Neiderjohn, Nygard and Wood’s article on teaching ethics to high school students did not inspire a lot of optimism when it comes to teaching ethical issues in the classroom, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. The authors point out that after students received lessons dealing with ethical issues such as “rational self-interest vs. greed” and the “social obligations of business”, their personal values were “more resistant to change”. I would have liked to seen a lot more detail on what these lesson plans encompassed, for instance what were the goals and intended outcomes? It seems like most of these issues mentioned (such as organ transplant markets, the role of ethics in science, etc) do not have a clear “right” or “wrong” verdict, and moral/ethical people could plausibly arrive at very different conclusions.
In something as subjective as morality and ethics, I am not sure how a great a role a teacher should truly play in the process. The authors point out that students became more effective at examining and discussing these ethical dilemmas, and I think that is the most important part. Since many of these topics are religious and political in nature, I don’t think teachers should be assigning a definitive judgment on them, but should instead view it from multiple angles and allow the students to arrive at their own conclusions. I also don’t think the burden should rest entirely on the teacher to educate students on every ethical issue (or risk feeling guilty if a new generation of “Enron”-type workers are spawned), but there should be increased responsibility on families to discuss these types of issues at home in order to expose their children and instill their personal values.
