Using a Comprehensive Multi-Modal Approach to Teach Values and Ethics
Hershey H. Friedman, Ph.D. Director of Business Programs Finance and Business Management Department School of Business Brooklyn College of the City University of New York E-mail:
[email protected] James A. Lynch, J.D. Assistant Professor of Business and Law Finance and Business Management Department School of Business Brooklyn College of the City University of New York E-mail:
[email protected] Paul J. Herskovitz, J.D. Associate Professor Business Department College of Staten Island of the City University of New York E-mail:
[email protected]
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Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2395634
Abstract This paper demonstrates the importance of teaching values that include business ethics and social responsibility to students. Using a text-based approach may not be the ideal way to reach the digitally savvy students of today. The authors demonstrate numerous ways to instill values. These include music, speeches, YouTube videos, film, television, as well as literature. This is especially significant because there is evidence that traditional courses in ethics (especially business ethics) have not been successful in making students ethical.
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Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2395634
Using a Comprehensive Multi-Modal Approach to Teach Values and Ethics
Introduction
As we aspire to be a just and fair society, our actions must be guided by ethics and values. Accordingly, there is a great need to teach students ethical behavior, which is a soft student in our businesses and organizations. The financial crisis of 2008, without doubt the worst business debacle the United States has experienced since the Great Depression, reinforces the notion that as a decent society, we must pay more attention to ethics and values. Millions of jobs were lost – many permanently – and trillions of dollars in market value evaporated. Millions of Americans lost their homes; and we are still not out of the woods yet. The unemployment rate is still unacceptably high and the poverty rate is an embarrassment for all Americans. The middle class is shrinking in size and income/wealth inequality is worse in the United States than in many third-world countries. The number of banks and financial institutions that have been sued for dishonest practices that contributed to the financial crisis is inconsistent with an ethical society. The entire world is suffering from what many view as predatory capitalism, which is responsible for this debacle. It is quite clear that firms that did not behave in an ethically, socially responsible manner have put the entire financial system at risk.
According to some scholars, the corporate world led by greedy, and self-interested CEOs was heading down a dangerous path for more than 25 years. One of the early signs that capitalism
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was morphing into something ugly and dangerous occurred between 1986 and 1995, when the Savings and Loan disaster occurred in which 1,043 banks failed. This cost U.S. taxpayers about $124 billion. Apparently, no lesson was learned, and a few years later came what might be referred to as the era of accounting fraud and irregularities. There were numerous corporate abuses of the capitalist system. The most egregious scandal that defined this era involved Enron, which filed for bankruptcy in late 2001. Enron may have been among the worst, but many other companies were caught “cooking the books.” They included such firms as Tyco International, Adelphia, Global Crossing, WorldCom, and many others. These companies used dubious accounting practices and/or engaged in outright accounting fraud to deceive investors and enrich executives. In fact, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was enacted in order to prevent future financial disasters and ensure honest accounting.
The then-Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, at a meeting shortly after the Enron debacle, voiced his concern with how easy it was for CEOs to “craft” financial statements in ways that could deceive the public. He declared: “There’s been too much gaming of the system. Capitalism is not working! There’s been a corrupting of the system of capitalism” (Suskind, 2008). Several years later, Greenspan, not heeding his own words, nearly allowed the entire financial system to collapse by trusting the financial institutions to take appropriate levels of risk. Instead, executives risked the viability of their banks and firms, by taking on huge amounts of risk via the sale of toxic, subprime mortgages and credit default swaps.
The financial abuses included the following: (1) providing NINJA (no income, no job, no assets) mortgages to the public; (2) selling ARMs (adjustable rate mortgages) to the public at very attractive rates (even 0%) for the first few years to entice the poor to buy homes knowing very
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well that they would not be able to pay up once the rates skyrocketed; (3) selling collaterized debt obligations consisting of sub-prime mortgages of extremely dubious quality where it was clear that the borrowers did not have the income to pay off the loans; (4) shorting (i.e., betting against) securities known to be of inferior quality sold to the issuers’ own customers; and (5) the use by banks of inaccurate, flawed foreclosure documents to unjustifiably evict homeowners from their homes.
