CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES FOR AN EDUCATION TO VIRTUE ETHICS

In order to be effective, educative activities should be structured around a significant theoretical background. Our theory of education with regard to virtue ethics is funded on the following theses: a) according to the ethics of care, acting “good” means caring for others; b) in order to care for others, it is necessary to learn how to practice virtues. On the basis of these premises, we present an educative project for children in primary school. The title of the project is “Melarete”: this word was born from a marriage of the Greek terms “meléte”, which means “care”, and “areté”, which means “virtue”. The educative activities in this project are structured in light of the following educative principles, which come from ancient philosophy: a) according to the Aristotelian perspective, in order to learn virtues it is important to practice them; b) according to the Socratic paideia, to learn means to acquire a clear concept of things, which occurs through maieutical discussion. In accordance with these principles, we propose the following main activities: “basket of virtues”, “journal of virtues”, storytelling, and vignettes about ethical problems.