Freedom and Equality

About the Book

Freedom and Equality is an engaging examination of who we are as ethical beings and an explanation of why we behave the way we do when confronted with value conflicts. An awareness of right and wrong is rooted in all of us through our biological and cultural heritage. We all have a moral sense; it emerged from eons of evolution followed by millennia of social interaction; it is simple and obvious and provides a framework of easily understood imperatives that guide our behavior. Freedom and Equality traces this indwelling ethical understanding through the history of western ethical thought and applies, in a refreshingly straight forward way, our natural ethical wisdom to common contemporary issues; it is a fascinating mix of past and present that offers incredible insights about how we became who we are and why we act so predictably.

About the Author

I recently retired after 33 years as a teacher and Social Studies Department Head in the Mansfield, Massachusetts Public Schools. My special interest and expertise is in ethics education and in integrating ethics themes directly into established secondary school curriculums. For the past few years I have done private consulting and maintained a website, www.ethicsineducation.com where some of my work is freely available to schools. While the response to my offering has been extensive, with thousands of downloads of the Ethics Workbook and other curriculum materials by individual teachers worldwide, the nature of inquiries and requests for advice convinced me that a clearer understanding of what ethics actually is and how it impacts our lives was needed. It was for this reason that I wrote Freedom and Equality . It is a coherent support text for teachers using the Ethics Workbook as well as a thought provoking primer for anyone interested in learning more about human ethics and how it should be taught.