‘It’s just not fear’ – Fictional Narratives’ Role in the Development of Pupils’ Perception of Justice and Morality

Abstract

Education is an investment. Although this claim is both controversial, cynical, and ultimately misguided, it holds some truths. The core of education is to allow children, adolescents, and young adults to develop not only the skills, knowledge, and values that are necessary to participate and thrive in society, but also prepare them to cultivate human values, such as a sense of justice, ethics and morals, throughout their life – a process which in the Germanic school of thought is referred to as bildung (Biesta 2002, 20; Bellmann and Su 2017; Lovlie 2002). I argue that a central aspect of bildung is the development and emergence of pupils’ sense of morality and perception of justice. Bildung can both be understood as the process through which one becomes, in lack of a better word, cultivated, and an ideal – the preconception of what it means to be cultivated as a reflection of the values of contemporary society (Biesta 2002; Straume 2013). According to Rachels (2003, 12) “[m]orality is, first and foremost, a matter of consulting reason. The morally right thing to do, in any circumstance, is whatever there are the best reasons for doing”. For the purpose of the following discussion, bildung is understood as the process through which a human being develops and/or inherits the values, attitudes, skills, and knowledge needed to be an active participant in society and an agent of his or her lifelong selfrealization and self-cultivation; a process that must happen in order to attain stage six in Kohlberg’s (2008) model of moral development. Thus, bildung and morality are intrinsically connected. This paper seeks to consolidate these two central pillars of education – bildung and moral development, and explores the question how fictional narratives play a role in pupils’ moral development and perception of justice?