Tag: Teaching

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower. #College #Unschooling #Education (via uberlearner)

On By southwerkIn business ethics1 Comment

The adjunct professor here tells us what happens when he flunks a majority of his students. –

What actually happens is that nothing happens. I feel no pressure from the colleges in either direction. My department chairpersons, on those rare occasions when I see them, are friendly, even warm. They don’t mention all those students who have failed my courses, and I don’t bring them up. There seems, as is often the case in colleges, to be a huge gulf between academia and reality. No one is thinking about the larger implications, let alone the morality, of admitting so many students to classes they cannot possibly pass. The colleges and the students and I are bobbing up and down in a great wave of societal forces—social optimism on a large scale, the sense of college as both a universal right and a need, financial necessity on the part of the colleges and the students alike, the desire to maintain high academic standards while admitting marginal students—that have coalesced into a mini-tsunami of difficulty. No one has drawn up the flowchart and seen that, although more-widespread college admission is a bonanza for the colleges and nice for the students and makes the entire United States of America feel rather pleased with itself, there is one point of irreconcilable conflict in the system, and that is the moment when the adjunct instructor, who by the nature of his job teaches the worst students, must ink the F on that first writing assignment.

I share some of these concerns. My persistent gripes about the “necessity” of policemen and firemen having to master college algebra is probably well known locally. A college education is appropriate in many fields but surely we can find a variety of mechanisms(of which a college education is a major choice but not the only choice) by which policemen and other municipal employees can be promoted.

James Pilant

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower. #College #Unschooling #Education The idea that a university education is for everyone is a destructive myth. An instructor at a “college of last resort” explains why.By Professor XJune 2008 Atlantic Magazine     I work part-time in the evenings as an adjunct instructor of English. I teach two courses, Introduction to College Writing (English 101) and Introduction to College Literature (English 102), at a small private college and at a community college. The … Read More

via uberlearner

The Not So Secret Code of Character (via Attacking the Page)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I found this essay to mirror some of my concerns. I try to point out to my classes (I teach college) that identifying with and having sympathy for criminals and wrong doers is usually wrong and when not directly wrong, questionable.

I remember my shock when asking my students who their heroes were and one young lady said the Hannibal Lector character in Red Dragon. After a long pause during which I tried to collect my thoughts, I pointed out that this might not be a good choice. I have also pointed out to my students that you hang pirates, that pirates do not sail in endless circles in the Caribbean on a kind of Carnivale Cruise Line vacation but sail to kill people and take their stuff. They find this a strange thought.

I tell them that your moral judgment has to be turned on all the time to be effective and that it requires considerable effort to do so after having been conditioned to root for the “hero” in thousands of television shows. As with all teaching I wonder how much I get across.

This a good article which takes the side of moral responsibility.

James Pilant

My thanks to Attacking the Page.

From the article –

Basically, codes are the rules we use to govern the way we want to live. Our codes of honor, ethics and conduct make up our conscious. They give us a moral compass for orienteering our way though life. Right or wrong, we all have a philosophy by which we live. And so should our characters.

Codes are all around us: computer codes, genetic codes, building codes, zip codes, Morse code and bar codes. The military has codes, professionals have codes, even pirates have codes (though I hear they’re more like guidelines than actual rules.) So what is a code? According to the online Free Dictionary a code is… A systematically arranged and comprehensive collection of laws. A systematic col … Read More

via Attacking the Page

Ethical Solutions Don’t Come Easy (via Scott’s Thoughts on Marketing)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Here is a fellow business professor. Always a pleasure to find another blogging teacher. He enjoys his students and finds their attention drawn to ethics. That’s wonderful, you’d be surprised how many teachers are less than fond of their students.

I like his thoughts on ethics, and I want you to read them.

James Pilant

Ethical Solutions Don't Come Easy Remember that Willie Nelson song “Always On My Mind? Well, sometimes it feels like ethics is always on the mind of marketers – which of course is a good thing! When I look at the traffic on this blog, the posts on ethics always get the most hits, by a long shot.  And while I can never identify who, specifically, lands on these pages, I can see what search engine terms lead people here.  Phrases like “marketing ethics” and “examples of legal but u … Read More

via Scott’s Thoughts on Marketing

ethics (via prof write @ usc)

On By southwerkIn Teaching1 Comment

This is a post in an ongoing class about teaching writing. The ethical problems discussed here are not too far from the problems of teaching business ethics. I know I have more than a few college students reading my posts. I think those students will take particular pleasure in this essay.

