from MM 1000
David Brooks on Moral Education 2.0
In this article in The Atlantic, David Brooks says he’s obsessed with two questions:
Why have Americans become so sad – increasing rates of loneliness, depression, and suicide?
And why have Americans become so mean – polarization, conspiracy theories, mass
shootings? Several explanations have been offered:
- Technology – social media are driving us crazy.
- Sociology – people participate less in community organizations and are isolated.
- Demography – white Americans are in a panic about increasing racial diversity.
- Economy – high levels of inequality and insecurity make people feel afraid, alienated,
and pessimistic.
These are all real, says Brooks, but they don’t fully explain why Americans have become so
sad and so mean.
The most important reason “is also the simplest,” he believes: “We inhabit a society in
which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration. Our
society has become one in which people feel licensed to give their selfishness free rein.” That’s
happened because a web of institutions – families, schools, religious groups, community
organizations, and workplaces – are not doing the job they used to do: forming people into kind
and responsible citizens who show up for one another.
“For a large part of its history,” says Brooks, “America was awash in morally formative
institutions” that taught people three things:
- How to restrain their selfishness – keeping their “evolutionarily conferred egotism
under control;”
- Basic social and ethical skills – how to welcome a neighbor into the community, how to
disagree constructively;
- Finding a purpose in life – “practical pathways toward a meaningful existence.”
For 150 years after the nation’s founding, says Brooks, leaders focused on perfecting what they
acknowledged were flawed human beings. Moral education was a centerpiece in schools and
universities; the McGuffey Readers and other textbooks were full of tales of right and wrong.
Churches, Sunday schools, the YMCA, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, settlement houses,
professional organizations, unions had similar themes. One 19th-century headmaster said the
purpose of his school was to turn out young men who were “acceptable at a dance and
invaluable in a shipwreck.”
3Marshall Memo 1000 August 28, 2023
The two premises of this moral drive, says Brooks, were (a) “training the heart and
body is more important than training the reasoning brain,” and it is accomplished through “the
repetition of many small habits and practices, all within a coherent moral culture,” and (b)
“right and wrong are not matters of personal taste; an objective moral order exists.” Underlying
both was a belief in human fallibility. “The force of sinfulness is so stubborn a characteristic of
human nature,” said Martin Luther King Jr. a century later, “that it can only be restrained when
the social unit is armed with both moral and physical might.”
Coexisting with this crusade, says Brooks, were “all sorts of hierarchies that we now
rightly find abhorrent:” beliefs about racial superiority, men dominant over women,
antisemitism, homophobia, and more. “Furthermore,” he continues, “we would never want to
go back to the training methods that prevailed for so long, rooted in so many thou shall nots
and so much shaming, and riddled with so much racism and sexism.”
Yet the old push for morality was egalitarian, says Brooks, at least in theory. “If your
status in the community was based on character and reputation, then a farmer could earn
dignity as readily as a banker. This ethos came down hard on self-centeredness and narcissistic
display. It offered practical guidance on how to be a good neighbor, a good friend.”
And then, just after World War II, “it mostly went away,” says Brooks. A series of
phenomenally successful books – Peace of Mind, The Power of Positive Thinking, Dr. Spock’s
child-rearing manual, and others – preached a new gospel of self-actualization. “According to
this ethos,” Brooks writes, “morality is not something we develop in communities. It’s
nurtured by connecting with our authentic self and finding our true inner voice. If people are
naturally good, we don’t need moral formation; we just need to let people get in touch with
themselves.” A mid-1970s Girl Scout handbook asked, “How can you get more in touch with
you? What are you thinking? What are you feeling?”
By the 1960s, says Brooks, K-12 moral education was in full-scale retreat, with an
increasing focus on SAT scores and getting into elite colleges and universities. In higher
education, the “research ideal” replaced an earlier humanistic ideal of cultivating the whole
student and thinking about how to live a good life, which now seemed hopelessly antique.
An analysis of words used in the nation’s books in the post-war era showed bravery
dropping 65 percent, gratitude down 58 percent, and humbleness 55 percent lower. Incoming
college students increasingly said that being financially well off was their leading goal in life.
Asked by researchers about their moral lives, young people said they hadn’t given it much
thought. “I’ve never had to make a decision about what’s right and what’s wrong,” said one. A
common refrain among students was that their teachers steered clear of controversies.
“Moral communities are fragile things, hard to build and easy to destroy,” wrote
psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Brooks believes that people raised in a culture without ethical
structure become “internally fragile,” without a moral compass and permanent ideals, with no
personal why. “Expecting people to build a satisfying moral and spiritual life on their own by
looking within themselves is asking too much,” he says. “A culture that leaves people morally
naked and alone leaves them without the skills to be decent to one another. Social trust falls
partly because more people are untrustworthy.”
