Ethical Theories

Ethical Perspectives

Those who focus on what it means to be ethical and on moral problems within the school environment (e.g., Robert Starratt) generally describe three different ethical perspectives: the ethic of critique, the ethic of justice, and the ethic of care. Each of these ethical approaches is grounded on certain assumptions about the nature of human existence and about how human beings ought to relate to one another.

The ethic of critique focuses on the nature of the school and the bureaucratic structures undergird–ing the educational system. Unfortunately, within the American educational system some students [Page 354]have been advantaged and others disadvantaged because of the way in which the school is organized. The ability to examine critically the types of practices in schools and to critique those practices based on whether and how they treat people with human dignity and with a sense of social justice is fundamental to ethical practice. Schools are artificial environments, and the real question is how to restructure the school environment to ensure that it is a place where all children have an opportunity to learn and are treated with dignity. Unfortunately, the ethic of critique offers more help in critically examining school environments than it does in outlining and defining how those environments should be structured.

The ethic of justice lies heavily on the work of philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and the contemporary work of John Rawls. It also relies on the work of Aristotle and John Dewey. The ethic of justice places heavy emphasis on the use of human reason and the fact that each person is driven by certain fears or passions. The emphasis is on the individual, and each individual calculates what is in his or her best interests. Lawrence Kohlberg viewed this as a developmental process with the individual moving through six different moral stages. Unlike Hobbes and Rawls, Aristotle focused more on society. In essence, the individual develops as a result of social living experiences and acquires certain understandings as a result of moral interactions within the school or community. Robert Starratt argued that there are essentially two understandings in evidence with the ethic of justice: Justice is understood from a personal perspective, or it is contextualized as a community choice that is used to “direct or govern” just actions. In fact, schools require both, with attention to both the individual and the community. Quite obviously, different individuals in different communities can reach different conclusions about what is just, which represents one of the significant limitations of the ethic of justice.

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