Abstract:

Authors of ancient and contemporary philosophy come to a common conclusion: gratitude is a rare virtue. Seneca already noted that among the commonest and greatest vices none is more frequent than an ungrateful soul, and centuries later Buber, in a letter in which he responds to the good wishes he received on his 85th birthday, points out that gratitude is unusual. However, if it is true, as Cicero states, that gratitude is not only a very great virtue, but also the mother of all the other virtues, then a virtue ethics education programme should include gratitude among its main objectives.

Starting from these premises, the second edition of the MelArete programme, which is developed by the MELETE Center of the University of Verona (Italy) and is aimed at developing students’ ethical thinking, involved its participants in reflecting on gratitude. To reach this goal, among the other activities of the programme, a “journal of gratitude” was proposed, where students were invited to periodically write down or draw something for which they felt they were grateful. The “journal of gratitude” is conceived as a reflective educational tool, because it encourages students’ examination of their ethical experience, and was introduced after the successful experience of the first edition of MelArete, when participants were instead invited to keep a “journal of virtues”, where they wrote down or drew gestures of courage, generosity, respect and justice.

In the last four years, the “journal of gratitude” was proposed during the implementation of the MelArete programme in some Italian schools, with the involvement of 9 classes of pre-kindergarten and kindergarten (3-4-5-6 y.o. students), 7 classes of primary schools (7-8-9-10-11 y.o. students), and 6 classes of middle school (11-12 y.o. students). The preliminary findings emerged from the qualitative analysis – following the empirical-phenomenological method – of the collected journals show students' ability to interpret gratitude in its different declinations: not only gratitude for the material things one receives, but also for the opportunities one has in life, and for the gestures of affection, caring and time given by others.

The contribution presents the theoretical background in which the MelArete programme is grounded, with a particular focus on the concept of gratitude and the philosophical perspectives about it. Then, after an overview of the main typologies of activities provided by the programme, with regard to the different ages of the involved students, authors describe in details how the “journal of gratitude” is structured. In conclusion, after the presentation of how the empirical-phenomenological method is applied to the collected data, the findings that have already emerged from the research are presented and discussed.

Keywords:

Virtue ethics education, MelArete, gratitude, school, qualitative research.