How do you teach ethics? If I have any advice to offer, it would be this: never teach ethics as if choices were a matter of point of view – teach ethics as if the choices were a matter of validity. If you teach ethics while mentioning different philosophies, students tend to take away the idea that morality is a matter of opinion.  I recommend ( and do) teach ethics as to which moral system is most appropriate while discussing the moral reasoning behind that ethical code. The idea is that a student will take from the class the idea that different ethical choices are based on human reason.

If morals are a matter of opinion, money ranks as a rationale with God, honor and country. If morals are a matter of validity or a matter of reason, rationales are weighed and considered.

James Pilant

After reading Katz and Ornatowski, and after our discussion in class on Tuesday, I’ve been struggling to figure out what it means to teach ethics—in writing classes in general and in professional writing classes in particular. Flipping through Locker’s textbook, I see the hard-core instrumentalist approach (basically, don’t lie on your resume or CV). “Ethics” doesn’t even appear in the index. I’m still waiting on my copy of Peeples, so I haven’ … Read More

via prof write @ usc

A Scholar in the Garden (I’m Teaching Today!)

On By southwerkIn ethics

I’ll be teaching Business Law in about an hour to a group of students who seem to like the subject or my lectures or both. I’m going to have a great time. I like this scholar thing. This is just a nice teaching picture.

James Pilant

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Do Case Studies In Business Ethics Increase Ethical Behavior?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics, Teaching, White Collar Crime

Only if the examples are of a particular type and taught in a particular way. Back in 2006, a group of professors from a variety of business disciplines got together to teach a class using the examples of Enron, Worldcom, Tyco and Shell.

From the article at SmartPros –

At the end of the semester, the number of students in a simulated trading room who were caught in misconduct or misusing information for insider trading was significantly higher than at the beginning. The students said, “You taught us how to do it,” Buono recalled.

“For those of us who’ve spent our careers teaching this, it’s been a disappointing time,” said Buono, who has taught at the Waltham, Mass., college for 27 years. “Some of the most renowned names in the corporate world are now jokes at cocktail parties. And they were led by graduates of our business programs.

Obviously, the teaching of unfortunate case studies is not the best route to ethical behavior. The professors decided to try a new tack and taught examples from a perspective of moral heroism.

Their initial studies indicated some success.

What’s my take? I loath case studies. My favorite example is a case in which the employee is put crossways with his boss over a fairly minor issue that would however, result in the loss of his job. The study goes on to explain that his wife is in the hospital and his children are in an expensive private school. The case study is loaded for one side. It is obvious students will do the correct and moral thing on a test but take away from the class, the real lesson, the lesson of getting along.

In other words, this kind of ethics teaching is negative ethics teaching. This example clearly indicated that a moral life is expensive and damaging to a career, and that it really doesn’t matter anyway. After all, management will get someone to do the immoral act anyway. Just Great! We desperately need a generation of ethically sound business leaders and our business schools can’t even get ethics case studies right.

How much change in the case study movement do you think has happened since 2006? Why do we have case studies anyway? Simple, it is good class discussion and easy to teach. So we wind up with generations of moral phonies, because business ethics teachers are unwilling to do their job because it’s hard.

My contempt for standard textbooks and standard business ethics teaching is hard to put into words. I write my own class material emphasizing individual moral development. Each individual student charts out an ethical course for their life path. As the semester progresses the students are asked what changes occur because of their exposure to Catholic Social Doctrine, etc. An individual with a thought out moral system is much more likely to make the right decision when confronted with an ethical problem. You prepare a student to be a good human being. That’s the heart of teaching. You don’t teach him silly examples that he will quickly discard as not being part of the real world, you teach that a life lived nobly and honestly is better than the other choices.

James Pilant

Julian Friedland (Business Ethics Memo) Comments On My Blog

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics, Teaching2 Comments

Julian Friedland maintains a blog, Business Ethics Memo. I had occasion to write and he wrote back.

This is what he had to say –

Hi James,

Thanks for the link and compliment. I would be curious to know what academic training you have, i.e. business, philosophy, etc.

