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Impact: A Journal of Community and Cultural Inquiry in Education

Abstract

Moral education in the US frequently has centered on cultivating “civic sense” and developing citizens who are morally akin to the dominant culture’s ideals. Although implemented as preventive measures (to avoid an otherwise inevitable suspension), these interventions are colored with dominant cultural sentiments that visualize differences as immoral. The idea of disciplining the “unrestrained” child thus aligns with a Western historical “civilizing” mission that aims at creating “moral citizens” through cultural erasure and behavioral transformation. This article discusses the unpleasant reality of moral education in the US educational system, demonstrating an inherent acculturation politics underlying behavior rectification initiatives. The essay will explore how moral sorting in US schools has frequently resulted in serious punitive measures, with the “difficult child” often being “suspended” from schools. It will demonstrate that the moral framework guiding education in the US is prejudiced and defined by dominant cultural coding, regarding differences as immoral behavior. The central question that the article will address is: How does the framework of moral rectification in the US educational system, imposed through strict regulations, standardization, and punitive measures of expulsion, reflect a national assimilation project, enforcing dominant cultural coding as the standard behavioral identity, thereby transforming schools into spaces of social control? In addressing this question, the essay aims to demonstrate that the “unrestrained” child is a victim of biased perception, as morality and virtue in US classrooms have forever been understood in conformity with the dominant culture's ideals.

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