Category: Teaching

Australians Fight For Religious Liberty!

On By southwerkIn ethics, Teaching2 Comments


Religious liberty is a two way street, the right to believe and the right not to believe. Not only that but if you do believe, how much and what part. In New South Wales, parents are fight for the right to teach ethics classes instead of scripture classes. The state allows scripture to be taught in schools but a parent can opt out. If a parent opts out, the child is apparently placed in another school room or the school library and does nothing. A group of parents have advocated for ethics classes as an alternative to the scripture classes. This would allow parents to choose not between scripture training and nothing but between scripture training and ethics training.

This just makes sense.

A pilot program was launched and students were given the choice which class to take. Some students in the scripture classes opted to take the ethics classes instead. There has been an outcry from the Catholic and other groups advocating for scriptural education. They don’t have the field all to themselves, though.

In the United States, we already had this lovely opt out provision in a different format. We used to have prayer in the morning of school each day. If a student opted out he could stand out in the hallway while everybody else prayed. I’m old enough to have prayed in public schools before the Supreme Court ruling. At my school, they didn’t bother to give me or the other children a choice to not participate in the prayer, but in other schools they did. I’ve talked and read accounts of people who stood in those hallways, they didn’t think much of it. It was only for a few minutes but I guess it seemed like a long time for them.

All these people advocating for a change want is a choice between scripture and ethics teaching. The current choice is between taking a scripture class and sitting in (what in America is known as) study hall. The current choice is strongly stacked in favor of scripture class. A choice is supposed to be a choice.

James Pilant

State of the Nation – It’s About To Get Worse

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics, Government Failure, Teaching

The statistics coming in are generally aligned one way, they point down. We’ve had a rough ride so far and it’s going to get worse. The governments of the world are just reacting to the crisis and have no real concept of what to do. The United States government led by Barack Obama appears to have a vague idea that an economic stimulus might be a good idea. However, that same government has had no appetite for bold action and is unlikely to develop any.

We float between two eras. The line between the two time periods will be marked at the banking crisis of 2007-2009 (and the continuing economic crisis left in its wake) and the environmental disaster of 2010. There will be a different United States after these two crisis play themselves out.

Currently we are locked in a battle of ideas. I break them into two kinds. One set of ideas say that there are unchanging and permanent solutions to the economic and social problems we face. The other says that solutions differ with time, place and circumstance. I side for the most part with the second group.

I teach business law and business ethics at the college level. I try to explain to my students that there is no glorious past where everyone was good and obeyed the law, etc. The only promised land is the one we build ourselves. Currently the only promise we seem to feel of any importance is the promise of making money.

You see, if there is a glorious past in which everyone goes to church and everyone obeys the law and in which the nation is a “city on a hill,” then it follows that there are a set of beliefs that all we have to do is emulate. We duplicate the virtues and rules of these paragons of virtue and righteousness, and we become great.

One problem, there is no such time. American history is messy. A lot of people die, often for very little reason. A lot of people wind up suffering terrible discrimination for very little reason. And a lot of people are made to lives lives of pain because they believe something other than common beliefs, and very often, those unfashionable beliefs are the exact beliefs held by the majority now.

However, since there is a loud and vocal part in this country who believe virtue resides in a past America, history will just have to be rewritten. I went to Barnes and Noble on Saturday, and there they were, books explaining that the history of the United States was everything you’d want it to be, that is, if you believe in a kind of Disneyland/Hollywood view of the nation’s history. There is good money in “Disneylanding” history. I don’t want any of it myself. Reality is disgustingly painful, but I will do my best to live there.

If you don’t live in a world hoping for a return to an earlier American, you know, “Take America Back” style people, then you have to deal with current circumstances. The way forward is obscure and difficult. You can’t be sure what’s going to happen and what will work. It gives those advocating a return to the promised land an enormous advantage. They have certainty.

We live in a terrible time. It would be nice if things were simple. They are not. It would be nice if things were certain. They are not.