Morgan Stanley is being sued by Chinese banks for selling collaterized debt obligations consisting of the worst sub-prime mortgages and then betting against them. Internally, people working at Morgan Stanley referred to the securities as “Subprime Meltdown,” “Hitman,” “Nuclear Holocaust,” or in scatological terms as a “Bag of ----.” Clearly, the investment bankers knew that these securities (known as Stack 2006-1) were not of high quality (Eisinger, 2013). Richard W. Fisher, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, notes that the banking system is unfair. About 98.6% of commercial banks – 5,500 out of 5,600 -- are relatively small community banks. If they take on excessive risk or excessive leverage and get into trouble, they are allowed to fail. The 12 largest banks, 0.2% of commercial banks, hold 69% of the assets and are able to take on huge amounts of risk and over-borrow (excessive leverage) because they are “too big to fail.” According to Fisher, “large institutions are financial firms whose owners, managers, and customers believe themselves to be exempt from the processes of bankruptcy and creative destruction” (Morgenson, 2013). The Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate) scandal involving the rigging of one of the most important interest rates of finance is making it quite apparent that corruption is now the norm in the corporate world. Banking executives now spend about 50% of their time dealing with legal matters and regulatory issues, instead of helping their businesses grow (“The Libor scandal,” 2013). So much for fairness in the banking system; the
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accounting profession has also come under scrutiny
Many accounting firms engaged in unethical practices. There have been quite a few major examples of accounting irregularities and wrongdoing during the last 20 years. The 10 largest bankruptcies in American history were: Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, Worldcom, General Motors, CIT, Enron, Conseco, Chrysler, Thornburgh Mortgage, and Pacific Gas and Electric (CNNMoney.com, 2009). Accounting malfeasance played a significant role in at least three of these bankruptcies. Recently, Hewlett-Packard shocked Wall Street by claiming it discovered “serious accounting improprieties” and “a willful effort by Autonomy [a computer software company] to mislead shareholders.” HP paid $11 billion for Autonomy and it now appears that they overpaid by a huge amount. HP is alleging that Autonomy inflated revenue and gross margins and “was booking licensing revenue upfront before deals closed” (Gupta and Leske, 2012).
The Great Recession of 2008 has made many educators realize that colleges in general, and business schools in particular, are not doing a good job teaching ethics and values. Many of the individuals responsible for the crisis had MBAs and took required ethics courses. Certainly, all had college degrees. As far as business programs, it is not surprising that one study found that 56% of MBA students cheated on a regular basis in college, more than students majoring in other areas (Holland, 2009). Incidentally, there is evidence that students who complete MBA programs are less ethical than when they started (Etzioni, 2002).
The cheating rate for college students in general is quite high. Recently, students at the best high schools and colleges in the country were caught cheating. According to a survey conducted by
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the Josephson Institute of Ethics, approximately 60% of high school students admit to cheating. Michael Josephson, the President of the Institute, asserts the following: Few schools place any meaningful emphasis on integrity, academic or otherwise, and colleges are even more indifferent than high schools. When you start giving takehome exams and telling kids not to talk about it, or you let them carry smartphones into tests, it’s an invitation to cheating (Pérez-Peña, 2012).
One professor at Harvard explained cheating using the following reasoning: The ethical muscles have atrophied in part because of a culture that exalts success, however it is attained. We want to be famous and successful, we think our colleagues are cutting corners, we’ll be damned if we’ll lose out to them, and some day, when we’ve made it, we’ll be role models. But until then, give us a pass (Pérez-Peña, 2012).
Scholars such as Milton Friedman and Peter Drucker felt that ethics could not be taught in a classroom (Altmyer, Yang, Schallenkamp, and DeBeaumont, 2011). Indeed, there is evidence that suggests that we cannot teach students to be ethical (Bowden & Smythe, 2008; MacDonald, 2007; Friedman, Fogel, and Friedman, 2005; Etzioni, 2002; Stape, 2002). One executive coach asserts: “It’s unrealistic to expect people’s behavior is going to change because they sit in classes” (MacDonald, 2007). A management consultant with a specialization in ethic claims: No one is going to come out of those [ethics] courses as a different person. The thing those courses are going to do is create awareness. They’re not going to change behavior because ethics is learned by modeling, not by reading a bunch of books over a weekend (MacDonald, 2007).
