Bleeding Edge raised my ire recently by suggesting that perhaps the problem with ethics in business was that schools don’t place enough emphasis on teaching ethics to their students.
Oh dear oh dear Charles, you’ve got me started. Maybe I’ll never stop now.
You’ve given us another burder for schools to bear. On the one hand we have conservatives everywhere telling us that schools need to focus on the basics – on measurable results.
Schools are “the best schools” if they produce good year 12 results and lots of their students on to university. Parents apparently base their decision on which schools they send their children on the school’s Year 12 results. Brendon Nelson is apparently going to give funding only to schools which can achieve good results (and don’t forget, have a working flagpole!)
But in reality, we want schools to do a whole lot more. Of course we want schools to teach ethics. But where are the league tables for schools which produce the most ethical students?
Oh no, that might just be a tad embarassing. Much better just to assume that the “better”, “more prestigious” and “higher Year 12 ranking” schools must be producing the most ethical students. As soon as we say a school is “good” (based on an arbitrary measure or ranking) we start assuming that it is “good” on all measures we can think of. Subtle isn’t it. Ethical? Hmmmm. Perhaps we need to start there.