Class Notes

We started off Tuesday night with addressing the central questions of Chapter 1, and the questions that we will attempt to address throughout the semester:

"What are ethical claims and are they even possible?"

"Are there any rules/claims that are likely to be useful and applicable to all situations?"

"On what grounds can ethical decisions be justified?"

Dr. Pope assisted us in distinguishing between factual claims and claims of appraisal/preference. Factual claims can be verified at the degree they correspond with the world, i.e. "EDUC 600 begins at 5:00 pm." On the other hand, claims of preference are a value judgment and cannot be proven, i.e. "Vanilla ice cream is good."

With ethical claims, there is always a normative, meaning that it contains an "ought", or a prescription for behavior. He told us that in philosophical ethics people believed that ethical claims were statements of fact. In constrast, in the educational realm, are we satisfied with ethical claims being statements of preference? Most of the time we demand universals, and our task is to figure out acceptable ways in which to justify ethical statements so that they are not reduced to statements of preference.

Our discussion then moved to the comparison/constrast of consequentialist versus nonconsequentialist thinking, as described in the Strike and Soltis text. Consequentialists makes decisions based on what will bring the most good. Ethical decisions are justified when they lead to the most good or lead to no bad consequences. However, the issues surrounding this train of thought deal with the objectivity of good, and the fact that humans are fallible and limited, therefore cannot know all of the consequences of an action. Sometime good consequences outweigh bad, but the actions involved may run contrary to moral intuition. Consequentialist thinking asks us to make decisions without emotions.

On the other hand, nonconsequentialist thinking models "The Golden Rule." Immanuel Kant is associated with this type of thinking, and the standard says that there are certain ways all fundamental people want to be treated. If you are about to apply a moral principle to someone else, are you willing that it be applied to you? Kant states that if we realized we have a great faculty of reason, we would treat people very differently; they would become rational moral agents. For Kant consequences do not matter so much because we are fundamentally responsible for our own actions.

Both theories try to find a way to ground and justify ethical statements. There is a hybrid of the theories that is called "rule utilitarianism" which requires that we figure out which rules make the most people happy and produce the most good, and follow these rules.

One major thing that we discussed is the relevant criteria involved in making an ethical decision. What counts as relevant criteria? Are there universals when weighing ethical decisions?

After the break we moved into the articles read for this week, and we started out with Noddings article on the "One-Caring as Teacher." There are two fundamental assumptions to Noddings' work, the first one being that we are always in relationship with others. The second assumption is that we are fundamentally caring and cared for. Noddings premise is that teachers are to be the one-caring and the students are the one cared for. What is most important is the relation between teacher and student. This relationship models a mother-child relationship, and the teacher's job is to be committed to the student.

Noddings discusses that we must understand we are not autonomous because we are always "the other" is someone's relationship. There are three things that a teacher should do as caring to enhance Nodding's ideal of the "ethical ideal":

1. Engage students in dialogue- Both parties contribute, something comes out. Students ought to contribute to classroom conversation through their thoughts, interests, viewpoints.

2. Provide a model- Nurture one's caring/ethical ideal by being one-caring.

3. Engage in cooperative practice- Teacher and student do things together, the teacher meets the student where they are, teaching is a moral activity. The student is confirmed.

We discussed potential problems with this idea, one being that both parties must respond in order to be in relationship. If the student does not respond, then they are not doing their job. Many times the relationship can be broken, or every act of caring by the teacher is not genuine.
The teacher can burn out from giving into relationships and failing to be confirmed/cared for in return.