The traditional approach of relying on great philosophers such as Aristotle, Kant, and Mill does not appear to do the job of teaching students to be ethical. There is a belief that the best that courses in business ethics can accomplish is to help students know themselves and their own
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moral values; improve their ethical sensitivity and awareness; and attain confidence and courage in making ethical decisions that can then provide them with the ability to question decisions that have ethical implications (Bowden & Smythe, 2008; Koehn, 2005). Altmyer et al. (2011) also found some “modest support” of the view that completing a course in business ethics does increase ethical awareness but for individual situations, not business situations.
The customary way of teaching courses in business ethics relies on case studies and ethical theories from philosophy. These ethics courses focus on normative applied ethics employing the major theories of philosophical ethics, such as Kantian deontology (duty-based), Millian utilitarianism (consequences-based), and virtue ethics (character-based). Many professors feel that case studies enhance the critical thinking skills of students since they have the ability of exposing them to all kinds of issues that may arise in a variety of organizational settings (Corey, 1998; Pomykalski, 2010). It appears, however, that these techniques are not sufficient and additional approaches to teaching ethics may be needed. We are not advocating the elimination of the traditional approaches. Rather, we posit that there are many additional ways to teach ethics and these other methods should be employed. Ryan and Bisson (2011) also assert that there is no one way to teach ethics and a “multifaceted” approach must be considered.
Values and Integrity
Business ethics is actually a subset of something much larger, values and integrity. It might be more constructive to teach students about values rather than ethics alone. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are teaching values to students in many of our courses. For example, much of what students are taught in economics courses focus on materialism. The “rational”
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man is one who maximizes utility and the goal of the firm is to maximize profit. Students are taught that the chief financial officer and the CEO’s jobs are to maximize shareholder wealth (some courses are now placing more emphasis on all stakeholders). Little wonder that universities have created crooked CEOs and dishonest accountants and auditors. It is quite obvious that theories that promote the idea that rational man maximizes his utility and that the ideal form of capitalism involves unregulated, cut-throat competition and free markets must be re-evaluated.
Adam Smith, a believer in the “invisible hand” of free markets did not believe in predatory, ruinous capitalism that only enriches the few at the top (Friedman and Friedman 2008; Friedman and Adler, 2011). Adam Smith, economist and moral philosopher, asserted in his The Theory of Moral Sentiments that economic growth depended on morality. A number of scholars have been warning the American public that capitalism based solely on greed was dangerous. Robinson (2007) states that the single-minded pursuit of self-interest has caused much harm to society and that we should not associate Adam Smith with this doctrine. In actuality, what Smith felt was that “society… cannot subsist among those who are at all times ready to hurt and injure one another.” To Adam Smith, benevolence — not pursuit of selfinterest — is one of the highest virtues. Thus, greed is not good. Guthrie (2011) also posits that Smith’s views have been distorted by economists such as Milton Friedman. He opines that most economists did not read more than a few pages of Smith’s Wealth of Nations, just enough to know about the “invisible hand” and to stress free markets. Milton Friedman’s (1962, 133) view of the sole responsibility of business is as follows:
There is one and only one social responsibility of business — to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is
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to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.
Fogel (2000) stresses the importance of spirituality in the new economy. He identifies 15 vital spiritual resources that include such concepts as “a sense of purpose, a sense of opportunity, a sense of community, a strong family ethic, a strong work ethic, and high self-esteem.” The implication of his view is that capitalism must consider spiritual values in order to survive in the new economy. Teaching students about maximizing wealth and maximizing utility are the opposite of spiritual values. Materialism and the pursuit of self-interest are the wrong values to teach students.
Porter and Kramer (2006) make the point that Successful corporations need a healthy society. Education, health care, and equal opportunity are essential to a productive workforce. Safe products and working conditions not only attract customers but lower the internal costs of accidents. Efficient utilization of land, water, energy, and other natural resources makes business more productive. Good government, the rule of law, and property rights are essential for efficiency and innovation.
Students attending schools implicitly pick up values. The question educators must ask themselves is whether or not we are teaching the right values to students today. There was a time – between 1836 and 1922 – when texts taught values such as respect, honesty, kindness, etc. This approach became unpopular during the 20th century but is coming back now (Damon, 2009).
