Teaching Ethics, 7-7-2010

 Today's Indianapolis Star has a letter to the editor asserting the problem with pre-school education lies with parents. Considering the educational achievements of most Hoosiers, the writer expects too much. Then too, how are parents to teach when both must work to them and their children alive?

Sirach 30, 1–13 gives support to the Star's letter writer. Aristotle and the Greeks had different ideas:

It is best, then, if the community attends to upbringing, and attends correctly. But if the community neglects it, it seems fitting for each individual to promote the virtue of his children and his friends - to be able to do it, or at least to decide to do it.

Nicomachean Ethics, Book X, Chapter 9, §14.

I am not so sure if we would like the laws noted by Aristotle – their laws did not prohibit, but prescribed educational practices and how to raise children. (See §8).

Yes, we expect parents to provide some training of ethics to their children. How much sticks will depend on the parents, the child, and how the child interacts with the wider world. We do nothing further about educating ethics, instead we rely on the law to bring the heads of those who break the law. I have written on this already in detail (click the philosophy link below). We exult the law above ethics; which may be another thing unchanged since 332 B.C.:

For many naturally obey fear, not shame; they avoid what is base becaue of the penalites, not because it is disgraceful. For since they live by their feelings, they pursue their proper pleasures and the sources of them, and avoid the opposed pains, and have not even a notion of what is fine and [hence] truly pleasant, since they have had no taste of it.

 Nicomachean Ethics, Book X, Chapter 9, §4. 

Does the description include you? If so, how does it feel knowing you have no idea of the fine, that you lack virtue? 

See, therein lies the difficulty of teaching ethics: can we change the way so many think? I would like to think we can, and we need to pursue the topic. Otherwise, why am I making such an effort before my incarceration?

I would like to think this education would only reinforce religious training received from the family. I made the point elsewhere in these notes by asking what virtues other religions recognize. But what of those not taught ethical values by their families? Then the topic must be started on the most basic level – which Aristotle is a practical choice.

What would happen if we created a society that took its ethical obligations seriously? Think on that for a while. Take a pause on that thought for a moment. 

Now consider this idea: what would happen if our society thought critically about our ethical obligations to one and all, that this was the habit of our common citizen?

Aim for the best behavior for a democratic ethos. You and each of us need to chip in on this project. Maybe you can raise this country to a better level of civic discourse. Maybe you can make this a better country.

Here I end my outline for a book on teaching the virtues. Take them, write the book, as I think this cannot wait the 12 years of my incarceration. We need something soon, something real, so that we can improve the American community.

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