Your blog is engaging some of the most important and timely issues today. However, I would council you to beware of your tone, which can be a tad shrill at times.

Instead of name calling (“incredibly stupid,” “evil” etc.) you might consider taking a more charitable view of the other side, which might help take the debate to a deeper level and alienate fewer readers. For example, there are reasons schools are invading student privacy, and some might be legitimate. How do we determine the difference here?

I know folks are shouting more and more in media these days (especially on the right), but I think educators like us should strive to maintain a better example. That said, I am all for calling a spade a spade from time to time. But in my humble opinion, that can be done without name calling.

Also, you might consider opening up the blog to comments.

BTW: I am writing an article on some of the citizens united implications for increased CSR. It’s entitled Sustainability, Public Health, and the Corporate Duty to Assist.

Did you catch my piece in the Chronicle of Higher Ed last November? It’s subscription only (linked on my blog) so in case your library doesn’t offer access, I’m pasting it below.

Best,

Julian

Business ‘Ethics’ Wrong Focus – Really?

On By southwerkIn business ethics2 Comments

Thomas DiLorenzo writes an article in which he explains that those teaching business ethics tend to emphasize a few bad apples which implies that all businessmen are corrupt. What’s wrong with greed, he says. We’ve always had it. The real problem is with government.

Okay, I get tired of this. I never teach that all businessmen are corrupt but I strongly suggest that those that are do incredible damage to this country and I can prove my point.

There are a lot of things like greed and pride and avarice and sloth, but that they’ve been around a while doesn’t mean they are acceptable.

I have to notice that the American economy (and the world economy) were nearly destroyed by Mr. DiLorenzo’s “greed.” I do not believe that the government is the source of all evil and I have more faith in an organization in which the American People have some kind of input (not as much as I want) than a giant financial company with a proven record of manipulation, overpayment and use of government influence to protect itself from the actual economic consequences of its misbehavior.

I am a business ethics teacher. That’s a lot more than a apologist for corporate malfeasance and a radical who has discovered the source of evil as American self government.

James Pilant

An Introduction To Business Ethics

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

This is my thoroughly acerbic intro to my business ethics class.

Business Ethics is the study of what is right or wrong in the world of business. We are going to explore your views of ethics. While you will learn about many ethical systems, the emphasis of the class is upon your ethical development.
It is possible that you live in a moral vacuum. You could have no beliefs whatever as to what should or should not be done. However, this possibility is so rare as to be almost impossible.

More likely is that you have been influenced by society and have accepted the viewpoints of those around you. You float in a sea of belief systems absorbing what is “normal” and usually what is comfortable.

Some, a good number, have been educated into a moral system. The most common system would be that of a religion although other systems of ethics which can be found in organizations as diverse as political parties, charities, and organizations such as Ala-non. These other systems vary dramatically in the depth and importance of ethics in them.
The few remaining individuals will have actively considered what is right or wrong. Some have reflected on these issues a great deal; others less.

The intent of this course is that you actively consider your ethics as they relate to issues in business.
You move from moral vacuum, society’s choices, religious systems, organizational beliefs and your own reflections to a highly active consideration of ethical choices.

There is no rejection here of any system of ethics. It is quite likely that individuals will find in our attempt at developing a moral framework a ratification of their previous beliefs. It is likely that the strongest choice for many will be a religious system and those that have worked to develop their own judgment will usually find their search to have been significant.

Hopefully, all students in the class will develop their system of ethics in some sense. However, if a student begins the class with a system of ethics or an absence of such a system and finishes with no change, which will have no effect on the grade received.

What we will study

We will begin by exploring religious codes of ethics. Many religions, in particular Protestant and Catholic Christianity, Judaism and Islam have created sets of rules that apply directly to morality in the business context.

From there we will journey through the often confusing field of philosophy. We will discuss the impact of the major schools of thought on business ethics.

We will look at legal obligations of duty, fair dealing and care.

After this comes current thought, in particular American philosophies of business ethics.

We then investigate the issues of crime and ethical issues concerning business. A focus on particular moral issues concerning individual business fields like accounting.

Ethics programs and their implementation are next followed by human rights concerns and the last chapter concerns social responsibility.

