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Linda et. al.<BR>
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You wrote on 6/19/2005:<BR>
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"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."</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" BACK="#ffffff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=3 PTSIZE=12 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"><BR>
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"The Virtues Project does not take on the values debate that can offend people of diverse belief systems, including religious and non-religious."<BR>
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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.<BR>
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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.<BR>
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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.<BR>
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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.<BR>
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<A HREF="http://www.virtuesproject.com/virtues.html">http://www.virtuesproject.com/virtues.html</A><BR>
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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.<BR>
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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:<BR>
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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." <BR>
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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.<BR>
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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.<BR>
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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?<BR>
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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.<BR>
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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.<BR>
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Ted Moffett</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" BACK="#ffffff" style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff" SIZE=3 PTSIZE=12 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0"><BR>
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