Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ethics-l
Date:         Wed, 4 Nov 1992 13:39:25 EST
From:         TYLERI@RHQVM03.VNET.IBM.COM
Comments: To: ethics-l@uga.cc.uga.edu

Newsgroup: ethics-l
X-Post-Me: Yes
Subject:      kids 'n 'puters
From: tyleri@rhqvm03.vnet.ibm.com  (Irv Tyler)
Organization: ISSC (An IBM Company)
Disclaimer: This posting reflects only my personal views.
Prior Ref: <brochman@SFU.CA  Thu, 22 Oct 1992 20:17:47 -0700>
 >One more time. There is no such thing as absolute ethics. Ethics are
 >rules which a group imposes on its members.
Current Ref:  <guthery@SLCS.SLB.COM  Wed, 4 Nov 1992 09:24:23 -0600>
 >     I personally am appalled by what passes itself off as ethics in
 >public schools and would immediately yank my kid from any class that
 >even thought about discussing ethics, computer or otherwise.  Simply
 >put, the public schools are morally, intellectually and ethically
 >bankrupt.  They have no ethics and thus have no ethics to teach.

Societies are made up of many groups whose members accept a somewhat
different moral standard from one another: that is, each professes
a mode of living and behavior based upon a belief system which has
some elements that differ from elements in the other belief systems.
I include religious, national, social, cultural, and business groups
for starters.  Each individual has his/her own hierarchy established
to resolve conflicts in situations where moral codes compete.

I understand ethics to be a rule system that implements a moral code.
Ethics on the state/nation level is a rule-set established to implement
a moral system which satisfies no one group completely but which it is
hoped will be "the best of all possible worlds" for the majority of
its citizens if it is followed.

  (Let's not get into "moral" systems established and maintained for
  the express purpose of enhancing the lifestyle of the leadership,
  or of a specific group, to the clear detriment of other groups).

From this viewpoint, therefore, it appears clear that there is likely
no more than a small subset of ethical behaviors/rules that would
be agreed upon by the vast majority of the population, and which would
be minimally objectionable to the rest.  I suggest that it is this
subset which is the appropriate framework for discussing GUTHERY's
argument.

Limiting my discussion to the U.S. educational system(s) because I am not
familiar with other educational systems and the means for funding them:

 If public schools are to do a proper job of producing young students
 who have a good foundation for living in this society within its
 professed moral system, then the public schools MUST be involved
 in teaching an agreed-upon set of ethics that support this morality.

 It is the job of parents to provide either the personal education
 or the means outside of the public arena (religious or other system)
 to impart the remaining ethical structures that are specific to
 the moral system in which they believe.

If you believe what I have just stated then we have here a guideline
for determining what the public schools should be (and unfortunately
are not) teaching.  I won't say that the old McGuffey Reader (used to
teach both reading and ethics in the early school systems of the U.S.)
is the right approach (for it was blatantly sectarian) but the mission
of those schools and their McGuffey Reader approach managed to produce
more adults with a sense of morality than the "morally, intellectually
and ethically bankrupt" school systems of today.

Irv Tyler
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU