Navigating the Moral Landscape of Youth Development and Community Education

This book analyses community education settings, focusing on the values that educators and practitioners impart and impose on the young people in their care.

Young people participating in nonformal community education programs encounter encouragement from staff to identify with certain ideas or values: "Acquire life skills, become an entrepreneur!" "Fight for your rights!", "Get out of the house and re-establish your essential connection with nature!". Whether implicitly or explicitly, these messages are imbued with values.

Based on a study of 12 community organizations in Canada, this book identifies four "ethical frames": the ethical frame of the entrepreneur, of the activist, of the artist, and of the naturalist. Ilya Zrudlo argues that while each of these framings brings strengths to community education, they also carry certain ethical and educational ambiguities that render them inadequate. Drawing on the work of philosophers including Mary Midgeley, Graham Haydon, Max Weber, Hannah Arendt, Albert Hirschman, and Charles Taylor, Zrudlo offers guidance for community organizations, policy makers, and researchers when navigating the moral landscape of nonformal youth education.