Focus on Education: Ethics or The Way We Should Act Part I By: Anthony Pellegrino

After reading today’s and Tuesday’s articles on ethics, l want you to write, call or visit Dr. Rita Inos and the members of the BOE and strongly tell them you feel that the teaching of ethics or moral behavior should be included in the PSS curricula starting this new school year. Our students are starved for guidance on how to behave toward each other. We have failed them too long.

A Gallop Poll in the U.S. showed that 84% of the parents favor having the public schools teach ethics in the schools. Ethics is the systematic study of the principles and methods for distinguishing right from wrong and good from bad. Let me quickly ward off any comments that ethics teaching must also involve religious indoctrination. This is simply not true.

Basically our decisions of rightAvrong; goodibad pretty well sum up the type of relationships among us. Let’s see what our young people are thinking about proper conduct.

A comparative study of high school behavior over three decades done by the Josephson Institute reveals the following: CONDUCT: Percentage who have lied to parents about school:

196955% 197960% 198970%

Signed parents’ name to an excuse:

196926% 197942% 198948%

Taken books from a library w/o checking them out

1969.8% 197918% 198919%

ATTITUDES: Percentage who believe HONESTY is the best policy:

196982% 1979 73% 198960%
Crime does not pay:

1969 89% 197957% 198965%

To succeed in business requires some dishonesty:

19693Z% 197942% 198945%

Would the percentages go up or done if a similar survey were taken in 1999?

The Josephson Institute also revealed interesting attitudes towards values in life. The Values and Behavior Survey showed that students consider the following six values as essential:

1. Getting a job you enjoy

2. Getting into college

3. Getting a well paying job

4. Having a trusting personal relationship

5. Being respected for your integrity

6. Being honest and trustworthy

77% 73% 66% 66% 55% 54%

It also revealed that students admitted they:
33%Stole something
61% Cheated at least once
35% Made serious ethnic slurs
20% Had driven while drunk
16% Lied to get a job…within the lasl

I am presenting the above data for us to reflect if something serious is not lacking in our moral makeup both in our adult lives as in the lives of our young children. Silently answer to yourself the same survey above and see where you would fall.

As I study the above data I feel it is time to actively consider the teaching of ethics in our schools again. it is an idea whose time has come again!

Years ago ethics teaching was considered an essential part of all school curricula. The Bible has always been a major source book for instru~ion Remember the McGuffey Readers which were used in the schools for teaching ethical behavior. So having ethics as part of school studies is not new. Unfortunately when the U.S. Supreme
Court decreed that church and school be separated, ethics went underground.

It is my firm belief that those of us who have special opportunities to influence a moral society have an obligation to do so. Yes, there will be legal questions to overcome and there will be opposition to teaching ethics, but isn’t this the case in any form of improvement? Who does not resist change?

Robert Bellah in his book The Good Society states: ” The idea of any education that simply gives individuals the methods and skills they need to get ahead in the world is almost certainly inadequate, even as “job preparation” in an advanced and technical economy, which requires morally and socially sensitive people capable of responsible interaction.” (to be continued).