Raising Good Children: an Aristotelian Approach to Pedagogy

 

    Aristotle believed that we have an innate sense of what is good and admirable, as well as what is vice-ridden or contemptible. This means that before we learn about moral philosophy or intellectual reasons for why something is right or wrong, we already have a natural awareness of it. Just as we can recognize courage, kindness, or fairness as admirable, we can sense that cowardice, cruelty, or injustice are contemptible. This sense is not something we invent for ourselves; it’s part of being human. There is no argument for the goodness of treachery or betrayal – and there is no real need for one.

     For Aristotle, children must learn to feel the right responses to what is good, true, and beautiful before they can fully understand why these things are good. Reality itself calls forth right and wrong feelings. Bullying does not call forth tears of joy; an act of difficult justice doesn’t nauseate a decent person. This isn’t something that comes purely from reasoning. It comes from habituation—practicing good actions and experiencing the proper, appropriate emotions. Just as a competent pianist experiences pleasure when listening to a piece beautifully played and experiences a kind of pain upon hearing a beautiful piece of music butchered, just so a decent person experiences pleasure when witnessing just or kind acts, revulsion when witnessing cruel or asocial acts. Without this background, philosophical arguments about theories of justice are hollow.

      Just like an athlete or musician practices to develop skills, children are shaped by the environment and education they receive. They learn through repeated experiences what it means to admire courage, to love fairness, or to appreciate beauty in the world. The right emotions must become second nature, so that by the time they are older and can think critically, they already know, deep down, what a good life looks like.

      This idea is easier to grasp when we think about learning a skill like music or sports. A musician or an athlete doesn’t become good or excellent by simply deciding to be great one day—they have a nature that sets certain conditions for what it means to play well. A violinist learns to interpret music through long practice, listening, and understanding how their instrument works with others in a quartet. Similarly, a basketball player learns what makes a good team member by playing, practicing, and cooperating with teammates. Just as there are ways to play well or poorly, there are ways to live well or poorly. A life based on charlatanism, fraud, sexual assaults, and causing political insurrections is not a good way of living, however popular such a man may be today.  Aristotle’s point is that we are not free to define for ourselves the contours of a good life; living well as a human means fulfilling the kind of being we are, just as playing well means fulfilling what it is to be a good musician or athlete.

    The epistemological consequences of Aristotle’s view are profound. Just as someone cannot converse intelligently about music or basketball without first having practiced and gained some measure of excellence, the same is true for understanding ethics. To truly grasp what is good, virtuous, and just, one must already have developed the right habits and feelings. This means that people who have not cultivated virtue or who are not part of a community that reinforces these values are at a disadvantage when it comes to understanding ethics – as though I, unmusical as I am, inserted my ignorant view about how a particular Bach piece should be played in a discussion between two master musicians. There is no discussion based on equality except based on competence – in ethics, virtue (i.e. an ingrained disposition to act justly, bravely, wisely, etc.).

  For instance, if someone has never practiced basketball or been part of a team, they might struggle to grasp the nuances of strategy, teamwork, or sportsmanship – or appreciate what is involved in that when watching a game. Likewise, someone who has never been habituated to feel the right responses to kindness, courage, or justice will have difficulty understanding these virtues intellectually. (Imagine making an argument about the virtue of honesty to a man like Trump.) Virtue is learned through action, practice, and experience, not just through intellectual reasoning. Without having lived a life that reflects these virtues in some way, a person will find it hard to recognize or articulate why certain actions or attitudes are good or bad. They will lack the practical wisdom (phronesis) that comes from lived experience.

     Moreover, just as a musician or athlete achieves excellence only within a community—a quartet, a team—ethics, for Aristotle, is also a communal activity. We learn to be good in the context of others who help us recognize the good. Those who try to live outside of any ethical community or reject the formation of virtue through habit are unlikely to understand moral truths in the way someone who is immersed in that community does. Thus Aristotle argues that ethics is not just about knowing abstract principles, but about becoming the kind of person who can feel and recognize the right things through years of habituation and participation in the life of a community.

   The tragedy of modern industrial society – whether liberal or autocratic – is that the only place where we can experience such community is private: in practices like music or sports. Given the absence of a community, given that we live in a mass society based nominally on the proposition that it is up to the individual to define what is good, bad, real, or beautiful, as long as they don't physically harm others or their property, disagreements about issues that from inside the ethical view are no-brainers become irresolvable: everything from abortion to pornography to the greed of the capitalist elite. This ethos emphasizes personal autonomy and subjective choice as the highest values, suggesting that individuals are free to determine their own moral and aesthetic standards without reference to any shared human nature or community.

      Sartre’s existentialism captures this idea perfectly. He famously asserted that existence precedes essence—meaning that we create our own meaning and values through our choices, rather than discovering them through our nature or community. In this view, there is no inherent good or bad; moral and aesthetic judgments are entirely self-determined. The consumerist model reflects this, as individuals are encouraged to craft their identities and lifestyles through the choices they make, driven by personal preference rather than a shared understanding of what it means to live well. Unlike Aristotle, who insists that true flourishing (happiness, goodness, truth) depends on cultivating virtue in accordance with our nature and in the context of a community, this modern view sees such constraints as limitations on personal freedom. The realm of personal freedom stops short of murder and robbery but is not nearly broad enough to embrace an ethical life. Instead of learning to feel the right responses to objective goods, modern individualism treats all values as equally valid, as long as no direct harm is done, divorcing ethical understanding from any communal or natural basis.

    This individualist ethic deeply shapes the pedagogical assumptions of modern school systems. Education today often prioritizes personal autonomy, self-expression, and the idea that each student should determine their own path and values. The role of the teacher is increasingly seen as a facilitator rather than a guide toward objective truths or shared moral goods. Students are encouraged to explore and express their individual identities and opinions, with less emphasis on forming virtuous habits or developing a sense of duty to the community. Learning is framed as a process of personal discovery, where subjective experience and personal choice take precedence over the cultivation of shared virtues or intellectual excellence. The idea that there is no singular vision of what it means to live well, but rather that each individual creates their own reality, echoes Sartre's existentialism and consumerist individualism: lifestyles and identities are like a shopping preference. As a result, the focus shifts away from moral and intellectual formation in accordance with human nature, and toward equipping students with the skills to navigate a world where values are seen as relative and individual freedom is the highest good. In this framework, education becomes less about shaping character and more about enabling personal choice, reproducing the society as education typically does. The results of that are all around us. You shall know the tree by the fruit.