The encouragement of ethical thinking and caring in children

This chapter presents MelArete, a project of ethical education promoted by the Center of Educational and Didactic Research (CRED) of the University of Verona (Italy). The project is theoretically rooted in Socratic and Aristotelian schools of thought and in contemporaneous philosophy of care. It aims to foster the development of children’s ability to critically and analytically examine ethical issues and to examine experience in the light of ethical concepts that are constructed through reflection. In particular, the chapter focuses on three educative instruments: Socratic conversations, aiming at fostering children’s eidetic thinking, by encouraging them to search together for the essential meaning of ethical concepts; vignettes, aiming at fostering children’s critical thinking, by encouraging them to reason on ethical dilemmas; a diary of virtues, aiming at fostering children’s experiential thinking, by encouraging them to reflect on their own and others’ virtuous actions.