difference Ryle points to is the fact that we can Ieam to become proficient, creative, and
so on in language but in learning this we can still put language to good use or ill.
Whereas when we Ieam to be moral this requires by definition that we are moral insofar
as we work toward the achievement of human goods.
The question ‘can virtue be learned?’ seems a much simpler question to answer for our
general experience is that those who entertain a genuine desire to become virtuous do
seem to be able to Ieam both what being virtuous requires and to actually become more
virtuous, and the question takes us in an altogether different direction. The focus is now
not so much on the teacher but on the learner. In this scheme, the teacher can be likened
to a guide or mentor rather than to an imparter of knowledge, and the learner is active in
the process of learning to become, in this case, a nurse engaged with nursing as a
practice in the MacIntyrean sense.
Identifying the nurse teachers
I have been using the term ‘nurse teacher’ rather indiscriminately and it is now time to
consider this potentially misleading nomenclature. There are many who are involved in
teaching nurses and while it is true that many of those formally employed (normally
within institutions ofhigher education) to teach nurses are themselves nurses there are
others who are not. It may be that any one or more of the discrete disciplines of
anatomy and physiology, psychology, sociology, ethics, law and so on might be taught
not by nurses but by academics from those disciplines. It is possible that, for example,
the one teaching sociology to nurses might be a sociologist with an interest in teaching
nurses, a sociologist with a sociological interest in nursing, a nurse with an interest (and
an appropriate qualification) in sociology, or both a nurse and a sociologist. In addition,
while many who teach nurses in the academy are themselves nurses many of them will
not teach nursing as such. This is partly related to the contested nature of nursing
knowledge and partly to do with the fact that many nurse teachers who are nurses have
become specialist teachers of, for example, anatomy and physiology, research, ethics,
and so on insofar as these subjects relate to nursing. Thus even in the academy those
who teach nurses will not necessarily be nurses nor will they necessarily be teaching
nursing as such, hence the misleading nature of the term nurse teacher. A nurse teacher
might be a nurse and a teacher (although not necessarily teach nursing), might be a
teacher who happens to teach a subject of relevance to nurses, or might be a nurse who
teaches nursing. Different arrangements occur in different institutions often for no other
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