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Teaching Ethics for Everyday — APA Newsletter, Spring 2006, Volume 05, Number 2 — students who do want to pursue philosophy as a career will be Instructors must assist students to think critically about these better prepared having been mentored by a club advisor. prejudgments, but such critical assessment is often extremely Finally, the social interaction with students outside the uncomfortable for students. classroom makes advising a philosophy club rewarding. If The scholarly area of practical ethics has burgeoned in one has a heavy teaching load, or one’s classes only allow for recent decades. One feature of this has been the proliferation formal lecturing, a philosophy club is a great opportunity to of sub-areas of practical ethics, including bioethics, legal ethics, know students more personally. Indeed, it is very satisfying for business ethics, educational ethics, environmental ethics, an instructor to hear students apply or debate philosophical and others. When I was asked to teach our department’s ideas from the classroom in their “off hours” at a philosophy undergraduate practical ethics course about eight years ago, I club event. Teaching can be exhausting, but philosophy club began to give some thought to what topics I might teach. For events are for me curiously energizing because they are fueled various reasons I ruled out most of the conventional areas of by student enthusiasm. practical ethics. (I already taught bioethics in our medical school Author’s Note: I wish to thank George Abaunza, Melinda and did not want to teach the same material in a second course. Cassidy, Tziporah Kasachkoff, Bernard Roy, and anonymous APA I wanted to avoid questions in legal ethics because many of Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy reviewers for their helpful our students go on to law school where these topics might be comments on this paper. I also would like to thank Alex Nowalk taught. I know next to nothing about business and thus thought (president), Nicholas Jackson (treasurer), and all the other it unwise to teach business ethics.) members of the Ramapo College Philosophy Club. Ethics for everyday Endnotes I thought that the ethical questions of everyday life—what 1. C. Satterfield and C. I. Abramsom. “The Undergraduate we might call “quotidian ethics”—would make an exciting Psychology Club: Possibilities and Suggested Activities,” theme for a practical ethics course. These questions are to be Teaching of Psychology, 25:1 (1998): 36-38. distinguished from moral problems faced by those deciding 2. N. Dunkel and J.H. Schuh. Advising Student Groups and issues of public policy1 or faced by individual people only in Organizations (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1997). their professional roles or in unusual circumstances. 3. B. Roy. Personal communication on Cafe Philo movement, The questions of quotidian ethics, of all the questions in June 9, 2005. practical ethics, have the greatest relevance for the largest 4. M. Sadker and D. Sadker. “Ensuring Equitable Participation in number of people. We all (or almost all) face these sorts of College Classes,” New Direction for Teaching and Learning, problems and we face many of them daily. Although the social 49 (1992): 49-56. and professional issues are often much grander, they are also 5. L. I. Rendon and T. B. Matthews. “Success of Community less immediate in most people’s lives. A second reason why the College Students: Current Issues,” Education and Urban Society, 21:3 (1989): 312-27. problems of quotidian ethics are more relevant to the largest number of people is that unlike decisions about the big social Bibliography policy issues, decisions about quotidian ethical questions Astin A.W. “Involvement: The Cornerstone of Excellence,” Change, can be implemented immediately by an individual. If one 17:4 (1985): 33-39. decides that capital punishment is right or wrong, one cannot Irwin W. (ed.). The Matrix and Philosophy. Chicago: Open Court Press, immediately implement that decision (unless one is one’s 2002. country’s dictator). Indeed, the chances are that one will have Norvilitis J. “Academic Clubs as a Mechanism for Introducing Students nearly no influence in bringing about a change in social policy. to Research,” College Student Journal, 34:3 (2000): 370-79. By contrast, a decision about some matter of quotidian ethics Phillips, Christopher. Socrates Café. New York: Norton, 2001. can be implemented forthwith. Stage F. and L. Watson. “Setting a New Context for Student Learning.” In Having decided to teach a course on the quotidian ethics F. Stage et al. (ed.) Enhancing Student Learning. Lanham, MD: American theme and discovering that there was no suitable text,2 I decided College Personnel Association, 1999. to develop one. Over the following few years, while I worked on compiling the anthology, I experimented with different topics and papers in my course. Since publication of the collection,3 I have used it as the course text. Teaching Ethics for Everyday Teaching