Moral Education as Socialization: Revisiting Theory of Emile Durkheim

With today’s emphasis on the reason of the individual, people tend to define the relationship between the individual and society in terms of the former. This trend also affects moral education, and in fact, the perspective of socialization has been neglected in favor of the perspective of development. This study is motivated by the problem that an indispensable element in defining morality has been overlooked today. Durkheim’s theory of moral education is worthy of note because it represents moral education as socialization, which has not received the attention it deserves. His insight that the individual does not shape society, but rather society shapes the individual, and that the individual is shaped by the demands of society, is shocking to modern people. But along with it, his remarkable insight that the socialized man is the freest is a reminder that moral education without attention to society is doomed to failure.