In 1982, philosopher Susan Wolf’s article ‘Moral Saints’ was published in the Journal of Philosophy. The paper explores several ethical theories and questions the assumption that it is always “better to be morally better.”
Consider the following example. Whether a particular moral philosophy asks you develop virtues, act in accordance with moral duty, or asks you to consider the moral consequences of your actions, it is likely that they will consider generosity a good thing.
But how generous should one be? How much should of my wage should I give to charity? How much might I be permitted to eat before being a selfish glutton? How many possessions might I own before I am too materialistic? Clearly, in order to live a life that most people would consider happy or healthy, I cannot spend the entirety of my time and energy being ever increasingly generous. Attempting to follow moral obligations as maximally as possible, or aspiring towards moral saintliness, is unlikely to be very good for my own personal wellbeing.
Or, as Wolf expresses it:
‘if a moral saint is devoting all his time to feeding the hungry or healing the sick or raising money for Oxfam, then necessarily he is not reading Victorian novels, playing the oboe, or improving his backhand’
Because of this, Wolf argues, many moral theories which compel us to act in as ‘good’ a way as possible, whether out of love or duty, force us to ‘sacrifice our own interests’ or to pay ‘little attention’ to our own sense of happiness. On the whole striving for moral perfection “does not constitute a model of personal well-being towards which it would be particularly rational or good or desirable for a human being to strive.”
Thinking back over this piece, which I first encountered during my undergraduate degree, I couldn’t help notice some similarities between educational discourse, especially in preparing year 11 students for their exams. The notion that teachers are duty bound to do everything they can to support these students has clear potential to overtake the bounds of what is reasonable or in a teacher’s personal interests.
Giving lunch time revision support for year 11s, why not do after school revision support as well? Marking books every two weeks, why not every week? Giving up Saturday mornings for revision, why not Sundays? Easter revision sessions? Why not use February half term as well?
The broadening of our duties or obligations to students may in some cases be a noble endeavour; we all want the best for our students. But we must ensure that teachers are not sacrificing themselves in pursuit of such teacher sainthood. We need time to play the oboe and practice our backhands (other hobbies are available).
Jo Facer wrote an excellent blog some years ago about the cost of certain actions we might take to improve students’ outcomes. Becuase all of the interventions I describe in the previous paragraph might work. Every additional hour we spend sacrificing elements of our personal lives, ignoring our gym memberships, not meeting up with friends, letting marking fill our evenings etc. could help our students. That, alone, is not a reason to pursue such saintly actions.
Wolf also explores a darker side to the pursuit or moral perfection, where normal desires for objects and activities are not merely sacrificed, but removed and suppressed all together. I wonder whether this is sometimes true of teaching. We suppress our desire to spend time with friends, read, go to the movies, because we have conditioned ourselves to prefer spending our evenings planning and marking – either through a sense of duty or through adherence to unreasonable expectations of work load. Either way, just like pursuit of moral perfection, pursuit of teacher perfection has too big a potential to negatively impact our lives. Of course, it is not only teachers, but middle and senior leaders too who are responsible for managing these expectations.
Importantly, this does not mean we should deride teachers (or other members of staff) who work incredibly hard for their students, or who do choose to make personal sacrifices for the sake of those in their care. Committed, hard working teachers do not need such pity or condescension.
Rather, I think we should be wary of the narrative that teaching, as a so-called ‘vocation’, should necessarily entail the type of personal sacrifice associated with the ideal ‘perfect teacher.’ Wolf argues that we needn’t be defensive about the recognition that our lives are not always as morally good as they might be. We can take the same stance. Finally, Wolf states that any of us can be ‘perfectly wonderful’ without being ‘perfectly moral’. I think we should make the same conclusion:
A teacher may be perfectly wonderful, without being a perfect teacher.
All references taken from:
‘Moral Saints‘ by Susan Wolf, in ‘Virtue Ethics’ edited by Roger Crisp and Michael Slote (Oxford University Press)
Image: Saint Jean Baptiste de La Salle (https://www.lasalle.org/fr/santidad-lasaliana/st-jean-baptiste-de-la-salle/)
mrbunkeredu 