There are values that should be taught to students, in K-12 as well as college. These values stress intellectual virtues, and character education (Tough, 2012; Berrett, 2012). Indeed, Tough (2012) is a big proponent of the view that if we want students to succeed in life it is not enough 10
to build up their cognitive skills (intelligence that can be measured by IQ tests). What really matters when it comes to accomplishing something in life is possessing traits such as ambition, conscientiousness, curiosity, grit, integrity, persistence, resilience, and self-confidence. Of course, these traits cannot be measured by IQ tests or other standardized exams. Damon (2009) is also a proponent of character education. He defines character education as “a broad range of efforts to promote positive values and virtues in students through explicit instruction.” Berrett (2012) opines that education has to stress habits of mind or intellectual virtues. The emphasis must be on traits such as “curiosity, open-mindedness, and intellectual courage, thoroughness and humility”; this would include a passion for lifelong learning.
Clearly, a number of scholars believe that it is important to instill values, morals, character in students. Students who have these values should be ethical. There is very little evidence that supports the view that teachers must tailor their educational approach to fit the specific learning style (e.g., visual, verbal, auditory, etc.) of each student (Glenn, 2009; Curry, 1990). However, the view that instructors should use a multi-modal approach to teaching and include all kinds of modern tools available on the Internet is quite reasonable and at the very least can make a course more interesting, especially when compared to the traditional lecture-based approach to teaching ethics. It is also more likely to teach students to think creatively and use an assortment of tools to solve problems.
A significant number of scholars are urging educators to make use of Internet-based tools as a way of making education relevant and exciting to the students of today, who spend a great deal of time with social media and the Internet (Battalio 2007; Brown, 2000: Carnes, 2011; Friedman & Friedman, 2011; Gee, 2003). The number of students taking online courses continues to grow;
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about 31% of college students are taking at least one online course (Allen and Seaman, 2011). Friedman (2013) asserts that MOOCs (massive open online courses) will dramatically change the world. By providing online education at an extremely low cost, MOOCs can “unlock a billion more brains” resulting in the solution of many world problems. Right now, at Courseera, 2.4 million students are taking 214 courses from 33 universities (Friedman, 2013). It is quite easy to use all kinds of Internet-based tools in an online course. In fact, it makes little sense not to use these tools that is so readily available.
Berk (2009) provides a comprehensive review of the literature on learning and concludes that using video clips from television, movies, and YouTube “provide a best fit to the characteristics of this Net Generation of students and a valid approach to tap their multiple intelligences and learning styles.” Berk provides 20 potential learning outcomes that can be attributed to the use of videos in teaching. These include such outcomes as making learning enjoyable, creating memorable visual images, enhancing creativity, fostering deeper learning, motivating and inspiring students, and decreasing anxiety. Students have the latest digital equipment and are spending between 6.5 and 11 hours a day multitasking on such activities as listening to music, playing computer games, talking on their iPhone or , texting or Twittering, and/or watching television or videos (Berk, 2009). Bay and Felton (2012) provide a review of the literature on the benefits of using films as a teaching resource.
McAdams and Duclos (1999) aver that “education literature and experience suggest that a broadened, more provocative sensory experience improves learning and retention.” This paper will describe a multi-modal approach to teaching values to students and thereby make them
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more sensitive to moral and ethical issues. The digitally savvy students of today spend more time with Facebook and the social media than with college textbooks.
Films and Television
Films stimulate the visual and auditory senses and are an ideal way to engage the entire brain and involve emotions in the learning of values. Films today may have the same ability to motivate and inspire as literature and music in ancient times. The advantage of films is that they relate complex themes using visual images that can be unforgettable. One of the most memorable lines dealing with business ethics is from the film Wall Street. Gordon Gecko, a fictitious corporate raider says: Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms, greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind.
This quote captures the philosophy that nearly destroyed the world economy in 2008. The movie clip for this is available at YouTube (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xex9rz_gordongekko-greed-is-good-full-spe_shortfilms#.UQEu3r9EEmM).
