Thoughtful, as always. An observation: in the ethics class that I teach, students haven’t built the muscles needed to express a point of view on the material. They seem convinced that their job is to spit back the “right”answer as I have defined it, which, of course, I haven’t done; having to come up with a personal point of view and then defend it is foreign. So while I agree with you about *what* college can or can’t teach, I wonder if we have some work to do with *how* we teach.
Nov 5, 2023·edited Nov 6, 2023Liked by Michael Rushton
I think frequently attacks on colleges and universities for not responding to a "skills gap" or preparing students for the labor market are an attempt to divert attention from the failures of public and private actors to intervene in labor markets to make them fairer and more responsive (or even, perhaps, in some cases, to protect them on behalf of one's own citizens). Higher education has accepted being a scapegoat in that long-running discourse because until recently that has been a role for which we were heavily compensated--that it was our job to be blamed for the failure of other institutions. At this point, that has become an unfavorable bargain but it's an old habit.
I think much the same is going on in any attempt to say that we have failed to teach ethics or civics. (The right's version is that we are actively 'indoctrinating' the wrong ethics or civics.) This move is principally made by people who are operating within the vast ethical void that is public and commercial life today, produced primarily by people aged 50-80. If the lack of ethics originates from what colleges teach or do not teach, the colleges we should be blaming are those of 30, 40, or 50 years ago. Colleges cannot teach what their society does not otherwise uphold--this is no different than the clergymen of the late 19th and early 20th Century attributing all sorts of social changes to higher education in that moment, when the social changes they were responding to were the result of the preceding three or four decades. There is no teacher so charismatic and wise that they can teach a student to live within an ethics that the student can see being blatantly violated all around them.
It is as you say: people who follow some kind of ethical constraint usually do so according to lived-in, emotionally experienced wisdoms that don't require an education in ethics. What an education in ethics gives us, perhaps, is greater facility for speaking about and recognizing an ethical life when we encounter it, and perhaps therefore some greater probability of following that example. But that doesn't happen right there and then, in the classroom. It only happens by experience--including making mistakes. You're more likely to recognize the human advantages of following ethical guidelines if you've lived through situations where they're often breached, or breached them yourself. No morality has force when it's just a catechism memorized and dutifully repeated.
The last paragraph really hits the nail on the head. Are we supposed to think that the majority of the population that never went to college have had no practical ethical education in their upbringing?
Incidentally, Milton Friedman’s dictum did contain a qualification: corporate executives should try to “make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom.” Friedman was explicit that corporate executives should not reduce pollution “beyond the amount that is in the best interests of the corporation or that is required by law”. Somehow, he fails to mention that corporate executives oversee actions to try to shape the legal and regulatory environment in which the corporation operates. The calls among right-wing Republicans for the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency should hardly be surprising.
Profit maximizing behaviour that flouts ethical custom is common enough and can perhaps be identified by the degree of public anger that follows from routine revelations of cheating or deliberately misinforming customers, knowingly exposing employees to toxic chemicals, or putting “forever chemicals” into consumer products or dumping them into the air, water, and landfills.
Anyone who went through a business school and who took the ethics course to heart would presumably self select to work in arts administration instead of for Exxon or DuPont, for example.
As for Ezekiel Emanuel’s specific concern regarding an ethical position regarding Israel and Gaza, someone who has carefully considered the ethics of the situation could reach a conclusion quite different from the one that he thinks is the right one. Recently, I’ve been listening to Norman Finkelstein, probably the foremost expert on the history and politics of Gaza, who concluded that, while Hamas fighters committed atrocities on October 7, one could legitimately decide not to condemn them in light of the historical circumstances that had brought that about. He draws a parallel with the atrocities committed during the famous slave rebellion led by Nat Turner and the ethical position adopted at the time by white slavery abolitionists in response to it.
Thoughtful, as always. An observation: in the ethics class that I teach, students haven’t built the muscles needed to express a point of view on the material. They seem convinced that their job is to spit back the “right”answer as I have defined it, which, of course, I haven’t done; having to come up with a personal point of view and then defend it is foreign. So while I agree with you about *what* college can or can’t teach, I wonder if we have some work to do with *how* we teach.
I think frequently attacks on colleges and universities for not responding to a "skills gap" or preparing students for the labor market are an attempt to divert attention from the failures of public and private actors to intervene in labor markets to make them fairer and more responsive (or even, perhaps, in some cases, to protect them on behalf of one's own citizens). Higher education has accepted being a scapegoat in that long-running discourse because until recently that has been a role for which we were heavily compensated--that it was our job to be blamed for the failure of other institutions. At this point, that has become an unfavorable bargain but it's an old habit.
I think much the same is going on in any attempt to say that we have failed to teach ethics or civics. (The right's version is that we are actively 'indoctrinating' the wrong ethics or civics.) This move is principally made by people who are operating within the vast ethical void that is public and commercial life today, produced primarily by people aged 50-80. If the lack of ethics originates from what colleges teach or do not teach, the colleges we should be blaming are those of 30, 40, or 50 years ago. Colleges cannot teach what their society does not otherwise uphold--this is no different than the clergymen of the late 19th and early 20th Century attributing all sorts of social changes to higher education in that moment, when the social changes they were responding to were the result of the preceding three or four decades. There is no teacher so charismatic and wise that they can teach a student to live within an ethics that the student can see being blatantly violated all around them.
It is as you say: people who follow some kind of ethical constraint usually do so according to lived-in, emotionally experienced wisdoms that don't require an education in ethics. What an education in ethics gives us, perhaps, is greater facility for speaking about and recognizing an ethical life when we encounter it, and perhaps therefore some greater probability of following that example. But that doesn't happen right there and then, in the classroom. It only happens by experience--including making mistakes. You're more likely to recognize the human advantages of following ethical guidelines if you've lived through situations where they're often breached, or breached them yourself. No morality has force when it's just a catechism memorized and dutifully repeated.
The last paragraph really hits the nail on the head. Are we supposed to think that the majority of the population that never went to college have had no practical ethical education in their upbringing?
Incidentally, Milton Friedman’s dictum did contain a qualification: corporate executives should try to “make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom.” Friedman was explicit that corporate executives should not reduce pollution “beyond the amount that is in the best interests of the corporation or that is required by law”. Somehow, he fails to mention that corporate executives oversee actions to try to shape the legal and regulatory environment in which the corporation operates. The calls among right-wing Republicans for the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency should hardly be surprising.
Profit maximizing behaviour that flouts ethical custom is common enough and can perhaps be identified by the degree of public anger that follows from routine revelations of cheating or deliberately misinforming customers, knowingly exposing employees to toxic chemicals, or putting “forever chemicals” into consumer products or dumping them into the air, water, and landfills.
Anyone who went through a business school and who took the ethics course to heart would presumably self select to work in arts administration instead of for Exxon or DuPont, for example.
As for Ezekiel Emanuel’s specific concern regarding an ethical position regarding Israel and Gaza, someone who has carefully considered the ethics of the situation could reach a conclusion quite different from the one that he thinks is the right one. Recently, I’ve been listening to Norman Finkelstein, probably the foremost expert on the history and politics of Gaza, who concluded that, while Hamas fighters committed atrocities on October 7, one could legitimately decide not to condemn them in light of the historical circumstances that had brought that about. He draws a parallel with the atrocities committed during the famous slave rebellion led by Nat Turner and the ethical position adopted at the time by white slavery abolitionists in response to it.