In the EthicsGame 2016 Survey of Ethics Educators, 80% of the more than 2300 respondents who include an ethics component in their courses said that teaching critical thinking is the most important learning outcome for their classes. Now, one component of critical thinking is determining the facts and assumptions in the dilemma at hand. Another part is determining the ethical issue to be resolved.
But, for those who blend ethics education with teaching critical thinking, the focus becomes teaching moral reasoning: helping students determine standards for ethical behavior and analyzing ethical failure. John Harris, in Be Good: The Possibility of Moral Enhancement, claims that those of us engaged in ethics education have as a primary task teaching our students how to both recognize and avoid moral failure, those times when compassion, altruism, and basic decency fail
or when those who take actions in the world fail to think about or feel for those whose lives will be impacted by their actions.
Over the centuries, people have brought forward many theories to allow them to escape responsibility for their actions. All of them provide some version of determinism, where the limits of individual free will and responsibility for action are showcased in order to deflect blame because somehow acting badly was outside of our control.
But, from Shakespeare reminding listeners in Julius Caesar that The fault…is not in our stars, But in ourselves,
to current day behavioral ethicists who encourage us to mindfully become aware of the biological and social nudges that keep us from being our best self, the message is the same: by knowing ourselves, evaluating the situation, and pausing to consider the best options for action, we are free to act responsibly—or not.
Perhaps the greatest gift that we can give our students is to teach them to pause and reflect before they act. John R. Searle, a preeminent philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, in Seeing Things As They Are stresses that we must first be willing to see the world as clearly and objectively as possible—even if what we see doesn’t match up with our preferred world view. In this day of overwhelming chatter in social media, teaching our learners to thoughtfully explore world views with which they don’t agree is an essential critical thinking skill.
And, then, they can pause—and reflect on their own values and ethical motivations.
Each of us comes into this world with an ethical disposition—a tendency to interact with others in particular ways. That disposition is reinforced and shaped during early childhood, providing the foundations for our instinctive ethical responses, often translated to us by our feelings and ethical intuitions.
However, those feelings are not always right, do not always lead us to doing the best thing, all things considered. The opportunity for unethical action comes when our feelings are tinged with fear or greed, or if our feelings are fed by a sense of self-righteousness or personal superiority. Without acknowledgement of our ethical shadow side, reflection and deliberation, we can make choices that not only fail to live into our own professed values but which also significantly inhibit the ability of those around us who are impacted by our decisions to thrive.
The existential philosophers call us to authentic ethical action, action taken after we see how our tendencies to act have been shaped by biological and cultural factors rather than by our own values and sense of self. Authentic ethical action requires that we see ourselves clearly and then, using the various traditional ethical perspectives, choose the best action in that moment.
Simone de Beauvoir in Ethics of Ambiguity claims that to will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision.
Claiming that freedom—freedom that humans seem to crave more than life itself—requires taking responsibility for personal actions rather than shifting blame by saying It’s Just Not My Fault!
77% of the respondents to EthicsGame’s Survey also said that teaching students to describe the role of ethics in their professional discipline is a core learning objective. Key to that task is showing the results of both taking courageous action for the good of oneself and the community as a whole and demonstrating what happens when our professional leaders take an expedient path or abuse their personal or professional power.
The ability to pause, look clearly at oneself and the situation, and then choose to live from the best of human values is what all of us who are engaged in ethics education teach. And, 86% of our respondents agree, that teaching moral reasoning is one of the most important tasks that we as educators have.
Thanks for being one of those committed to teaching ethical leadership.