I do believe in ethics, right and wrong. There are definitely some eternal verities in ethical beliefs. However, the great nostrums I hear are seldom based on ethical principle. When “free market” economics takes on the trappings of religion, it is no more ethical an idea than it was before. When you discover that the founding fathers were all evangelicals and thus, America was based on the Christian religion, you aren’t ethical; you’re lying. When you say that killing, torture, stealing and lying are wrong, and that they always will be, you speak based on ethical principles and we are brothers and sisters under the skin.

I don’t know what is going to come. There is a lot of pain ahead. I believe current levels of unemployment, the highest in American history since the Great Depression, will continue through 2014. I do not believe our government is willing to deal with the challenges facing this country and that if they did, that they are not in any way competent to do so.

We are betwixt and between. Societies under these conditions change or shatter.

I think that what this web site is all about is doing the right thing. I firmly believe that if Americans try to do the right thing, not the greedy thing, the power thing or any thing other than just a sheer dogged devotion to acting as if our only end was what kind of world we would want to have after us, then we will get through this and have the kind of society that the righteous deserve. You get to live in the “City on the Hill” when you deserve it, not because you are supposed to have it.

James Pilant

Planned Obsolescence: Is it Ethical? No. Can We Still Have the Newest Gadgets? Yes! (via Leading in Context™ Blog)

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics, Teaching

Linda Fisher Thornton has a discussion of ethical values in the context of planned obsolescence. She backs it up with a wide variety of links. Her blog posts about once a week. So, you might want to check on her in that time frame. She also writes a guest column for the Richmond Times Dispatch.

Is Planned Obsolescence Ethical?  Every business should know its position on this important question.  Do you know yours? Many companies have the technology to make products that last far longer, and choose not to use it. You know what comes next – the products wear out faster and we have to buy them more often. Is that a responsible way to achieve profitability? Here are some opinions on that question (all of which could be used for good leader … Read More

via Leading in Context™ Blog

Ethics: Where are you? part 11 (via Life is what you make it)

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics, Teaching

Denise Scammon is looking for the answers. She describes her thoughts on virtue ethics in this recent post and there are apparently ten more before it, explaining previous stages in her search. She’s obviously smart. The work is disjointed but she’s developing a pattern for her ideas and it takes a bit. We’re looking at someone not afraid to put her thinking down and let other see how far she has gotten. It’s nice work, give it a look!

“Ethics: Where are you? part 11”
Both deontological theories and utilitarian theories contribute to virtue ethics because “virtue ethics and theories of right action complement each other” but “virtue ethics emphasizes right being over right action” (Boss, 2008, p. 400). Kant explains “the importance of good will” in his Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (p. 405). Mill believed that reflection and cultivation of a “benevolent disposition” led to virtue (p. 405). The main po … Read More

via Life is what you make it

Structuralist Economics

On By southwerkIn Economic measurement, Teaching

I found a pdf file of an interview with Lance Taylor. Structural economics is a form of macroeconomics that challenges the current orthodoxy. An orthodoxy, I might add, that has failed to explain or predict the current economic crisis.

Here is a quote where Taylor explains the reversion to classical economics after the second world war:

“It went through several stages, but in effect, what happened is
that by, say, the 1970s and certainly the 1980s, mainstream macroeconomics
had reverted to nineteenth-century economics. The major
figure in late-nineteenth–early-twentieth-century economics was Knut
Wicksell from Sweden, and basically what has come out in recent
decades is a less interesting version of his work.”

This is fascinating work. I recommend it.

James Pilant

This is a Lance Taylor lecture. He is quite good at making economics straightforward and understandable. (It makes me wish I was a student again!)

Here’s another:

Law schools and the legal job market (via Minding the Workplace)

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics, Teaching2 Comments

In difficult economic times, the market for lawyers tends to crashed. Well, it has crashed and it’s crashed for the four or five years at minimum. Are law schools adjusting to the changing demand by raising entrance requirements, cutting class sizes, and lowering tuition?

