Teaching Morals and Ethics in Public Schools Essay

Teaching Morals and Ethics in Public Schools The question of whether or not schools should teach ethics and morals is misleading, because ethics and morals are two different things. Websters Dictionary defines ethics as a particular system of principles and rules concerning duty, whether true or false, and morals as motivation based on ideas of right and wrong. As I take it, ethics implies a set of basic rules to abide by, whereas morals strictly set down what to believe, and what not to. I have no objections to schools teaching ethics, however I do not think schools, or any authority for that matter, should be teaching children morals. In this country, we have an accepted system of ethics that children begin to learn in the†¦show more content†¦I believe it is. For example, schools can teach Christian ethics--some of which I have described above--without teaching Christian morals. In other words, you can teach a child to be compassionate towards his fellow human beings without teaching him that something like abortion is fundamentally wrong. There is the problem today, though, of the lack of morals among American children, and, in the minds of many people, the solution lies in either the public schools, or families. School is where a child will spend the vast majority of his time until he is eighteen years of age, so it is obvious that a childs schooling will have an enormous effect on him. For the sake of argument, let us suppose that schools did somehow have the ability to determine what correct morals are--assuming that there even is such a thing as correct morals. If this were the case, then having schools teach morals would be a solution. The problem with this is, determining right morals is beyond the ability of any institution. Others may propose that it is up to individual families to teach their children morals, but this does not solve the problem either, because all too often a childs parents are not ethical people. A good example of this is racism. Racism is perpetuated by racist parents, who may believe that they are behaving in a very moral fashion, teaching their children to be racists. The largerShow MoreRelatedEssay on Teaching Morals and Ethics in Public Schools1108 Words   |  5 PagesTeaching Morals and Ethics in Public Schools I find myself disagreeing with Kozol and his statement that schools should be an institution where morals can be taught and developed. It is my belief that schools should not be held responsible for instilling morals and ethics into the minds of Americas children. Of course, it is true that schools should instill and reinforce morals that are part of our everyday existence. 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