Insider – it’s not the teachers who are pushing this. In fact, to some extent, the teachers, while recognizing that the need is there, wonder how they are going to squeeze yet another item into an already crowded curriculum.

Terry – I hear what you’re saying. The public schools have always tried to make up for theshortcomings of parenting, so I have no problem with ethics being taught to youngters.

My problem is the larger issue of lack of ethics in our society. Trying to teach ethics to college-aged kids is kinda like closing the barn door after the horse is already out. (Besides, trying to teach ANYTHING to college-aged kids is hard enough.) With all of the images around them – from MP3 sharing on up – showing them the exact opposite, even the most ethically-minded kid has a hard time trying to find an example of somebody who behaves as they should. Look at who the role models are: celebrities and athletes, few of which we can hold up as behaving ethically.

For people who grew up in unloving families, or on the street, a sense of morality — feeling connected to the family of mankind — was an exotic notion, difficult to grasp.

Wishing all children would have the upbringing described in the first paragraph will never make it so. Heaping scorn on the parents of the kids in the second paragraph is easy, but we’re stuck with their offspring, nonetheless. If we don’t teach the importance of moral values/ethics to those unlucky children in our public schools, where are they supposed to get that message?

Are the kids who drew a bad hand, parent-wise, supposed to learn right from wrong from our popular culture?

If you haven’t learned “ethics” until you’re college-age, I think the train’s left the station.

I do agree that, rather than ethics as separate class, it would be much more effective to integrate it into the various subject classes. I’ve experienced both bad and good implementations of that, though – it’s not an easy thing to do.

MB – I don’t blame the B-schools for society’s ills. What has happened is that too many people no longer have a conscience.

My own recommendation to the group was that there should be an introductory required course on just what ethical behavior is. Get the definitions out there – all of them. And then, ethics should simply be taught within the other courses, as reinforcement.

Much human activity is based on the risk-reward balance. I certainly would not show up for work if I won the mega-millions lottery, because the risk-reward ratio would be entirely different.

People engage in unethical behavior when the perceived reward outweighs the perceived risk, which is the possibility of being caught. When one only fears the civil authorities (police, FBI, etc.) one’s odds of getting caught are low. When one fears an omniscient God, one’s odds of getting caught are unity.