Imitating or Emulating? How Exemplar Education Can Avoid Being Indoctrinating

Despite renewed interest in the positive role exemplars can play in moral education, exemplar-based education has been criticized as illiberal and indoctrinating. In this chapter, we investigate these worries and show how a specific, twofold approach to exemplar narratives can help avoid them. According to opponents, exemplar education can involve indoctrination and impose specific moral values, since pupils are expected to act in ways that resemble exemplars. Even if pupils are encouraged to pick their own exemplars, this arguably still promotes moral deference instead of independent moral reasoning and critical thinking. We argue that a nuanced distinction between “imitation” and “emulation” helps avoid such worries. Rather than seeking to simply imitate their exemplars, pupils should be encouraged to take a more nuanced approach to emulation in which they engage with their exemplars, think about how they can promote the values, and embody the ideals and virtues that they identify and admire in them. This approach is supported by recent insights about which exemplars are more motivating and which risk backfiring due to “do-gooder derogation.” It also leads to practical pointers for those who want to work with exemplars in character education without being charged with indoctrination.