Are the "Moral Dimensions of Teaching" really that important?

The other day in class we discussed the Moral Dimensions of teaching. I thought it went well; the students seemed responsive, and as always, when talking about the importance of education and teaching, I felt the lesson seemed to have a positive impact on the students. Recently I read an article in the Smithsonian magazine that discussed the importance of service in our lives. Obviously, being a church going guy, and being involved in education, I immediately bought in to the article. What impressed me most about the article was its "call" to the general public to engage in "good causes - to try and make a positive influence" on our global community (in addition to the charitable donations we all make to get a few tax breaks, and which we do, because we think our donations covers the service component of our life.) The article portrayed the lives of a few individuals who after graduating top in their classes, from exemplary programs and universities, went on to work in international service organizations (ie. Green Peace, etc.) and then later returned to their "normal lives" ready to take on the world and make their millions, only to chose not to. They instead, having seen the needs of the world, decided to continue their service by working in inner city public schools, etc. in an effort to continue to give back and help build the global community, and on an equally important level, help individuals in their local communities. It was a wonderful article and made we recommit myself to trying to find other ways and areas that I could serve. I am sure we would all agree that serving others is one of the most important things we could do with our life. As if this article, coupled with teaching the Moral Dimensions of Teaching, weren't enough to re-commit me to service and charity, I came across an article on a blog that gave me an additional incentive. The article talked about how our prisons in the US have become the 4th largest city in our country! I have copied a few segments of the text below:

Based on 2005 population figures for both our prisons and U.S. cities the prison population would rank as the 4th largest city behind New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago while beating Houston out by over 200,000 people...Not only that, population growth shows the prison population outpacing the top cities’ growth figures which means it will only continue to rise in rankings and within a few years can pass the population of Chicago! Taking the 2005 prison population and comparing it against the 2005 U.S. population figures we see that nearly 1% of the population is locked up! 1 of every 100 citizens, according to our justice system, must be incarcerated. This does not begin to look at the numbers which are arrested, on probation, face charges which result in something other then confinement, this is just those incarcerated...So I further dug into the Bureau of Justice Statistics provided by the U.S. Department of Justice. It was not pretty; the numbers are too large to be comforting but the number of violent criminals’ incarcerated represent 52% of the total population. Just over half are violent criminals that have harmed another of our neighbors in the criminal conduct they pursued which led them to being incarcerated. This would mean the violent population represents the 10th largest city but it also meant there were enough non-violent criminals incarcerated to also represent the 11th largest city...In the Koppel report the focus is on the California prison system. It was designed to hold a maximum of 100,000 inmates yet is strained with the overcrowded number of 178,000. The cost per prisoner for one year of incarceration is $43,000.00 (compared to a Harvard education costing $43,200.00) and there is no relief in sight for eliminating this strain. There is no wonder why the criminal justice system and prisons are among the fastest growing segment of our economy today. We are building more prisons to house more non-violent criminals every day. Here's a link to the full article.

I can't imagine that one would argue against the need to base/ center instruction on the Moral Dimensions of Teaching - but I would like to once again, raise my hand and voice in support of continued curriculum development and pedagogical practice centered on these important principles.