Business ethics is a relevant and vital subject, but this field of ethics had been full of difficulty.

Business involves large sums of money, interactions between humans at different levels of power, interactions between one business and others, and interactions between business and government.

Some businesses have stolen incredible amounts of money, caused or contributed to the death of millions of people, damaged the fabric of the world economy, colluded with other businesses to set prices or drive other businesses out of existence, bribed government officials, evaded taxes and by giving an impression of constant criminality and dishonesty damaged the social fabric of many nations and poisoned their relationships with other countries.
Business ethics has been taught in the United States for about forty years. It has been a disaster. Corporate scandals so huge as to threaten the world’s financial systems have occurred several times. The more mundane corporate crimes ranging from tax evasion to the participation in causing injury and death are so commonplace they require little discussion.

Most of the individuals in these crimes were educated in business schools with business degrees probably the most common, the MBA. They had business ethics as a course. The fruit of that teaching is evident. There is no fruit. There is no positive result.

It can be claimed that business ethics has had some immeasurable effect that cannot be calculated. If that is a justification for having this course why don’t we teach a wide variety of other classes that might be effective. Is that how a business school is to be run: in the hope of a course being useful? Perhaps we should seek business success with Ouija boards, séances, and voodoo curses?

If we admit that current business ethical teaching is a failure. What can be done?

First, let’s have a look at our current textbooks. They contain many fascinating elements. First there are thought problems at regular intervals. A student is told in this thought problem that he is in position of having dire financial problems and at the same time he is confronted with an ethical problem involving a superior. If he does the morally correct thing, it could result in dismissal and the end of a career. If he does the wrong thing, he will keep his job and the risks are quite low that he will be caught. The student will of course give the proper response to the teacher. But he has already digested the principal lesson of the example. Don’t make waves. Don’t risk your career. When you get out into the real world you are going to have real financial pressure and if you lose your job, there will be consequences for the rest of your life.

How about that section on ethical systems, a vital part of the text? After all most of us attempt to work out our problems through with ethics code we already have and this is usually one common in our society. In most textbooks, there will be several pages perhaps even a large part of a chapter explaining the base elements of philosophy. This is so the eager business student has a good grasp on normative as opposed to descriptive ethics. You see that normative ethics is a system in which you try to figure out what is right or wrong. Descriptive ethics involves studying the current systems of belief or lack thereof. You see if we taught what was right or wrong we might offer students moral choices. But we give it a quick pass and offer students the choice of doing whatever is being done now, a convenient way of avoiding any moral choices at all. You see telling students what is right or wrong means forcing our ideas on them rather than allowing them the total freedom to act without any direction at all.

Then there comes the heart of the matter, a discussion of ethical systems that can range over as much as two to three pages. In one textbook which will remain nameless, Christianity is give two entire paragraphs, although there are reliable reports that a considerable number of Americans claim to live by its tenets. We then discuss utilitarianism and Kantian ethics. Occasionally to amuse myself at the beginning of the semester, I ask the class how many of them live by utilitarian ethics. After a long period of silence, I try out Kant and the categorical imperative. Would you believe that our students don’t seem to make any of their moral decisions based on this thought? They don’t even seem to know what these things are! But if you ask about that Christianity thing, the one with two paragraphs, many of them react. Then you will find several students who are trying to figure out what is right or wrong in their own minds developing their own philosophy. And last you will always find two or three students who believe that money is the only measure of morality in this world, a descriptive ethic.

Our intent here is to explore the world of business in view of the many ethical systems that deal directly with business moral issues and there are more than a few. We also intend to look at your own moral development over the course of your life span.

Most importantly we will learn to consider morality and ethics as an active endeavor. You don’t put judgment in the back of your head as to what is right or wrong, you think about it actively. You have to think about what is right before the issue comes up or many times you will simply not realize the moral implications of your actions. You have a world to win, fight for it.

James Alan Pilant

“The Apartment” And Business Ethics

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics, Teaching

In 1959, the Apartment, was filmed. It starred Jack Lemon and Shirley MacLaine. It was nominated for ten academy awards and won five.

They filmed some scenes in New York and intended to make much of the film there but Jack Lemon became very ill after at all night shoot in Central Park. So, they filmed most of it on the lot in Hollywood.