In fact, there are websites dedicated to the greatest film scenes of all time (http://www.filmsite.org/scenes.html). Who can forget the sinking of the Titanic made famous in James Cameron’s 1997 film? This is actually a good way of demonstrating what happens when a company is not concerned enough about customer safety; there were an insufficient number of lifeboats on the Titanic because the company building it did not want to waste valuable deck space with them. Regulation about the required number of lifeboats were 13
obsolete and did not make the necessary adjustment for the much larger cruise ships of that time and only 16 lifeboats were required (Gallagher, 2012). There are hundreds of examples of unforgettable scenes; visual images have a way of staying with us.
Bay and Felton (2012) demonstrate the value of using films to “foster students’ emotional commitment to ethical decision-making.” It is difficult to generalize from their study since it only involved accounting students taking a senior university accounting course taken by fourth year accounting majors at one university. The control group was students taking the same course a year later. A number of studies discuss the value of the use of visual imagery as a memory aid (Bay and Felton, 2012). Films also have the ability to show how actions are interconnected and how people and institutions are interdependent, helping students understand that a small or isolated ethical act may affect a larger whole and that business and non-business are not distinct realities (Bay and Felton, 2012).
There are a large number of films that professors can use to teach students values. If you want to teach students about the evils of racism, you can use various websites such as: http://unrealitymag.com/index.php/2010/03/08/the-best-movies-about-racism/ and http://www.imdb.com/list/-PKAKFpTOhE/ to help find appropriate films. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_racism-related_films) provides an extensive list of films dealing with race and racism. Even historically inaccurate films may have value to educators. Nelson (2013) makes the following statement about Quentin Tarantino’s film, Django Unchained: But this story of a black bad man is, in a certain way, and perhaps inadvertently, truer to the folkloric source material about the end of slavery than the heroic-white-man story in Lincoln [Spielberg’s film]. Django expresses part of the lore that black men (and perhaps some women) created to 14
turn the last years of slavery, now just 150 years gone, into a usable past. To fight against “the man” was suicide — but it was a beautiful death. Tarantino tweaks the story’s ending, but it’s worth watching.
Some powerful films that deal with racism include the following: Crash, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, To Kill a Mockingbird, Do the Right Thing, American History X, Gentleman’s Agreement, Mississippi Burning, Gran Torino, Amistad, Monster’s Ball, School Ties, Schindler’s List, The Help, and many more.
There are websites dealing with the most ethical films of all time. These include: http://www.cityethics.org/Top10%20Ethics%20Films and the Carnegie Council’s list that deals with films on ethics at http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/education/002/film/index.html
Carolyn Johnson provides a list of films dealing with business ethics at her website, “Business Ethics in the Movies: http://www.west.asu.edu/johnso/businessethics/ethics.cfm Some films that tackle the issues of business ethics include: Barbarians at the Gate, Boiler Room, Glengarry Glen Ross, Erin Brockovich, Syriana, The China Syndrome, Wall Street, Tin Men, Nine to Five, Roger and Me, The Constant Gardener, Rainmaker, Norma Rae, Other People’s Money, Save the Tiger, Silkwood, and Rogue Trader.
Stillman (2006) discusses various films that are useful in teaching ethical leadership. There are quite a few biography films such as Spielberg’s Lincoln film that may be used for this purpose. There are film biographies of a large number of leaders such as Malcolm X, Gandhi, Julius Caesar, Nixon, Patton, Zapata, Lawrence of Arabia, Joan of Arc and many others that have educational value. There are several websites that list the best the best biographical films (e.g.,
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http://www.imdb.com/search/title?genres=biography&title_type=feature&num_votes=1000,&so rt=user_rating,desc). Adler has a website with suggestions of films that can be used to teach many organizational behavior concepts (http://group.aomonline.org/cms/newresource/films1.html). Cox, Friedman, and Edwards (2009) used the film Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room to teach organization behavior students ethical principles. They found that using a movie enhanced students’ awareness of ethical situations that may arise in the corporate world.
