Anindita Satpathi

Unlike the current fashionable portrayal of gray characters on celluloid, cinema even a few decades back was marked by starkly white characters posited in opposition to black ones. As a child, I remember during family television viewing I being very persistent about confirmation of the good and the bad guy so I could settle my emotions regarding them without which I would continue to watch ill at ease. The complexity of gray characters being quite beyond my understanding was the result of a particular type of socialization that children are typically subjected to even now. This socialization is one that is anxious to imbue children with respect for rules, regulations, norms and standards which is where the need for moral science as a compulsory course in primary school comes in.

Essentially preachy and self righteous, moral science as taught in schools with heavy doses of moral-laden stories and categorical stipulations with ought to assertions contribute to a skewed absorption of moral values by children. Children are faced with the situation of judging events or deeds isolated from their historical contexts on the basis of a particular understanding of ‘good’. Rejection of things now recognized as morally wrong, for instance, slavery needs to be backed by an understanding of their legitimacy resting on a very different social and cultural system all of whose values were not wrong. To children, ineffectual and grating stories of Aesop’s Fables despite warnings of dire consequences are scarcely inspiring. The pervasive effect of moral science instead manifests itself in imperceptible beginnings of a selfish and ambitious individualism in reverberation of themes of ‘duty’, ‘achievement’ and fostering of a status based respect rather than merit based respect.

Oral accounts of a liar or cheat or thief necessarily coming to a bad end fosters among children a hypocritical viewing of peer groups through economically tinted lens. In this respect moral science becomes an insidious instrument of bourgeois values. Consequently children miss out on learning empathy and understanding perspectives owing to their assumed incapacity of dealing with complex moral problems. The resultant hotch potch of discrete ‘moral’ values simplified by injunctions of unconditional application is what masquerades in the garb of moral science.

What is interesting is that the Gramscian formulation of hegemony assumes importance here owing to its reference to the school system as a subtle and pervasive instrument of perpetuating ideological hegemony and maintaining the status quo. In modern day democracies the teaching of moral science amply illustrates the exercise of hegemony by consent. Allusions to the eldest male member as head of the family perpetuates patriarchal structures, need for doing right requires conforming to authority which in turn recommends identification with majority will and emphasis on benevolence, generosity and honesty creates and reinforces a public private divide wherein the moral gets relegated to the private thereby legitimizing the public sphere as rightfully engaging with power, violence and decision-making.

Universal values of humanity in the veins of justice, fairness and equality turn out to be the last virtues that are served by the compulsory course of moral science as taught in primary school. Its crucial function is the shaping of prevailing consciousness in mixed societies such that particular values, attitudes and beliefs legitimately come to comprise common sense.