It’s beautifully filmed (I like black and white) and there is a great deal of subtlety in the details of the background that add to the message of the film

Why do I use it in class? First, it’s a view of an America that has ceased to be. An America whose history has tremendous resonance for our own.

Lessons from the film. (Not in order of importance.)

1. There is no normal in America. Every year we think this is normal, that everyone should do this. It’s how it is and you can’t change it. Well, it’s changing anyway. The only normal is constant motion in the direction of a new normal. It’s an important lesson because some of my students feel like they can have no effect in this world and thus should retreat to a private world of friends kept at a distance and media individualized to kill time and give a brief, fraudulent feeling of fulfillment.

2. I want my students to see the changes in how women are treated and how they adapted. Women were relegated to certain jobs and they realized their only avenue to improving their lot in life was to marry well. Many of the women in the film are just temporary forms of entertainment for all intents and purposes.

3. One of the strangest qualities of the film, and the director himself pointed this out, the Jack Lemon character, for the most part, is the architect of his problems and yet we feel sympathy for him and identify with him. And again, the Shirley MacLaine character largely chooses her own fate and we feel sorry for her.

There’s a big lesson here – we often feel sympathy, often a sense of identification and sometimes, even envy, with the unethical. I tell my students about the time one of my students came to me with this story of woe that virtually demanded sympathy. And I felt that way, until I noticed a sentence in this long story of suffering. So, I stopped him and said, “You did what?” There then followed a not very effective explanation. You see, he was a criminal. He broke the law. He was in the mess because of his own decision making. He did not deserve my sympathy. Yet, I was confident that every student he regaled with his tale of suffering felt bad for him.

If we are going to practice ethics, we are going to have to be tougher than that. People who do bad things, who treat other people cruelly, who act without honor or scruples, deserve moral condemnation. That will not change because you’re related to them, because they are friends, really attractive or you like their story. Practicing ethics is tough and it means being tough on other people who do wrong.

If you know what should be done and let it have no effect on your actions, you are acting unethically. You have failed to act ethically.

4. The role of minorities in the film is important. I believe that if film goers in 1960 believed that the film was inaccurate in its portrayal of women and minorities, it would not have been a success. Blacks in the film appear twice in the film, once a shoeshine boy and then, a group waiting to clean the offices at the end of the business day. My eagle eye students found a black man working among the mistreated proles in the huge office background and, once again, at the Christmas party (same guy). It just goes to proves that when lecturing it’s safer not to let them talk!

If my students ability to find a minority in the background when I couldn’t was bad enough, they really got me on the Eastern Europeans. I missed the fact that his neighbors and landlady were of the same ethnicity His landlady and his neighbors are all immigrants and recent ones. (The film is only fifteen years after the close of the Second World War.) They were warm and kind to the Jack Lemon character although judgmental about his ethical failings. (I did not realize the importance of this until it was pointed to out to me. Now, in my defense, I did realize the importance of his neighbor, the doctor, but I didn’t get the big picture.)

I was never able to figure out whether the restaurant hideaway was Chinese or Japanese. It seemed like one of those ethnic groups running a restaurant with some kind of Tahitian background. But basically we can conclude from the film that orientals are okay as long as they are serving food.

Generally, how did the film portray the different groups. The white corporate types were greedy, licentious, petty, and lacked any self perception whatever. Blacks are in the background, soulless workers who pretty things up. Chinese (possibly Japanese) are allowed certain profession but corporate life isn’t one of them. The Eastern Europeans are authentic human beings. They are tolerant and kind but willing not just to make moral pronouncements but willing to call attention to them. They openly criticize the Jack Lemon character for his (not real) sexual adventures. They have a moral center. Aside from our two main characters, they are the only real human beings in the film. And to be blunt, our two major characters only arrive at human hood in the last few minutes of the film.

If there is no other reason to show the film, the movement of the main characters from caricature to humanity makes it all worthwhile.

The doctor is the moral center of the film. He issues the call to personhood to the sinner in the next apartment.

As in instructor, it’s a good choice because there is no difficulty in getting students to watch and remember the film. They enjoy it and it leaves its mark on them. That makes it more useful than many more “on point” films.

If you are going to teach, misdirection, implification and appeals to unconscious motivations are legitimate tools.

James Pilant