You argue that character education could act as a continuous dosage of moral guidance to protect mental health, but you also acknowledge that mental illness has strong biological and genetic underpinnings. How do you propose disentangling the effects of moral education from these hardwired factors in real-world settings? Without that, isn’t there a risk of overpromising what character education can actually deliver?
You critique positive psychology for lacking a golden mean and for treating virtues as linear (more is better), but your preferred neo-Aristotelian model still lacks strong empirical support for its core claims, like the role of phronesis in mental health outcomes. Given that, isn’t this just swapping one under-evidenced framework for another?
You mention that the decline in traditional moral anchors (religion, family) might contribute to mental health issues, but you’re careful not to moralize. Still, isn’t there a subtle implication here that non-traditional family structures or secular worldviews are somehow lacking? How do you avoid that interpretation while still making your case?
You also say character education isn’t meant to fix mental illness, but then you frame it as a protective factor against existential distress. Isn’t that a bit of a fuzzy line? If a teenager is clinically depressed, how exactly does cultivating virtues like gratitude or resilience help without veering into toxic positivity or moral pressure?
You highlight the lack of good measurement tools for virtues like phronesis, yet you still advocate for integrating character education into schools. Isn’t that putting the cart before the horse? Shouldn’t we have reliable ways to measure these traits before we start rolling out large-scale interventions?
You acknowledge that social media’s role in mental health decline is mixed and maybe overstated, but then you pivot to moral anchor decline as if it’s a more solid explanation. Isn’t that just swapping one correlational story for another, with equally shaky causal evidence?