Television is very similar to film and may also be used to teach business ethics. In fact, one can find a clever PowerPoint lecture on the Internet that demonstrates how the popular television comedy, The Office, can be used to teach business ethics (DelCampo, 2010). There are clips from several television shows that can be used to teach values and ethics. There are a number of episodes of American Greed available on Hulu that may be of value as real-world cases of unethical behavior. Some episodes of 60 Minutes may also be of interest. One interesting story on 60 Minutes dealt with credit default swaps and how they almost destroyed the economy (Kroft, 2009). YouTube
Today, one does not only have to rely on films; YouTube provides a huge amount of visual material that can be used for instruction. The Department of Business, Government & Society at the University of Texas produced a very useful website for teaching ethics that uses YouTube at http://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/. Concepts discussed at this website include: overconfidence bias, framing, bounded ethicality, conflict of interest, conformity bias, incrementalism, self-serving bias, ethical fading, and incentive gaming.
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Several of Michael Sandel’s lectures dealing with justice and morality are available on YouTube. “Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?” Episode One, Episode Two, etc. are all on YouTube. For example, the moral question of killing one person to save the lives of five others is discussed in Episode One at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXz11rmt1Pg Episode 7 is a “Lesson in Lying” and discusses the Kantian view of ethics. There is so much available on YouTube. Dan Ariely gives a 16 minute lecture on “Why we think it is ok to cheat and steal (sometimes).” This is available from TED Talks. http://www.learnoutloud.com/Free-Audio-Video/Business/Economics/Why-We-Think-Its-OKto-Cheat-and-Steal-Sometimes/44794
Film clips from various movies can be found on YouTube. For example, you can show Vin Diesel, in a scene from Boiler Room, closing the sale and selling 2,000 shares of stock (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVQPY4LlbJ4).
There is a powerful speech by Alec
Baldwin from Glengarry Glen Ross where he talks about the A-B-Cs of selling (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kZg_ALxEz0).
Music
One way of delivering inspirational messages to students is through music. Most students listen to music so this can be a different way to teach them values. There are several examples of songs that helped change the world. For example, there are numerous websites dedicated to the music of the American labor movement. There was a time when it was quite dangerous to go on strike and many workers were killed by militias working for employers. A good website to find a nice selection of labor songs is:
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http://folkmusic.about.com/od/toptens/tp/BestLaborSongs.htm
There are hundreds of anti-war songs. One website that features 155 of them is: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/media/anti-war-songs There is also a website for “Great Protest Songs” (http://www.greatprotestsongs.com/. Nick Wall maintains a website describing the 50 greatest protest songs (http://musictodiefor.wordpress.com/50-greatest-protest-songs/). Lynskey (2011) wrote a classic work describing the history of some of the great protest songs. Constitution Daily lists the “The Top 10 Protest Songs of All Time” on its website (http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2011/04/the-top-10-protest-songs-of-all-time/).
The following are some examples of powerful songs that made a difference. The song “Strange Fruit” recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939 is available at YouTube and is considered by some to be among the songs that had the greatest impact on society (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs). This song made everyone aware of the viciousness of racism, particularly the lynching of black Americans in the South. The “strange fruit” hanging from trees was young black men. Southern trees bear strange fruit Blood on the leaves and blood at the root Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze Strange fruit hanging from the popular trees Edwin Starr’s War is available on many websites including on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dKAX7Jp8wo). This is an excerpt from the anti-war song. War, huh yeah What is it good for? Absolutely nothing…
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The “Let my people go!” proclamation from Exodus (5:1) became a famous African American spiritual and a mantra of the civil rights movement.
It was also used as the battle cry of Soviet
Jewish dissidents and refuseniks. Jews all over the world and many gentiles rallied to that passionate appeal. Muravchik (2010) believes that this chant helped make the world aware of the horrors of Communism. A country that has to imprison its citizens behind an iron curtain cannot be a workers’ paradise. It reminded the world of the virtues of living in free countries where anyone had the right to emigrate.
Speeches
Speeches are somewhat similar to songs and can also influence people. Students can learn so much about values and morality (as well as some history) from speeches. Some of the most powerful statements in history were part of speeches. Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death!” was part of a speech he made (http://www.history.org/almanack/life/politics/giveme.cfm). There is a great deal one can learn from quotes and speeches.
