Ethics and Education

Ethics and Education

Before one decides whether or not morals should be a standard part of

American public school education, one first must figure out what the

purpose of education is. This is a difficult question to answer. Some

would say that the purpose of education is to learn facts. Others would

add to that and say that one's education should include facts and

ideas. Perhaps the goal of education is to create well rounded people

who are prepared to face the world around them. Perhaps education

should be the pursuit of truth, however, in order to pursue truth, one

must also define verity. How do you say which, or who's morals are true

or untrue?

An important aspect of defining education is deciding what areas of a

person's education must be acquired in school, and what areas should be

learned elsewhere. The area of morals is sticky in this respect. It is

very difficult to know where to draw the line. When deciding this one

must figure out where the responsibility of parents ends and where

responsibility begins for teachers. One could argue that teachers have

the task of being educators and parents the job of care-giving, so

therefore all learning, including morals should occur within the

schools. This is difficult to say though, because the line between

teaching and care-giving is also fuzzy. Part of care-giving is making

sure that one's child does not hurt him or her self or others, and that

involves teaching. Similarly, part of teaching is making sure that the

child is able to learn, which involves care-giving.

In modern day society children spend a very large percentage of their

time in school, and perhaps to enough time at home for their parents to

effectively instill all the morals they need to learn in order to be

ethical human beings. Because of this it could be argued that it is the

responsibility of schools to teach morals in order for their to be any

kind of ethical society at all. By not actively teaching morals it is

possible that schools are passively teaching to be immoral.

Another question to be raised is whether or not morals need to be

learned in order ro function in other areas of education. If this is

the case, then another question is whether or not the schools should be

responsible for instilling those morals, or if they should expect the