One Choice at a Time

Editor’s Note: For now over 75 years, The Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. This September 1991 – October 1991 Classic wrestles the question, “Can you teach someone to be ethical?”

A nationally known political figure faced accusations of accepting improper financial favors when his daughter received a special scholarship from a university that might benefit from his good will. Part of his problem, he said, was the “arrogance of integrity,” being so sure of his own pure motives it never occurred to him anyone else might think otherwise. 

A nurse pondered what she would do if she discovered the physician she worked for had AIDS. Which is more important, the patient’s right to know of the doctor’s illness, or the doctor’s right to privacy? “I guess I’d quit,” she said, “because I don’t know.” An award-winning journalist, fired from her job after an article she wrote was shown to have whole sections lifted without attribution from another paper, explained, “I was careless.” The newspapers are filled with ethical dilemmas, but no more so than most peo ple’s daily lives. For many individuals, the years spent in college studies are one of the few times they have the opportunity to reflect on ethical issues before they find themselves reading their own life stories in the headlines. Late-night talks in dorm rooms have always been informal seminars in moral decision making, but is it possible to teach ethics in a structured way? Can ethical behavior be learned in a class- room? Using a variety of approaches, many teachers at Baylor are doing their best to help students understand the subtlety and complexity of ethical decision making before those students face difficult choices in a professional or personal situation. 

Traditionally, the subject of ethics has been seen as one belonging in the religion and philosophy departments. These classes still emphasize the theory of ethics. In recent years, a practical approach to ethical problems has been emphasized in the schools of nursing, business, and law, as well as the areas of journal ism, political science, psychology, and environmental studies. Today most disciplines combine practice with ethical theory. 

The religion department’s course in Christian ethics, taught by Dr. Dan McGee, explores Judeo-Christian moral teachings but also looks deeper. McGee explained, “The primary task of the ethics professor in an academic setting — which is different from that in an ecclesiastical setting — is to help students understand who they are and what their values are, and the implications of their habits and rules.” The course is not an attempt to convince a student of any particular perspective but rather to demonstrate the diversity of the tradition and the need to confront ethical issues. 

“Often students think some of their beliefs are Chris tian because of the close affinity between the church and society,” McGee said. “Really those beliefs often are a form of social Darwinism. Many traditions and values which students assume are Christian clearly can be traced to other sources. We challenge the naive assumption that those maxims come from the Bible.” 

McGee said teaching ethics is a much more modest task than it might first appear. He explained, “I do not think a class in ethics in college or graduate school is likely to make any dramatic change in the character or lifestyle of an individual. Radical change does happen. Deeply buried seeds come to fruition. But 1 serve more as a midwife to persons as they discover traditions within themselves, put words and structure to feelings, and see realistic ways to act out subliminally held convictions. Ethics teachers get credit for more than we deserve. Also, we shouldn’t be blamed when we don’t turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse. But the course is more than an intellectual experience — it is character molding, along with all the other communities that mold an individual.” 

The challenge of rigorously examining one’s own background and beliefs is difficult but necessary. “I am convinced,” McGee said, “that a young adult cannot achieve the status of real maturity until he or she makes peace with the past — with parents and church. You must understand the past, explain it, and appreciate it. Only then can you come to value who you are and what you can do. The ethical responsibility of teaching ethics is not to remake students but to free them — not free them from their past, which would be to isolate them, but give them information about the larger ethical tradition and critique it. Then they are no longer enslaved to a value system they couldn’t see beyond.” 

Most students have grown up with the “rules ethic,” a list of do’s and don’ts to follow. The other two major traditions of ethical behavior are character ethics and consequential ethics. “A healthy system,” McGee said,

“will incorporate all three.” Character ethics emphasize developing a strong inner moral base from which decisions will be made. Rule ethics rely on the long tradition of moral rules and precepts for guidance. Goal-oriented ethics look to the outcome to judge the act. Each system has strengths and weaknesses. Individual character can be swayed by self-interest, rules don’t allow for the subtleties of human experience, and there are serious problems when the end always justifies the means. 

Dr. Richard Chewning, who holds the Harry and Hazel Chavanne Chair of Christian Ethics in Business, agreed that knowing the rules won’t solve the problems of unethical behavior. “I maintain,” he said, “the real problem is not knowing what is right or wrong, but in doing right or wrong. Standards are bashed by cultural pressures.” 

Chewning maintains that human intellect is often overwhelmed by human needs to be accepted, admired, or accomplished. “In that understanding,” he said, “you can ’ t teach what’ s right or wrong. You can only encourage the student to struggle so knowledge can override the wish or desire.” He continued, “Ethics is grounded on people’s faith presuppositions. It asks, ‘Do you have the character, commitment, and resolve to stand for what you believe? Will you stake your reputation on that?’” 

As limited as rules are, they need to be respected. McGee explained, “People need external rules to help us restrain our bad impulses and inform our good impulses. Rules and laws contain the wisdom of human experience. A useful rule in most traditions says, ‘Do not tell a lie. Tell the truth.’ There are times when it is both’ foolish and irresponsible to tell the truth, but in 99 percent of all cases it is a good rule. Before you do not tell the truth, you need to have a reason, and a compelling one at that. The ‘character ethic’ and the ‘goal- oriented ethic’ are more subject to self-delusion and manipulation for selfish purposes than an ethic of rules.” 

The largest concentration of courses centering on ethics is in the philosophy department. Four professors, Dr. Robert Baird, Dr. Elmer Duncan, Dr. Stuart Rosenbaum, and Dr. Michael Beaty, teach most of the courses, but as Chairman Baird pointed out, “In almost all philosophy courses, there is a specific ethical component. Concern with ethics pervades the department’s curriculum.” 