Many corporate leaders believe that we can learn a great deal about leadership from Lincoln. Leadership lessons that can be learned include: “the importance of resilience, forbearance, emotional intelligence, thoughtful listening, and the consideration of all sides of an argument. They also show the value of staying true to a larger mission” (Koehn, 2013). A leader’s speeches can often shed much light on his or her philosophy. Lincoln’s Gettysburg address is considered among the classic speeches of all time. Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, said that Lincoln “taught us that whether you are a business leader, an entrepreneur or a government official, one’s foremost responsibility is to serve all of the people, and not just one’s own self19
interest” (Koehn, 2013).
President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address contains a very powerful excerpt that can still inspire people today. And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man (Source: http://www.popularsomething.com/2010/01/top10-greatest-speeches-of-all-times.html).
One can find the “Top 100 Speeches” of the 20th century compiled by Lucas and Medhurst (2012) at the American Rhetoric website; the “Top 10 Greatest of Speeches of all time” may be found at: http://www.popularsomething.com/2010/01/top-10-greatest-speeches-of-alltimes.html. According to Lucas and Medhurst (2012), the best American speech of all time is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech.” There are many other interesting and valuable speeches at the above-mentioned website.
Literature
Cases are used to teach ethics but they rarely arouse the passion the way literature can. Cases and history are limited to facts, literature can use fiction, parables, fables, and all kinds of tools to teach values. It is not surprising that many scholars feel that literature and films should be used to teach business ethics (Williams, 1997); many advocate using fiction to teach business ethics (Singer & Singer, 2005; Brawer, 1998; Kennedy & Lawton, 1992). Clemens and Mayer (1999) believe that a considerable amount of wisdom regarding leadership may be gleaned from
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literature; they examine the works of such authors as Homer, Plutarch, Plato, Shakespeare, and Hemingway. A number of courses can be found at universities all over the world where literature is used to teach ethical concepts.
Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel, The Jungle, changed the way business was conducted in the United States. It described the corruption in the meat packing industry and made the public aware of the importance of regulation. It was as important as Uncle Tom’s Cabin was in describing the horrors of slavery; it was actually described as "the Uncle Tom's Cabin of wage slavery.” Gail Collins (2013) claims that Betty Friedan’s 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, is one of those perfect books that “perfectly encapsulate the problem of an era before other people even notice the problem exists.” It definitely created a big stir and, despite its flaws, made men and women aware of how professional women were essentially tools for reproduction and purchasing kitchen appliances. Collins would definitely consider this book one of the most important books of the 20th Century.
There are websites that deal with important works of literature. One website, “50 Books that Changed the World,” lists books that had a significant impact on society. These books include Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Silent Spring, The Wealth of Nations, Das Kapital, 1984, Brave new World, The Second Sex, The Prince, I Ching, The Bhagavad Gita, The Bible, The Quar’an, Tao Te Ching, and The Torah. Human Events asked 15 conservative scholars to come up with the most harmful books; they are listed on its website as the “Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries” (http://www.humanevents.com/2005/05/31/ten-most-harmful-books-of-the19th-and-20th-centuries/). According to the list, the two most harmful books are The Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf. Clearly, literature has the power to change the world.
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Conclusion
This paper demonstrates how films, television, YouTube videos, music, speeches, and literature, can be used as a tool for teaching students values and ethics. Even if it is not possible to teach ethics in a classroom, it is important for academe not to give up on students; faculty have the responsibility to do everything possible to attempt to make students more ethical (Koehn, 2005). Moreover, a class can be made more interesting by using some of the examples provided. Films, music, speeches, and literature are simple, powerful ways of teaching students about truth, equity, and justice. By using visual and auditory stimuli, students’ awareness of the importance of ethics will certainly be enhanced; there is evidence that a good course in ethics can be effective in increasing students’ awareness of ethics and also the salience of the attitudes towards being ethical (Williams & Dewitt, 2005).
After the Great Recession of 2008, which caused a huge amount of human suffering, it is clear to many educators that we have to rethink what we are teaching in the universities. There are numerous ways to reach people. Young people in particular understand that the way to make a message go viral is by using the Internet. In this digital age, we should be using an assortment of tools to teach values and ethics and not limiting ourselves to textbooks and cases. A multimodal approach may be the best way to get the message across to students that ethics and values do matter and that greed is not good.
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