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Making sense of moral education: guest editor’s preface to a book symposium on A Theory of Moral Education by Michael Hand

Any theory, so the conventional understanding in academia testifies, is usually solidified (to a large extent) by the secondary literature it generates. The feedback from the scholarly community on Michael Hand’s theory of moral education published in his latest book is a testament to this wisdom. Few, if any, recent books on the philosophy of moral education or the philosophy of education in general have received the level of attention A Theory of Moral Education has been graced with. Alongside the customary book reviews published in some of the leading scholarly journals (e.g., Cam, 2019; Drerup, 2018; Ferkany, 2018; Hambrick, 2019; Maxwell, 2019; Peterson, 2018), three book symposia have been put together to discuss the various aspects of Hand’s account of moral education, i.e., the current one appearing in the Journal of Moral Education as well as the one to be published in the Journal of Philosophy of Education (with contributions from David Aldridge, Doret de Ruyter and John Tillson) and another in the Journal of Beliefs and Values (including contributions from Angie Hobbs and Andrew Copson). Moreover, essay-long examinations of Hand’s view on the problem of moral education have also been elaborated by some of the leading authors in this area of scholarly research, e.g., John White (2016, 2017) and John Tillson (2017). As the set of contributors engaging with A Theory of Moral Education reads like a list of who’s who in philosophy of education, this alone is a testimony to the interest Hand’s account of moral education has aroused in the global scholarly community. Furthermore, as the publication of A Theory of Moral Education has been accompanied by a number of Hand’s (2018) more popular pieces discussing various aspects of his account of moral education, e.g., ‘If we disagree about morality, how can we teach it’, ‘How to teach children morals’, ‘Making children moral’ etc., its impact is most likely to go well beyond the academic community. Exchanges between academics in the philosophy of education community tend to be less combative than within the gladiatorial circles of mainstream philosophy. However, Hand’s book has garnered quite a lot of challenging critiques, which attests to the merit of the book in rising above the sea of cozy truisms. The review articles in this issue are a case in point. This book symposium published in the Journal of Moral Education brings together two essays on A Theory of Moral Education by Matthew Clayton & David Stevens (2019) and by Laura D’Olimpio (2019). Each of those challenges several aspects of Hand’s conception of moral education published in this book. By both praising his work and critically engaging with several of its aspects, the two essays offer an insight into academic scholarship at its best. To close off, this symposium also includes Michael Hand’s reply to the most challenging objections advanced by Clayton & Stevens and by JOURNAL OF MORAL EDUCATION 2019, VOL. 48, NO. 4, 499–500 https://doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2019.1660629