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The result is “vulnerable narcissists… people who are addicted to thinking about
themselves, but who often feel anxious, insecure, avoidant. Intensely sensitive to rejection,
they scan for hints of disrespect. Their self-esteem is wildly in flux. Their uncertainty about
their inner worth triggers cycles of distrust, shame, and hostility.” Not surprisingly, suicide
rates have risen more than 30 percent since 2000. The pandemic made things worse, but the
underlying conditions were there before and remain in full force today.
“Over the past several years,” says Brooks, “people have sought to fill the moral
vacuum with politics and tribalism. American society has become hyper-politicized… For
people who feel disrespected, unseen, and alone, politics is a seductive form of social therapy.
It offers them a comprehensible moral landscape: the line between good and evil runs not down
the middle of every human heart, but between groups… The culture war is a struggle that gives
life meaning.” One study found that young people who are lonely are seven times more likely
to get involved in polarized politics than non-lonely youth. Politics gives them a sense of
righteousness, purpose, and identity.
Brooks points to a couple of glimmers of hope: people openly weeping in theaters as
they watched Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, the film about Mister Rogers “in all his simple
goodness – his small acts of generosity; his displays of vulnerability; his respect, even
reverence, for each child he encountered.” And Ted Lasso, the series about an American coach
transplanted to U.K. soccer, who said his goal was not the championship but “helping these
young fellas be the best versions of themselves on and off the field.”
That is a “description of moral formation,” says Brooks. “Ted Lasso is about an earnest,
cheerful, and transparently kind man who entered a world that has grown cynical, amoral, and
manipulative, and, episode by episode, even through his own troubles, he offers people around
him opportunities to grow more gracious, to confront their vulnerabilities and fears, and to treat
one another more gently and wisely.”
The question before us, says Brooks, is how to “build a culture that helps people be
better versions of themselves.” His suggestions:
• A modern version of how to build character – What we used to do was gendered and
old-fashioned, he says, and points to Iris Murdoch for a better idea: a moral life as something
that goes on continually, “treating people considerately in the complex situations of daily
existence.” Channeling Murdoch, Brooks says, “I become a better person as I become more
curious about those around me, as I become more skilled in seeing from their point of view.”
• Mandatory social-skills courses – Some possible components: how to listen well, be a
good conversationalist, disagree with respect, ask for and offer forgiveness, patiently cultivate
a friendship, sit with someone who is grieving or depressed. “If we’re going to build a decent
society,” says Brooks, “elementary and high schools should require students to take courses
that teach these specific social skills, and thus prepare them for life with one another.”
• A new core element in the college curriculum – Brooks points to several college
courses, including “Life Worth Living” at Yale and “God and the Good Life” at Notre Dame,
that have students read classic literature and grapple with questions like: What is the ruling
passion of your soul? Whom are you responsible to? What are my moral obligations? What
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will it take for my life to be meaningful? What does it mean to be a good human in today’s
world? What are the central issues we need to engage with concerning new technology and
human life?
• Intergenerational service – Brooks suggests “at least two periods of life when people
have a chance to take a sabbatical from the meritocracy and live by an alternative logic – the
logic of service.” These might be right after school and at the end of one’s working years,
when young people and seniors come together to serve their communities in meaningful ways
– and cooperate with people unlike themselves.
• Moral organizations – Most institutions serve both instrumental and moral goals, says
Brooks: hospitals heal the sick and make money; newspapers and magazines inform the public
and try to generate clicks; law firms defend clients and maximize billable hours; nonprofits
serve the public good and fundraise. But too often the instrumental eclipses the ethical, he says.
“Moral renewal won’t come until we have leaders who are explicit, loud, and credible about
both sets of goals.” Here’s how we’re going to forgo some financial returns in order to better
serve our higher mission.
• Politics as a moral enterprise – “Statecraft is soulcraft,” says Brooks. “We can either
elect people who try to embody the highest standards of honesty, kindness, and integrity, or
elect people who shred those standards… Yes, of course people are selfish and life can be
harsh. But over the centuries, civilizations have established rules and codes to nurture
cooperation, to build trust and sweeten our condition. These include personal moral codes so
we know how to treat one another well, ethical codes to help prevent corruption on the job and
in public life, and the rules of the liberal world order so that nations can live in peace, secure
within their borders.”
“Look, I understand why people don’t want to get all moralistic in public,” Brooks
concludes. “Many of those who do are self-righteous prigs, or rank hypocrites. And all of this
is only a start. But healthy moral ecologies don’t just happen. They have to be seeded and
tended by people who think and talk in moral terms, who try to model and inculcate moral
behavior, who understand that we have to build moral communities because on our own, we
are all selfish and flawed. Moral formation is best when it’s humble. It means giving people the
skills and habits that will help them be considerate to others in the complex situations of life. It
means helping people behave in ways that make other people feel included, seen, and
respected.”
“How America Got Mean” by David Brooks in The Atlantic, September 2023 (Vol. 332, #2,
pp. 68-76)
