Educational Ethics: Are We On The Right Track?

Educational Theory

Volumn 48, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 555-569

  Coombs, Jerrold R ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0007254981     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.1998.00555.x     Document Type: Article

References (16)

1. John M. Schulte and Donald B. Cochrane, Ethics in School Counseling (New York: Teachers College Press, 1995); Barry L. Bull, Royal T. Fruehling, and Virgie Chattergy, The Ethics of Multicultural and Bilingual Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1992); Kenneth A. Strike, Emii J. Haller, and Jonas F. Soltis, The Ethics of School Administration Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1988); and Kenneth A. Strike and P. Lance Ternasky, eds. Ethics for Professionals in Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1993). These books will be cited as ESC, EMB, ESA, and EPE, respectively, in the text for all subsequent references.
2. Barry L. Bull, Royal T. Fruehling, and Virgie Chattergy, The Ethics of Multicultural and Bilingual Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1992)
3. Kenneth A. Strike, Emii J. Haller, and Jonas F. Soltis, The Ethics of School Administration Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1988)
4. Kenneth A. Strike and P. Lance Ternasky, eds. Ethics for Professionals in Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1993). These books will be cited as ESC, EMB, ESA, and EPE, respectively, in the text for all subsequent references.
5. James D. Wallace, Moral Relevance and Moral Conflict (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 19881.
6. Using somewhat different language, J.M. Brennan, The Open Texture of Moral Concepts (London: Macmillan, 1977) argues that these two kinds of ethical problems are exhaustive of the field of ethical problems.
7. Earl Winkler, "From Kantianism to Contextualism: The Rise and Fall of the Paradigm Theory in Bioethics," in Applied Ethics: A Reader, ed. Earl R. Winkler and Jerrold R. Coombs (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 343-66
8. I am not persuaded that there is any case of cultural conflict where it is more important to understand the nature of the conflict than to resolve it justly. Sometimes understanding is all we can achieve, but a just resolution is still more important when we can get it.
9. Benjamin R. Barber argues that most Western liberal states combine liberalism and democracy, and that not only has democracy benefited from liberalism but liberalism has also benefited from democracy. Sec his "Liberal Democracy and the Costs of Consent," in Liberalism and the Moral Life, ed. Nancy L. Rosenblum (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989).
10. For a discussion of the pros and cons of ethical theorizing see Stanley G. Clarke and Evan Simpson, eds., Anti-Theory in Ethics and Moral Conservatism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989).
11. Wallace, Moral Relevance and Moral Conflict.
12. One way to generate an analogous case is to imagine oneself in the role of various persons in vhe case being judged, particularly persons who may be disadvantaged by acting on the intuitive judgment. For an account of the various ways of testing principles implicit in our intuitive judgments see Jerrold Coombs, "Validating Moral Judgments Through PrincipleTesting,' in Development of Moral Reasoning, ed, Donald B. Cochrane and Michael M. Casimir (New York: Praeger, 1980), 14-29
13. Michael Philips calls this the constancy assumption, and rejects it, arguing that moral principles have different weight in different domains. Domains include the family, the educational system, the scientific community, the criminal justice system, the medical system, the economic system, the political system and the like. See Between Universalism and Skepticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), chap, 4.
14. Wallace, Moral Relevance and Moral Conflict, Chapter 3.
15. Albert Jonsen and Stephen Tpulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 198S.
16. An important strength of both Ethics in School Counseling and The Ethics of School Administration is their very useful discussion of moral concepts.