Deciding Ethics

In my Issues & Prinicples in Secondary Education (I&P) class, we were recently given a reading assignment and asked to write a short reflection. As I read the article on ethical decision making for teachers, I had a number of fundamental objections to the author's take on the topic. I don't necessarily dispute his outcomes, but I certainly took a different path to get there.

Hoping to keep a positive outlook, however, I decided to set my conflicts asside when writing my reflection. Here is my final (as in, this is what the teacher's getting) reflection paper:

When I think about ethical behavior in the classroom (or ethics in general), I am perplexed. Ethics and ethical behavior are one of those things that everyone is expected to “just know.” For the most part, people seem intuitively to know (or at least have a good idea) what the ethical choice in a given situation is, but when asked to explain or justify it their logic begins to break down. This is because ethics are only loosely related to logic.

The assigned reading from class attempted to resolve this by providing some guiding principles that would make choices easier, but then highlighted several situations where their defined principles conflicted. Again, the logic only gets us so far. In such a scenario where quantitative reasoning reaches its limit (x and y are equally good or bad), we’ve got to fall back on qualitative reasoning (which one do we feel is correct?).

Though the author went to great effort to draw a distinction between ethics and values, when it comes to making that qualitative choice, one’s values are all a person has to draw on. When a rational, persuasive argument can be made for (and against) more than one action, which is the ethical choice? My answer: it depends. It depends on the person making the choice, because they are ultimately responsible for their own decisions and actions and must be satisfied with the consequences.

While the thoughtful consideration of issues before hand can certainly guide our thinking process and values, they do not adequately prepare us for actually making an ethical decision. In fact, nothing will except the actual practice of making those decisions. By this point in our lives, we have all been making ethical choices for decades, though not always in the classroom. Thankfully, this means we’re not new to the game of deciding between right and wrong. Still, transitioning this experience from the realm of personal experience into that of professionalism requires a different level of commitment.

Rather than just coasting through decisions based on what feels right, we must be prepared to justify our decisions on a regular basis. Administrators, students, and parents will always be watching and questioning. The skills of ethical decision making must be honed over time by conscious effort and continuous reflection. It is not enough to just act wisely. We must also reason intentionally and transparently.