Striking a Balance in Ethics Education

In some ways American higher education mimics the fashion industry. There are top designers (Harvard, Yale and Stanford--Klein, Lauren and Kamali) and there are mediocre ones. Products (clothes, education), differ in quality and style, but they conform to certain conventions.

And like fashion, education undergoes fads. While this season in fashion has witnessed the comeback of the mini-skirt, academics have seen the return of ethical education.

Led by two rarely allied leaders of higher education, Education Secretary William J. Bennett and President Derek C. Bok, academia how well its students develop moral and ethical standards.

After the campus turmoil of the 1960s, faculties recoiled from the idea of instructing morals. Attempting to teach students what values they should hold would respark the campus protests and violence that arose in rebellion against the Vietnam War and the way universities, attempted to control students' lives. But two movements have arisen which have placed the teaching of ethics back on higher education's agenda.

These movements come from diametrically opposed philosophies which have become curiously intertwined during the Reagan era. The first is the conservative desire to restore the good old days when all citizens strictly obeyed the laws of the land and those of God (Which some still think are one and the same). Then, people followed a strict, traditional morality which was taught in the class room as well as at home. This philosophy-reflected in education and politics through attempts to restore school prayer, and through Ollie North's repeated invocation of God--has produced the many speeches and writings by Bennett and fellow conservatives arguing for the restoration of morality to the nation's campuses.

Along with this conservative trend, the 1980s has seen the emergence of an attitude which whispers in the ears of our nation's leaders and businessmen that "anything's okay as long as you can get away with it." This attitude, which pretends that the government and social standards exist only when they 're convenient, is the same attitude that has led to both the Iran-contra and the insider trading scandals. Shocked at such blatant disregard of the law and professional standards of conduct, some of the nation's more liberal educators, such as Bok, have apparently joined Bennett and gang to call for ethical instruction by colleges and universities.

But there are important differences in orientation between these strange bedfellows. Bennett wants to see students instructed in a small set of moral values centered around Judeo-Christian, Western traditions. He demands that Universities teach courses on Christian morality and impose strict codes of behavior which strongly discourage premarital sex, drugs and drinking. They dismiss current ethical instruction, which they characterize as games about "deciding which person to throw out of the lifeboat."

Bok and other university presidents see things differently. They recognize that the nature of society and the independence of their students would not permit them to bring back the days of chapel services of strict dress codes even if they wanted to. No fair-minded college president wants to be a moral imperialist imposing his values on those less in lightened than he, Instead, mirroring the philosophy behind his undergraduate Core Curriculum, Bok wants to teach students how to think about ethical questions and problems rather than what to think.

But this approach has problems that handicap its effectiveness. It's fine to learn the process, but where does a student learn the values he will base his future actions on? Professor Stanley Hoffman once described that when he teaches a Core course he concentrates "on the building rather than scaffolding." Instruction that is obsessed with process will miss the more important "building" of actual moral values.

Bok argues that participation in community service programs will allow students to develop values emphasizing self-sacrifice and helping those less fortunate instead of the self-centered morality that prevails today. A latter day program of good works, if you will. But how do you ensure that a majority, not to mention all of Harvard's undergraduates, will enroll in community service programs? Many won't have the time and many won't have the interest. And if ethical instruction is as important as both Bennett and Bok bill it, how can the University allow a single undergraduate to miss out on this type of moral education?

Harvard educators must devise a means of teaching ethical thinking and fostering the development of moral values for all without erring too far on the side of Bennett's moral imperialism. This is a dilemma that has beset many a thousand in Professor Michael Sandel's course, "Justice," not to mention our nation's educators. For starters, the University should add another subdivision to the Core that examines the values, traditions, and development of Western civilization and thought. This would provide knowledge of a moral structure that has underpinned the society in which we have lived for several millenia.

To balance any possible Western centrism, the foreign cultures Core should be strengthened so that its courses emphasize the values of these societies, instead of attempting to teach thousands of years of history in three months. The moral reasoning Core could afford to dispose of some of the courses that do not really examine thinking about ethical questions, and to include more that do. The professional schools should also require such courses on morality (except divinity, which seems to have had a monopoly on them), rather than offering the poorly-attended electives on ethics that currently exists.

Although these changes are not revolutionary, some may object, saying that a university should go no farther, that it is up to society to change its attitudes before universities can change them for society. But on closer inspection, it is clear that the university is one of the places where social standards and codes of human behavior can be transformed--whether for good or bad--as witnessed in the anti-Vietnam protests of the 1960s.

In addition, students can learn ethics through the moral leadership of the university they attend. Bok, among others, has argued that the way institutions address their own ethical challenges can set an example for its students to learn from. But does that mean that students who attend Columbia, which has decided to divest its holdings in South Africa, are receiving a better ethical education than Harvard students?

No. Teaching students values outside the classroom takes more than one such act. Their leadership must be more farreaching. If students do indeed learn from universities' actions' then every message that Harvard sends out to its students must be moral. And that may not be compatible in a large, bureaucratic Harvard of today that sometimes values power more than brilliance, and where competition is the order of the day. What needs to change is the atmosphere of the Harvard community and the behavior of its members.

Perhaps a true honor code, stricter systems of discipline administered by students themselves, and a more democratic from of governance at Harvard can be the answer. Whatever the answer is, it is evident that the ethical instruction at the majority of today's colleges and universities are lacking and have produced many students who are coldly self-centered and lost in today's world. More needs to be done. It is hard to believe that what is billed as the greatest system of higher education in the world cannot do better.