Holistic Liberal View of Moral Education of Citizens

This study argues that although communitarians criticize liberalism as ignoring moral education of citizens and thus responsible for the current widespread problems including formal educational failure in particular and moral deterioration in general, this criticism is mistaken in reducing liberalism to its Hobbesian - instrumentalist version and thus ignoring an alternative strand of liberalism which neither discards moral education nor endorses an instrumentalist view of society. This article analyzes Mill's and Hume's political theories as examples of this alternative liberalism to show that this alternative strand of liberalism does not necessarily discards moral education of citizens and recognizes the formative impact of society on individuals. They perceive character education as a product of many different institutions and practices including formal education.