What is "moral education"?
Assuming we more or less know what education is, try defining "moral." The education ministry's website takes a stab at it: "A heart-and-mind (kokoro) that values life, a heart-and-mind that is considerate toward others..."
That's unimpeachable as far as it goes, but once the platitudes are dispensed with we inevitably reach a point where people, countries, philosophies and religions diverge, morally speaking, without one party being demonstrably good and the other demonstrably bad. That's when moral education gets tricky. How do you teach one morality without being unfair to others? Or, alternatively, how do you teach a universal morality without in effect teaching nothing at all?
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