ethics for everyday David Benatar Theory: University of Cape Town Some instructors like to introduce a practical ethics course with some attention to normative ethical theory. My Teaching practical ethics own preference is to teach theory in one course and practical The teaching of practical ethics courses provides special problems in another. This gives more time to both theory and opportunities and poses special challenges. Among the former practice. Although not all my students who take the practical is the opportunity to teach material that readily engages student ethics course have taken the theory course, resolution of interest. Whereas students sometimes have to be convinced of the theoretical issues is not usually necessary for reaching the importance of other philosophical questions, some of which conclusions about practical moral problems. However, I do strike ordinary people as silly, students typically do not have to give a very brief overview of the major theories in order to be convinced of the importance of questions in practical ethics. help students who encounter reference to theories in some Practical ethics is thus a valuable vehicle for attracting students of the readings. to philosophy courses and then for teaching philosophical Sitting on the fence or taking a stand?: skills. Among the special challenges, however, is the fact that Many instructors prefer not to divulge their own views students usually enter a practical ethics course with strongly to students. They argue that it is better for instructors to be held opinions about the topics that will be discussed. The impartial in the classroom, particularly when discussing highly challenge instructors thus face is to help students to overcome emotive issues. Although that approach has its merits, I prefer the students’ (often uninformed) prejudgments on these topics. — 8 — — Teaching Philosophy — not to hide my own views. Although the approach I prefer has find morally troubling and to hand these in (anonymously, unless its costs, which I shall discuss shortly, it also has a number of they prefer otherwise). Usually the examples are about race, advantages. First, those instructors who do not take a stand often women, or Jews, but they sometimes also include jokes about unwittingly foster the impression that whatever view one takes dead babies or tragedies such as the Holocaust or famine. I often of an ethical issue is simply a matter of opinion because there draw on these examples to illustrate points in our subsequent are arguments both pro and con for each position. In arguing for discussions. I argue against the prevailing view that all jokes one view, I show that I think that the balance of evidence and turning on stereotypes must always be morally wrong, even arguments supports one view. This enables students to see and though such jokes often are. And I argue that it is not always participate in the activity of philosophy, which is not simply a wrong to tell jokes about dead babies, the Holocaust, famine, listing or even examination of competing views but a structured Diana Spencer’s death, and the space shuttle accidents. Once argument toward some conclusion. Second, when I think we have finished this topic, I screen “The Yada Yada” episode that the prevailing orthodoxy on some question is mistaken, it of Seinfeld in which Jerry’s Catholic dentist converts to Judaism helps me to challenge that view much more effectively. Third, and Jerry is offended at how quickly he takes to telling Jewish students learn a valuable lesson in those cases where I am jokes. The dentist similarly takes exception to Jerry’s jokes about undecided. I can show that one should suspend belief in those dentists and Jerry is accused of being an anti-dentite. cases in which it is unclear what view is best. Because I take Next, I turn to sex and examine either promiscuity or a stand on other issues, my indecision in some cases is not a adultery, and then homosexuality. Student views on promiscuity symptom of “fence-sitting” but rather the consequence of the are quite sharply divided. Some think that it is immoral, while arguments and evidence not being decisive (in my view). Given others think that there is nothing wrong with it. I advance an how many people hold firm opinions on topics about which they argument about sexual ethics that is deeply unsettling to both are not fully informed and about which they have not thought groups.4 enough, it is good for students to learn that suspending belief Most students are opposed to adultery, but disagreement is sometimes not only an option but the best option. Finally, I can be generated by considering adultery in “open marriages.” am able, at the end of the semester, to show students that the Parties to such marriages make no undertaking of sexual views I have defended during the course cannot be boxed neatly exclusivity and indeed expressly allow one another the option of into one category—such as liberal, conservative, revolutionary, extra-marital sexual relations.
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