The use of art forms in class can be an effective method for students' emotional growth by allowing self‐distancing from one's own judgments, providing new space for the moral, political, and spiritual aspects of the self, as well as facilitating reevaluation of one's own emotional responses (Carr 2005; Sanderse 2012). Furthermore, through art, students can gain relevant moral insight into themselves and society by inviting them to identify and reflect on their moral biases and normative perspectives, and by understanding that wrong ends can result not only from serious character flaws, but also from disordered desires and passions (Carr 2005). Finally, art can be a valuable tool to help students develop the virtue of compassion through understanding human diversity and vulnerability, as well as to connect emotionally with other people's aspirations, challenges, and struggles (Sanderse 2012).
As an example of how art can be included in the classroom to address these moral issues, an activity based on documentary pedagogies is suggested. First, the professor can choose a couple of film documentaries that they think students can feel emotionally and rationally engaged with and that are related to current sustainability problems, e.g. “Cowspiracy” or “Seaspiracy” to address issues of human and non‐human animals relationships; “Miss Representation” and “The Mask You Live In” to reflect on gender differences in our society; or “Minimalism” to think on the excess of personal consumption. Second, the professor can ask them to write an individual essay in which they reflect on the moral issues raised in the documentaries and the different moral positions of the people involved in them, as well as their moral stances and emotions while performing the whole activity. As a last step, it is recommended to open a collective dialogue on their most relevant impressions about the documentaries; special emphasis should be placed on how they have regulated their emotions, and on their understanding of how their emotions affect their moral self and behavior. During the activity, the teacher should remind students that the classroom is a safe space in which to share experiences or ideas in a climate of trust that allows active and empathetic listening.
4.5 Final Remarks
Educating oneself and others in virtues is an exciting but complicated process and, as such, it is not without challenges. So far, we have presented arguments in favor of using virtues to educate for sustainability; in the following we would like to address some of the difficulties that we, as educators, can face when educating in virtues.
First, virtue education continues to be seen with skepticism; this attitude is sometimes based on a misunderstanding of what virtues are and what the purpose of using this approach is (see Kristjánsson 2013 for a review of myths about virtue education). For example, virtue education has sometimes been accused of being used as a tool for indoctrinating children (Sanderse 2012). This view may be partly influenced by one's own idea of education and the role it plays in society. In this sense, virtues could encounter more resistance if one assumes that education is a neutral activity and that educational communities should be spaces in which knowledge is simply to be transferred to students.
Another common criticism of virtue education is that it is overly individualistic, with the understanding that it is too agent‐focused. However, both the concept of the good life and the path toward it only make profound sense as a collective enterprise; a journey influenced by the specific situation of the agent, but also by the idiosyncrasy of their pluralistic community that aspires to collective excellence.
In practical terms, a considerable challenge for educators is how to bring virtues into the classroom and how to integrate them into the curriculum. The literature suggests that it would be optimal to have the support of the whole educational community. In this sense, it would be advisable that professors receive some kind of training on how to use pedagogies aimed at fostering moral growth (Sanderse 2012). Additionally, it would be desirable that the culture of virtues and eudaimonia permeate the entire educational community (Kristjansson 2016); otherwise, there is a danger that it will become something exceptional (even freakish), relegated to a single course or understood as a personal project of some group of professors.
Even with institutional support, educators need to face another important issue: the role they play in the process of learners' virtue habituation. In this regard, studies of model education pedagogies could be very revealing (Kristjánsson 2006; Sanderse 2013; Athanassoulis 2018). We agree with Sanderse (2012) that we should not seek to become a person that students admire and want to imitate; instead, we should aspire them to become what we exemplify by inviting them to reflect on what it means for them to be virtuous. To this end, we must keep in mind that it is not enough that we behave in a virtuous manner. Given the relevance that intentions have in virtues, then we must also explain the reason underlying our (virtuous) actions.
Also, at times, it is possible that we, as educators, want to see ourselves as the spark that inspires students to self‐change and flourish. However, we must be vigilant, as our ego may come to the fore. Instead, we might think of ourselves as part of a larger system working toward excellence.
Such a responsibility demands a great deal of humility. Becoming virtuous is a life project, an open‐ended process; we need to remind ourselves that our relevance comes not because we are realized virtuous persons, but because we recognize the value of becoming virtuous and we strive for virtues (Sanderse 2012). In this sense, our moral interactions with students are micro‐moments in our moral, political, and spiritual growth. The meaningfulness of these micro‐moments will depend on the stage of moral development of students and our own, and where both meet on the journey.
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