Ethics in Education

Oblivious of the fact that dulcet ring tone does not guarantee that incoming call pertains a rejoicing

news, I attended the call of my son’s teacher with conventional motherly tendency to entertain my

ears with the adulation of my son. But in response to my easeful hello her rumbling hi startled me.

She carried on that my four-year old kid’s naughtiness had so much implicated the disciplinary

environment in the classroom that she was greatly agitated. In a single go, she charged him with all

the possible classroom offences for being more insolent and less obedient, more mischievous and

less disciplined, more aggressive and less friendly, more distracting and less attentive, and her

exceeding complaints went off the scale turning my flickering patience into enraged inferno,

although, I managed to keep my hair on. She concluded by anticipating an utter failure in

consequence of leaving this matter unsolved. I put an end to my talk in dejected mood and started

thinking of confiscating all his toys and story books, chocolates and candies and cartoon shows and

visits to parks. But the advancement of all these castigations was hindered by a single thought of his

angelic smile. My mind was wholly taken up by the reminiscence of his gentle face, radiant eyes,

impeccable heart, inquisitive mind and his self-created jubilant stories. His innocent dream to be

powerful like Hercules and adventurous like Spider Man compelled me think twice. Instead of

yielding to others expectations, he wanted to administer his free will in his self-created dreamland.

The teacher’s scolding left me rooted to the spot ascertaining the truth of the rough edges.

While my fidgety soul was involved in finding any soothing object around to rest upon, my

restless eyes like my wandering thoughts finally fell on his report card. My shivering fingers

hardly managed to open both ends of his progress report. Under the impact of latent emotion,

the words and figures were undecipherable for they appeared slanting, sleeping and standing

lines that gradually looked dangling. But a little more concentration enabled me finally to perceive the two sections that the progress report was divided in to. He was an ‘A’ in

vocabulary but ‘C’ in politeness, an ‘A’ in communication but ‘C’ in behavior and an

‘excellent’ at keeping up in sports but a ‘failure’ in manifesting sportsman spirit.

Both juxtaposing ends were cautioning me against his growth as more earth-bound and

temporal individual, and less equitable and ethical civilian. The more I meditated, the more it

became clearer to me that our vital focus had remained on preparing him to be ‘victorious’

but what was the real sense to help him emerge ‘victorious’ - to win the race for material

gains and high position or to conform to the rules of moral conduct, or both. The answer was

both. This very point was the striking disclosure. The teacher’s wake-up call caused me to

unfold the crux of perplexity that we had failed in keeping a balance between academic

achievements and sound character and consequently the former had dominated the latter.

Finally, an arduous understanding settled in “What’s wrong with kids today?”

Plato believed that good education creates a good citizen and a good citizen acts nobly

(Bennet, 1993). But contrary to Plato’s belief, today nobility is slipping from the face of

education. A student is burdened with an exaggerated sense of competition to earn absolute

success in study as a preparation for life, whereas he should realize that education is the life

itself. His academic gains are subject to industrial development, technological advancement

and scientific growth but apart from ethics, morality and manners. Today we have plenty of

modern methods of education in large number of schools, propelled by educational research,

but in result what we are left with – less virtue and more vice, less leisure and more sorrow,

less generosity and more greed, less justice and more revenge, less compassion and more

aggression and the list continues with the exceedingly growing ratio of violent crimes,

suicide rates, and most ironically, numbers of jails increasing along with schools. This 

comparison mirrors the hollowness of modern education. Mark Twain compares the

ineffectiveness of such type of education with a fruit basket that is filled up with fresh ones

on the top but the bottom half is rotten.

A ubiquitous educational goal for social reform can be achieved through directly teaching a

set of moral values such as appreciation, empathy, tolerance, fairness, compassion, honesty,

respect, responsibility and justice. For good education, there is a dire necessity to inculcate

above mentioned moral values as guiding principles. For character building only designing

the best framework by integrating guiding principles into curriculum is not sufficient, but

teachers need to reinforce parents’ efforts also. In order to instill ethical values and moral

conscience within the youth, both teachers and parents should shoulder their responsibilities

to practice the behavior they want to promote.

Character- centered – teaching provides a base to the sound character and sound character

leads to high academic goals. Since behaviour is unrelated to one’s ability it should be taught

through social interaction and supporting environment within the educational institutes.

Quality of education should not be judged by how many books one has gone through, but

how many books have thoroughly been gone through one. A good moral conduct should be

as highly appreciated as a successful scientific experiment.

To sum up, we need to infuse the ideal objective of education in our youth’s mind i.e.

education is not only to enable them to live in society, but also meant for a preparation to

leave it better than they found it.