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Despite shifts in marketing and ideological emphasis from the 1730s to the 1890s, the it-narrative genre (wherein objects and animals recount their own histories) remained surprisingly consistent in the nature of the social commentary it provided. In contrast to earlier studies, mainly devoted to small segments of the phenomenon in Britain or America, this study brings out the transatlantic persistence of the it-narrator’s functioning as a model of moral agency, cognizant of his/her/its obligations within a societal grid. A lens to the contemporary perception of what made it-narratives important is available in the writings of Thomas Reid, an eighteenth-century philosopher who emphasized the tangible reality of moral judgment as a force in "practical ethics." Widely known in Britain and America during this period, Reid’s paradigm, in dialogue with modern histories of material and popular culture, informs my account of how the it-narrative, while certainly responding to specific cultural trends, became ever more solidly perceived as an intertextual forum for understanding moral agency and social justice.

We are facing a crisis in education: there is a vacuum where there once was an exhortation in terms of how teachers serve as moral models for their students. This reality becomes even more complex when the particular educator facing the dilemma has a specific religious perspective herself. The problem confronted in this philosophical study is how does today's educator, working in the public sector and having a particular religious background, best serve her students in her role as a moral agent, given an environment that is either vacuous of or even hostile toward the moral vector implicit in education. The following questions are considered: 1) Does education today have a moral end? 2) What should that moral end be? 3) What should the educator's role be in said education? 4) Has education historically served as a moral endeavor? 5) And finally, how much should a teacher with a specific religious basis for her morals allow that to affect her role as moral agent in a secular setting? In order to respond to these questions, an historical review of how teachers were traditionally expected to serve as moral agents was undertaken, as were a review of contemporary research on moral education and a consideration of numerous philosophers' perspectives. Simone Weil, a French philosopher and teacher, is looked to as an example of a woman who lived her life with a core set of beliefs that led her to both push boundaries and yet remain in a liminal space that allowed her to remain open to others' values and needs. Weil's liminal approach to life is explored in combination with MacIntyre's call to found a morality on virtues based on a teleological view of man. Ultimately it is suggested that the educator with a deep sense of faith must both strive to function in the liminality Weil represented, and to root herself deeply in her own faith, from which she will gain the strength to live within the necessary tension evoked by teaching in a secular institution.