Class Notes for EDUC 600 4_8_2008

Dawn Pollanen and Audrey Gagel

The Ethics of Teaching- Kenneth Strike and Jonas Soltis
Chapter 1:

-Code of Ethics

-First Case:

-catches a student plagiarizing

· People’s reactions

o Give him a short time to correct his mistake

o University policies

o What is the student’s definition of plagiarism. Does he understand what it really means?

o He still needs to be taught a lesson

o The rules are in place for a reason

§ Turn him in and then talk to the administration to see if after losing his scholarship is there another way for him to get his tuition covered

o Things have to be fair for everyone

o Looking at his background, what kind of motivation did he have to do this?

o Why didn’t he go to the teacher before this point if he was struggling

o If you bend the rules for this one student what do you do for the next student?

· Is there a right answer to this situation?

o Integrity- of the teacher

· Are ethical claims possible?

o Factual claims are easily verified

o Ethical claims are not factual claims

o Ethical claims are also not statements of preference

o Ethical claims are normative

· If you have made the decision to fail him and then are asked to justify this decision, what do you say?

o Are ethical claims verifiable and if yes, how?

o Class discussions on plagiarism- he knew what he was doing

· What is the intent of the law or rule?

· Consequences seem to matter to most people. How does that influence your decision? This is one path to justification.

o How do we project the consequences?

o How do we decide the good or bad of a consequence?

o Based on previous experiences we can predict future consequences

o The consequentialist would most likely lean towards not failing the child because the positive immediate outcomes outweigh the negative.

CONSEQUENTIALISM:

• · principle of benefit maximization (page 11)

• · intent is irrelevant, all that matters is consequences (winning office pool)

• (Discussion: Consequences seem to matter; did the kid know/ part of reasoning, there could be negative consequences for you in the future. The decisions that are wrong and immoral have the worse consequences.)

• What’s the way to go? How do we project what the exact consequences are going to be? We can not determine all consequences.

• · Key element of consequentialism: good needs to be produced and maximized in consequentialist’s point of view. Omniscient/non-omniscient problem arise. Lean towards not failing/give second chance.

• · What good is going to come out of me failing him? If you fail the kid, it’s going to be really bad for him and his family.

• · Most well know form of consequentialism is utilitarianism…you have to decide what is good consequence and bad consequence; good is pleasure. Judge each act by individual measure; judge each rule by it maximizing the rule; if you are a rule utilitarian; FAIR does not matter. Fairness adds a moral or value, this is not a part of consequentialism.

• · There is a system for deciding on what is fair, the result will change depending on the variables

o Problem: you don’t know what the future will hold.

o Issue of quantification of good becomes an issue, what is relevant or not—hassling of students better or worse than kid getting flunked out of school?

o Can lead us into immoral territory.

Thoughts and reactions to this:

**a lot of us decide by this way; it’s hard to look at the outcome

**if I was in this situation, I’d do this, if I was doing this, etc…

NONCONSEQUENTIALISM:

• · The Golden Rule
• · Principle of equal respect of persons (p. 15)
• · Intent matters
• · Kant is the father
• · There are two ways of thinking about it: 1) you should only act in a way that you think is universal law; 2)act as a way to treat others as ends as opposed to means as an end.

o You should not treat people to cater to your own desire

o That everyone is a free agent

o All agents are any moral value; they are free, rational, and responsible moral agents—we must respect their freedom of choice (p.15)

o no one is better than the next

o Consequences are not morally important

o We must be held accountable for our own actions

**fairness of the rule, if you are following rules; do the rules promote respect for persons? Rules aren’t to be followed just because they are rules

How do we evaluate the means to an end? Consequences seem to be a part of it…

-Second Case:

-Ms. Jones, Mr. Pugnacious, and Johnnie

-group discussion

• They summarize the case
• Why did she take the path she did?
• Why did she take him to Johnnie?
• Why didn’t she call Social Services or Security?
• Was it wrong or right for her to lie?
• The security of those involved comes first but then she should tell the truth so things don’t get worst
• Johnnie wasn’t in on the lie. So when it comes out that he started the fight he is still going to get in trouble
• It was a gut reaction not a thought out process
• Instinct to protect the child and then take care of the consequences
• It does happen that irate or drunk parents come in, you have to call dss or other officials
• You need to take another step to take it from happening again
• You are given a lot of information to consider very quickly
• It is the first time she is presented with a situation like this
• Is the lie really the ethical problem here?
• How she follows up the lie and with the situation is more important
• She immediately realizes her mistake

-Comments from the outer circle:

• Most people approached it from a consequential point of view
• Initial reaction is to protect the child even if that means you lie
• This is not a situation where you are thinking things through, or where you have extra time. This is an impulse situation.
• In non-consequentialism lying would never be a good thing to do. It can not be turned into a universal law

Chapter 2:

Due process

· Case three:

Chemistry class/ Mr. Fuse

o Did the teacher react fairly?

o Punishing the entire class and the anonymous note

o Should he have left the class unattended

o Due process—moral decisions are arrived through a process; teacher’s decisions need not be arbitrary or capricious; punishment is appropriate to the situation.

o Reaction: he had a short fuse; little evidence and the kid didn’t have a chance to defend himself; no evidence of who saw what; is there enough evidence to convict Alex yet he still gets in trouble

o Kyle would ask “What would Dewey do?” and the Perry Mason, Scooby-doo approach ensued

o Mr. Fuse punishment in either situation is flawed; what would you do?

§ Get someone to confess

§ New lock

§ Nothing he can really do about it but educate students; cops do fingerprints

§ Keep whole class punished—students had to have been aware and no one stopped this from happening.. kids that don’t fess up are accomplices

§ Don’t give kid “F”, it will go on permanent record and harm their college career/future; don’t use this way as an example

§ Should whole class be punished? About ½ of class, though some hesitant, thought so; rationale: responsibility and detourant

§ You want to maximize rationale so that an incident never happens again.

§ Does Mr. Fuse deserve to be punished