“Part of our task,” Mike Beaty added, “is to get students to think critically, to recognize alternatives, to be able to formulate and evaluate them, and to end up committed to taking charge of their lives.” 

“It seems to me that those of us in philosophy deal with ethical issues on two separate levels,” Baird said. “On the one hand, we are concerned with theoretical questions: How do you justify fundamental moral principles? That’s a theoretical ethical issue with which we are very much concerned. But we are also concerned with how these moral principles work themselves out in terms of behavior, issues such as civil rights, abortion, or animal rights. In all of our courses we deal with theoretical issues but also with what we call practical moral problems.” 

Philosophy tries to define the categories and concepts necessary to sort through ethical questions. “For example,” Baird said, “you can’t discuss the abortion issue very long without some discussion of what constitutes a person. What do you mean by the category ‘person’? Philosophy plays a role in getting students to see that there are preliminary issues that must be dealt with before decisions can be made.” 

Besides the difficulties of defining the terms on which decisions are based, the individual must deal with changing social expectations. Something seen as ethical by one generation may be condemned by the next. The student must learn not to confuse social mores with moral judgments. 

Stuart Rosenbaum said, “The Supreme Court may decide one thing on one occasion and another thing on another occasion. The political situation changes or the legal situation changes, but in the midst of all that, people have to make their own moral choices and have their own autonomy. It seems to me that the idea of what is moral doesn’t change so dramatically over time as does what is judged legal by the Supreme Court.” 

Elmer Duncan has researched the history of how ethics was taught in the past. “It is worth noting as historical fact,” he said, “that one hundred years ago or so, ethics was taught as a very practical discipline to inculcate young people with the ‘right’ kind of moral beliefs. It had as its purpose to make them moral. In Christian schools, ethics courses were central to the curriculum. 

“By the time I became a student, that attitude had changed. During the forties and fifties, philosophers were expected to be concerned only with theoretical matters. It was considered outside the pale to talk about practical matters at all. If you had wanted to talk about abortion, for example, your professor might have discussed with you the meaning of personhood. But if you had asked your philosophy professor whether abortion is right, he or she probably would have advised you to ask your preacher. That began to change in the sixties. Students felt teachers should be concerned with more immediate issues. Still we would not as philosophers today teach Christian ethics pure and simple. After all, that’s taught by the religion department.” 

Some philosophy professors are moving toward a teaching approach that forces the student to ask, “What sort of person ought I be? What is the good life?” A purely theoretical approach had the potential of leaving students ethical nihilists or ethical skeptics. But no matter what approach the teacher takes, the student still has the responsibility of making moral judgments. Students may still want a set of rules, but life isn’t that simple. Individual autonomy is still the goal of the philosopher. 

“A judgment is not capricious,”Beaty said. “It is very important to get the student to realize that a personal judgment is not certain, but that it is also not capricious. Students in ethics often will say, ‘Well, I just believe this…’ and you get the feeling it hangs on nothing.”

“There are people who would say this business of encouraging autonomy, this encouraging the making of judgments, is a failure,” Baird said. “What they would have us do is not to teach autonomy or reflection but to encourage a very narrow range of behavior. Some people interpret ethics as the teaching of this narrow range. I think all of us in the philosophy department would reject that idea.”

The professors in philosophy seemed to feel that although students may have certain dispositions ingrained through their experiences at home, in the church, and in their communities, their own moral characters and ability to make their own judgments — their moral autonomy — has only begun to develop. 

“I think whether or not a person does really become autonomous may be determined during their college years,” Baird said. “Part of what that means is that many people never do become autonomous. Part of our task is to help them. We do have the capacity to do that. There is some evidence that many people enter college as freshmen and graduate as seniors with no alteration having taken place. If that’s true, it seems to me to that extent, the university has failed.” 

All of these professors must deal with real-life issues on a daily basis. As business professor Chewning notes, “You can’t keep law, medical ethics, or anything else, out of business school discussions.” 

Dan McGee observes three major areas of student concern today. “First, they wrestle with big social issues in the areas of politics, the economy, the environment, and medicine. Second, in interpersonal issues, students are concerned with sexuality, sexual identity, and relationships. What behavior is responsible, appropriate, and fulfilling? Common to all is the question of how to come to grips with the reality of death and its relationship to life. And third, there’s the old question of vocational decision — what do I do with who I am out in the world? Not many generations ago, that decision was limited by circumstances of one’s birth, family, and opportunities. Today, the situation is almost the opposite. Most students could go a lot of different directions. A Damascus-road experience doesn’t happen to many. Most students struggle with vocation.” 

In the business school, Chewning points out, many students are currently interested in questions about the proper balance between the rights of the community and the rights of the individual. Students must consider the responsibilities of employer and employee and notions of privacy, for example, in situations where drug testing, polygraphs, and access to information come into question. Chewning adds that he believes a major issue for the business world in the immediate future will be the ethics of biological technology. 

Classroom discussions of such issues will not necessarily keep Baylor students from becoming embroiled in tough ethical decisions of their own in years to come. Such decisions are difficult to anticipate. Both the embattled political figure and the nurse concerned with confidentiality faced ethical dilemmas that probably weren’t covered specifically by any college course when they were students. AIDS has only recently come to public attention, and the public’s notions of financial propriety have changed as well. As a student, the journalist might have learned a fundamental rule, “Plagiarism is wrong,”but might never have learned enough self-awareness to realize she would break that rule to meet a deadline. It remains the responsibility of the individual to live life ethically. But by introducing students to ethical theories, discussing common ethical dilemmas, and teaching the essentials of responsible decision making, these Baylor professors hope to help students recognize potential problems and find ways to deal with difficult decisions.