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Interview Transcript

Question: What indicates a moral decline in the United States?

Keltner:    I’d put my finger on 3 that really reveal at this broad level the decline of our, not only are the moral standing of our culture elsewhere but also the just the social fabric of our culture.  One, UNICEF’s study 2004 rank the social well-being of children in 21 industrialized nations, and this is in terms of their happiness and their health and their connection with friends and physical health, and we ranked 20th out of 21, and so if cultures are judged by how they take care of vulnerable individuals, we are not fairing well.  A second is the literature on trust.  Trust is this amazing glue of social bonds, facilitated by oxytocin, vagus nerve, regions of the nervous system we study and the degree to which American citizens trust each other has dropped precipitously in 15 years.  Now, this is pre-Obama and I’d suspect there’s been a boost, a significant boost, and third, all the data on where our culture stands in the eyes of other cultures is unequivocal and we have dropped, we plummeted as a nation to respect in the past 8 or 10 years.  So, those are pretty strong indicators of where we are.

Question: Is our moral decline connected to a loss of religious life?

Keltner:    I see spiritual tradition and spiritual organizations as derivative of something more basic that we’ve lost which is what people like Confucius and other and what you see in streams of Buddhism have really cultivated which is an everyday set of intuitions and ethics that build up strong communities and these are things like, you know, just the rudiments of respect toward others, being affectionate, you know, we’ve talked about it today, being complimentary, sacrificing yourself for others, those are all things that evolution has designed us to do and regrettably when I look at those indicators of our poor cultural health, I put my finger on the decline of emotions like gratitude and compassion and reverence in our culture.

Question: Are anti-depressive drugs a sign of our moral slide?

Keltner:    As an empiricist and as a scientist, I’d want to see the data and I know that a lot of the [end-things] I-do-drugs work and so you have to take, have faith in that, and you also have to know, you know, the prevalence of the depressions and the anxieties in our culture today, and in many cultures and how powerful those conditions are.  You want things that can mitigate those symptoms in the short term, so my take on the rise of those particular drugs is that we have to meet these cultural anxieties in some fashion but again, you know, by the way, I problematize that, you know.  It gets too easy.  We start medicating kids with young nervous systems, with untested drugs.  That’s bad news and that I worry about and if my daughters, one of my daughters had a real kind, a deep source of anxiety or a depression or early depression, I’ll do everything that’s possible before turning to drugs.  I think they’re symptoms of, you know, the isolated age we live in and there are easier ways to return to a deeper sense of connection.

Discuss

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Marsha Waldman on March 4, 2009, 9:53 PM

Clearly, one of the most pervasive ways in which government plays a role in morality is through public schools. Having been in many different schools in the greater New York region, I have noted vast differences in the degree of responsibility schools take in playing this role. There are several different aspects to “teaching” morality in the schools: behavioral expectations, such as good manners, tolerance and prevention of bullying; study of historical and political events; and the role models presented by teachers and administrators.

In spite of the fact that many schools have anti-bullying and tolerance programs, they often fail to be effective. For example, one school system rewards students for kind deeds by handing out “Hats Off” buttons. Periodically, one particularly virtuous student is given a gift certificate to a fun local shop such as the ice cream parlor. Yet, the same school failed to take action when a student was being persistently bullied. The perpetrators were spoken to, but in no way punished. It became clear to this boy that they would do nothing to protect him, so it should not have been surprising when he finally struck back. Ironically and sadly he was suspended. In another incident, an elementary school boy had been persistently verbally abusing other students on the school bus. Finally, he called one girl the “N word.” Odd, since she was Caucasian. When the parent complained, the school principal refused to take action, saying that it was one child’s word against another, in spite of the fact that the perpetrator was known to be a troublemaker. The repeated failure of the administration to intervene in bullying sounds the message to students that their anti-bullying and tolerance programs are hollow and these concepts are not worthy of respect.

In the worst of schools, fist-fighting was rampant. Students destroyed school property. They set off fire alarms to get out of classes. Students thought so little of cursing that they used it toward teachers as well as among friends. One of my students routinely spit out racial epitaphs at another student of darker complexion. The school administration did nothing to prevent any of this. There were neither appropriate punishments for bad behavior nor rewards for good (and there were many great kids there). Further, school administrators acted disrespectfully toward teachers in front of the students setting a negative role model.

In stark contrast, the community of Scarsdale is exemplary in setting a moral standard for its students. While I do not know the details of their elementary school programs, the middle school students demonstrated a high level of respect for one another and the faculty. Small actions were telling. One didn’t hear curse words and certainly not bigotry, people held doors for one another, and treated books with care. By far, the most powerful demonstration of teaching moral behavior was their celebration of Human Rights Day. Students participated in wide-ranging activities that cultivated compassion for people around the world. Younger students, having read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, created a chain of one thousand Origami cranes to be sent to Hiroshima’s peace park. Older students faced the harsh truth about events in Darfur when they attended a presentation by Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Nicholas Kristof. These students are clearly taught that they have a moral responsibility within their own community and as world citizens.

Public schools may easily be the most pervasive arm of government in this country, given that approximately one quarter of the US population attends school and more than 6 million teach. While family, religion, and community all play crucial roles in developing moral responsibility, certainly the schools are equally significant in shaping morality.

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