar to the above example.  My concern is 
that such engineering on a social scale is grand if the environment were set 
piece and unchangable, but just as species need to be diverse to protect 
from extinction in the real and ever changing environment, social structures 
need to be diverse in order to adapt and cope with the uncertainty of the 
real and very changable world in which we live.

Phil Nisbet

>From: Tbertruss at aol.com
>To: pcnisbet1 at hotmail.com, vision2020 at moscow.com
>Subject: Apology:Re: [Vision2020] Ted on the Virtues Project
>Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 14:13:36 EDT
>
>
>Phil et. al.
>
>If you are not getting all the V2020 posts for some reason, this can 
>explain
>why you did not see Nick Gier's post sent explicitly to you on V2020, that 
>you
>claimed was buried in the "avalanche" of V2020 posts, so I apologize for my
>misunderstanding.  I also have noted some V2020 posts are not coming into 
>my
>inbox or spam folder!  This I discovered easily by cross checking my inbox 
>with
>the V2020 archives.
>
>As far as my post on Virtues Project is concerned, there is no way to avoid
>teaching some virtues in the public schools, nonviolence among them.  I 
>just
>think there are serious conflicts, disagreements, and constitutional issues 
>that
>could result from introducing the Virtues Project into a school system.  If
>we introduce a specific program of teaching virtues paid with taxpayer 
>dollars,
>we should expect some serious and radical disagreements over what virtues
>should be taught, especially when the program being considered uses 
>terminology
>suggestive of a religious origin and religious content for their program of
>"virtues."  Some will argue the Virtues Project is too close to introducing 
>a
>form of religious teaching in the public schools for it to conform to
>constitutional guarantees of separation of church and state.  And the 
>Virtues Project
>claims of avoiding values debates and the advocacy of religion is highly
>questionable.
>
>I think children learn by example as much or more than by words.  If a 
>child
>is surrounded from birth by people who show respect and consideration for 
>each
>other, this is what they will learn, regardless of what the people
>surrounding them preach.  On the other hand, you could trumpet the virtue 
>of nonviolence
>all day long, but if the culture a child is raised in surrounds them with
>messages that violence is justified and even a "virtue" itself, insofar as 
>force
>or violence against others is viewed as a means to prove manhood or 
>personal
>worth or gain success or guarantee the hegemony of the state, as it is 
>often in
>our culture, the preaching of nonviolence may have limited effect.
>
>Ted Moffett

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