Ethics and Education

What is Ethics?

More often than not, ethics is erroneously constructed in and by all areas of American culture as a prescriptive set of rules that answer whether an action in a given situation is universally perceived as correct or incorrect. Such a universal dichotomy rarely exists. Rather, making ethical decisions is a complex and nuanced process requiring critical examination, reflection, and explanation.

One should not rely on ethics to argue that one's behavior is beyond reproach or scrutiny. There is rarely a single correct answer that will be appropriate for all individuals. Rather, ethics must be constructed broadly, as centuries of philosophers have done, as a branch of moral philosophy that is concerned with the study of how individuals and groups go through the process and analysis of deciding what they believe in dealing with issues of determining what is right or [Page 326]wrong, just or unjust. Though ethics does involve answering complicated and often nuanced questions about issues including good and evil, and the limitations of personal responsibilities and behaviors, these answers are not universal.

There are many factors that are involved in making a decision about right or wrong when it comes to ethics. These include, but are not limited to, culture, values, norms, and theology—themselves all concepts that reasonable people do not always agree on. Though these concepts may be complicated and difficult to navigate, particularly in the current political and social climate, they are of vital importance. Students need to be able to identify situations that require ethical reasoning and then be able to act accordingly. What they currently get as an alternative is not acceptable.

Character Education

American educators across the country are currently engaged, often through governmental regulatory mandates, in the delivery of character education. Though there are several different approaches and curricula, all touted by companies seeking to profit from the need to instill character in our students, there are basic tenets that bind them together. Among these is the belief that students can be told, through edicts and dic-tums, how to be persons of character.

The prescriptive approach embedded in these various curricula and lessons explicitly sends students the message that if they simply follow the appropriate instructions, they will possess the qualities of character. These qualities include such admirable traits as fairness, honesty, respect, citizenship, and trustworthiness. The problem is not the promotion of these traits, but the manner in which they are promoted.

Students are simply told to be fair, honest, respectful, trustworthy, and good citizens. But they are rarely given the space to question what it means to be a person who reflects these traits. Students are told what these traits mean and how they manifest, without any examination of the ambiguous nature these words often take when in the context of real situations that individuals are forced to navigate. Students are presented with a binary of a person either “being” or “not being” the human embodiment of these characteristics as a litmus test of whether or not they are persons of character.

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