Morality is everywhere in K-12 education. It’s in a recess supervisor’s injunction to “be fair”; it’s in a literature teacher’s emphasis on particular character traits; it’s in a principal’s decision to admonish certain forms of self-expression and ignore others. No matter what school a child attends, in every lesson, academic policy, teacher interaction and playground rule, he encounters some implicit standard of what it means to be good.

Is this a problem? Or is moral training inherently a part of a child’s education?

Drawing on anecdotes from his own experience as an educator, and focusing on the trait of independence, Mr. Girn investigates the relationship between a child’s schooling and his moral development. He demonstrates that while it is improper for schools to explicitly teach moral theory, there is nevertheless a fundamental integration between a child’s cognitive and moral development, and that a proper educational system facilitates this integration.