What do you think? Of course not. The law school business is immensely profitable. After all, they sell dreams of monetary success for the avaricious, justice for the inspired and job security for the frightened.

When times are good, law school graduates, tend to get some of those things. But times are not good and many of those dreams are going to be nothing more than a lifetime of debt and second rate jobs.

It is ethical for law schools, especially second tier, to keep on doing what they have been doing without the slightest deviation?
No.

Are they going to change?
No.

But this is a good discussion of the situation and I recommend you read it. I’m very impressed with the web site. The guy is honest to God idealist. Treasure him, there are not a lot left.

James Pilant

Law professor Brian Tamanaha (recently of St. John's University in New York; now at Washington University in St. Louis) challenged law professors at non-elite law schools in a blog post to consider the ethical implications of attracting thousands of students to pursue an expensive legal education at a time when the job market cannot provide them with meaningful employment.  Citing to angry, despairing posts on blogs by law students and recently g … Read More

via Minding the Workplace

Chris MacDonald’s Video

On By southwerkIn Teaching

Mr. MacDonald very kindly sent me a video of him discussing ethical issues.

It is here –

Mr. MacDonald also made a wry and clever joke about the Elvis impersonator who shared his name. The Elvis impersonator doing Johnny Be Goode is below.


What Are The Ethical Questions Surrounding The Gulf Tragedy?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Teaching1 Comment

Chris MacDonald answers that with a barrage of ethical questions designed to inspire creative thinking on the part of the reader.

Here’s a little bit about Mr. MacDonald’s career and qualifications.

I wanted to put up a video of Mr. MacDonald talking about business ethics. However, Chris MacDonald is a common name. After looking at a famous cyclist, a famous Elvis impersonator, the country singer, the graphic designer, and the meteorologist, I decided to concede defeat. However, since I like including videos, I have one for Chris MacDonald the country singer. He is doing This land is your land, this land is my land. As far as I know he has no connection with Chris MacDonald the ethicist.

Chris MacDonald Discusses Food Labeling

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Teaching

Chris MacDonald discusses the Business Ethics of the lowly hot dog.

Watch the “Hot Dog Song.”

Hard Thinking

On By southwerkIn ethics, Teaching

I had the misfortune and the opportunity to think over the long break. The misfortune was due to my trip to Tulsa. I have a dramatic allergy response to the city either the phosphorous laden Arkansas River or the emissions of the oil refineries or both. I was down and in a lot of pain for several days. But on a larger note, I thought. I am 53 years old and I am not sure what happens next. Gail Sheehy called my age, the age of mastery. I don’t feel like a master of my career or much of anything else.

So, I thought. I apologize for the lack of posts. I wanted to clarify what it was I was trying to do. I wanted to clarify to myself my purpose and to set some goals for this savage year. Yes, savage year. I predict a rough year for me and, more particularly my students. They have come seeking new lives and all this economy has to offer them is pain. They seek an American dream that barely exists.

Why should I write this when so few read it? I wrote my previous blog for more than a year and never gained an audience. I finally deleted it feeling it was of no significance. This one is different. It is different because I am using it as a tool to seek kindred souls and develop my thought.

I want to talk about ethics seriously and without backing away in educational jargon from confronting the evils of our time. Of particular concern are two issues. One is the total lack of protections for our internet communications. We as a people are entitled to some kind of protection for our e-mail and other posts. The second is privatization in the state of Arkansas, my home. I sense something in motion. I worry about the assets of the people of this state being turned over to private interests for their unjust and cruel enrichment.

Sometimes, I would fold my tent and walk away. I could read, listen to music, play my games and let the sweet things of life escape me away from the tedium of the continuing struggle for significance, for the struggle against evil, for that action that says I stand and while I live I will try to do what’s right. Let me quote Tennyson:

 Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
  We are not now that strength which in old days
  Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
  One equal temper of heroic hearts,
  Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
  To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Not a great post, but my post. A new year. Continued struggle. 2o10

James Pilant