“The fact that we have schools does not mean we have education. The fact that we have hospitals does not mean we have health care. The fact that we have courts does not mean we have justice. We need professionals who are “in but not of their institutions, whose allegiance to the core values of their fields makes them resist the institutional diminishment of those values.”
This quote in Parker Palmer’s article really stuck with me. I think that in every field we have issues where what we learn in school isn’t necessarily what is done in the world of work, whether this be because of lack of time, money, or effort. Obviously this disconnect is an issue, but the bigger issue is the gap in education that we receive in terms of ethics. We’ve discussed numerous times the cursory attention that ethics are given in education, and the more I think about it the more I see this gap everyday.
While writing this I’m sitting across the room from my boyfriend who has a degree in engineering, and he confirmed that he doesn’t recall any of his classes addressing ethics. This man could go out and build buildings, create weapons, design computer programs, and a million other things I’m unaware of, and not once did anyone ever prompt him to consider the ethicality of doing so. Luckily he has a good head on his shoulders, and is a very culturally and environmentally aware person, but what about those who aren’t. What about those engineers or doctors or biologists or teachers who didn’t grow up being taught to think about how their actions impact others? If these people aren’t learning this in their personal lives, and aren’t learning it through their educations who knows what could happen.
There is so much deception, damage, and corruption in the world already. If we don’t, as Palmer says, “humanize” ourselves, and begin to educate in a way that emphasizes the effect rather than the result things will only continue to get worse.
Despite my examples being primarily engineering related, this isn’t an issue that only impacts the hard sciences. We all need to humanize our students. What good does it do for me to teach my students how to give an effective persuasive speech if I don’t address the ethical implications of this type of speech, and when this type of speech might be inappropriate.
We often shrug ethics off as something that everyone already knows, but judging by the current political state in our county I believe we have to accept that everyone doesn’t always know the difference between right and wrong, especially when the lines begin to blur, money becomes involved, and your personal security is on the line. I am throughly convinced that ethics need to be a more prominent subject in my course, and I hope you do too.
April 24, 2017 at 6:07 pm
I agree that there needs to be a better focus on ethics. I also think ethics need to be reiterated over and over again. I have taken classes that reference ethics and taken workshops specifically about ethics. I still only remember a minuscule amount of the information taught to me. Even if we don’t have a whole class devoted to ethics, I think it needs to be integrated into almost all classes to help people retain the information.
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April 25, 2017 at 5:04 am
There is one class teaching engineering ethics in our department (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering). The name of this class is “Ethics” and is taught by Marc Edwards. I was surprised when I first got to know this class. At that time, I think it is not necessary to teach a subject that everybody already knows. But now I starts to believe that it is necessary for incorporating ethics into engineering education.
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April 25, 2017 at 7:15 pm
Ethics definitely needs to be a focus in preparing academics and other professionals. The underlying point of what we do is to serve society, which is hard to do properly without ethics!
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April 26, 2017 at 6:50 pm
That quote from Palmer stuck with me too! It reminded me of what my high school headmistress always told us ‘Don’t just pass through the school, let the school pass through you’. I think we should all be cautious of that and strive for total education
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April 26, 2017 at 7:59 pm
I completely agree that ethics needs to be emphasized more. I don’t remember discussing ethics at all throughout undergrad at Virginia Tech aside from maybe one class during intro to engineering course. I took the Ethics class (CEE 5804) that Haoran mentioned and I definitely recommend it to anyone interested in ethics. You don’t have to be in engineering to take the course!
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April 26, 2017 at 10:24 pm
Humanness is an important virtues that we learn to practice throughout our lives. I am not sure how you think it can be taught to students. I’d love to hear you about that.
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