Children’s Ethical Thinking: The “Melarete” Project

MelArete is an educative and research project promoted by the Center of Educational and Didactic Research of the University of Verona in Italy. The project is aimed at educating children to virtue ethics and exploring their ethical thinking. The theoretical background is grounded in the Socratic and Aristotelian ethical visions. Important references are also found in the philosophy of care and in Ricoeur’s definition of ethics. The project involves children attending kindergarten (5-6 y.o.) and primary school (9-10 y.o.). The experience is aimed at encouraging children to reflect about the concepts of good and care, about the general idea of virtue and about some specific virtues, such as courage, generosity, respect and justice. The activities designed to reach these educative aims and collect data for the research are the following: Socratic conversations, stories, vignettes, games. Another important activity is the diary of virtues, a journal where children reflect on their ethical experience. The qualitative data analysis is still in progress. However, we can already present some specific examples that show the richness of children’s ethical thinking.