CHAPTER 1 
                       INTRODUCTION 
          
         1.1 Introduction  
          
         Moral education has always been a perennial aim of education. The 
         function of schools, it was believed, was not only to make people smart but 
         also to make them good. However, with industrialization, the moral aim of 
         education receded to the background as the demands of capitalist markets 
         centered mainly around the provision of skilled manpower, culturally ready 
         to integrate into labour markets. 
          
         The return of moral education to the limelight is attributable to the fact that 
         modern societies increasingly have to deal with disturbing trends both 
         within schools, and in the wider society. Mounting discipline problems 
         culminating in violent outbursts, alarming rates of teenage pregnancy and 
         drug abuse are phenomena often explained by the breakdown of the family 
         or are generally situated in the aftermath of industrialization. Many have 
         also located the dysfunction of the school as one contributing to the 
         degeneration of social mores. Prime among these dysfunctions is the fact 
         that our schools are not adequately providing for one important aspect of 
         child and adolescent development, that is, moral education. 
          
         Those who believe that we need to provide for some form of moral 
         education in our curriculum are not a homogeneous group. Amongst them 
         we find, at one extreme, the traditionalist who argues that we should return 
         to the good old ways of teaching values through religious literature or 
         some other relevant material of universal significance. At the other 
         extreme, some argue that, rather than teach values, adults have to model 
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         desirable behaviour and the school’s hidden curriculum must be used to 
         help children become morally autonomous adults. 
          
         In Mauritius, moral education has, so far, been the concern of confessional 
         schools (those with religious denominations). However, it is undeniable 
         that the interethnic conflicts of February 1999 (Matadeen Report:1999) 
         acted as a catalyst in propelling character education into the limelight by 
         emphasising the need of some form of moral education, an indispensable 
         ingredient, for peaceful cohabitation in a multicultural society. Our renewed 
         interest in character education forms part of a wider educational and 
         political agenda aimed, not only, at revamping our system of education but 
         also at giving a new impulse to a quasi non-existent social policy. The 
         goodwill of the government, no doubt fuelled by the political urgency of a 
         dormant social crisis, has manifested itself through the inclusion of Living 
         Values Programmes in the school curriculum and in many of the teacher 
         training programmes at the Mauritius Institute of Education.  
          
         Implicit in these policies is the assumption that all the stakeholders within 
         the school are ready and willing to assume the roles that others are 
         carving out for them. Despite the general agreement that schools are 
         responsible to a certain extent for character education, there seems to be 
         a general vagueness as to what this responsibility consists of and how 
         schools can conceive and implement such a programme formally and 
         informally in a multicultural context. No study has so far been undertaken 
         to investigate the perceptions of stakeholders about moral education in 
         Mauritian secondary schools. The aim of this present study is to fill this gap 
         by describing and developing an understanding of the perceptions of some 
         stakeholders in secondary education about moral education in the context 
         of Mauritius. 
          
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         This study will provide the groundwork which may assist policy decision 
         makers to take into account the needs and expectations of different 
         stakeholders in relation to moral education in our schools. 
          
         1.2 OVERVIEW OF OUR GLOBAL CONTEMPORARY CONTEXT 
          
         While most social theorists (Burbules and Torres 2000:5) agree that we 
         are living in an age of rapid scientific and technological change, they also 
         do not deny that such changes have varying impacts on different social 
         groups within  the same society and across different societies. The existing 
         literature about post industrial and post modern societies (Beck 1995: 127-
         136) and its effects on social groups  and families  is growing rapidly in 
         view of the all pervasive effects of globalisation. At the economic level, 
         changing trade patterns and world order have compelled all societies to 
         readjust structurally. The free flow of capital and its rising value as 
         compared to labour has meant increasing inequity across most societies 
         with resultant outbreaks in violence and conflicts. Changes in patterns of 
         production, distribution and consumption worldwide together with the 
         possibilities offered by information and communication technology have 
         meant the adoption of radically new work culture that has impacted on the 
         family.  
          
         Changing relations of production have produced in time changing 
         philosophies and outlooks which have permeated all spheres of life - both 
         public and private.  In the public sphere, discourse came to be centered on 
         the concept of individual merit and rights with the attendant connotations of 
         individual freedom, which is at the basis of most democratic societies. 
         From the agrarian societies maintained by the collectivity, the building 
         block of post-industrial societies is the person and not the community. 
         Such a transformation meant a radically different political agenda, more 
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         sympathetic to the capitalist set up. While the neomarxists have 
         highlighted the sinister agenda of industrialized countries in affirming the 
         supremacy of the capitalist economic system as the only viable economic 
         system and legitimizing the cultural dominance of the West, one cannot 
         ignore the benefits conferred by industrialization in terms of health 
         improvements and better life expectancy. However, as Mac Laren (1995:3) 
         argues the benefits of progress are confined to a few and the cost of such 
         progress is borne by too many.  
          
         Economic compulsions represent the driving force of modern societies, to 
         which everything else becomes subservient. Mac Laren (1995:1) opens 
         the discussion in his book “Critical Pedagogy and Predatory Culture” with 
         this description of  postmodern societies: 
          
            The prevailing referents around which the notion of public 
            citizenry is currently constructed have been steered in the 
            ominous direction of the social logic of production and 
            consumption. 
          
         Maintaining high rates of economic growth is the priority of all industrialized 
         countries - a priority which looks formidable since Pareto efficiency has 
         already been reached making it difficult to push productivity beyond the 
         present levels. As a result people generally have to work harder to keep up 
         with the demands of the workplace.  
          
         Increasing dissatisfaction with the present economic set up, disillusionment 
         caused by the crumbling of the welfare state, the disintegration of the 
         family and mounting social unrest in many parts of the world, disruptions in 
         climatic conditions and a general deterioration of the environment, have 
         caused many people to question this very model of development and 
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