Ethics! Ethics! Read All About It! - The New York Times

Ethics! Ethics! Read All About It!: Suggestions for Younger Students This lesson is a companion to the lesson "Extra! Extra! Read All About It!" for grades 6-12, found online at http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons/20090417friday.html. Note to teacher: This lesson plan addresses the same subject matter—ethics—as today’s lesson for middle and high school students. Unlike the older students’ lesson, however, this plan does not involve discussion of Randy Cohen’s blog posts on Madonna’s attempt to adopt a child in Malawi and the flogging of a Pakistani girl. Rather than engage younger students in the complicated issues raised by those two posts, this lesson plan focuses on simpler questions of ethics raised in some of Cohen’s past “Ethicist” columns in the Times Magazine. (For possible extensions on this lesson, or if you think you would like to discuss the Madonna story with your class, see Cohen’s blog at http://ethicist.blogs.nytimes.com/.) 1. WARM-UP: Prior to class, write the following prompt on the board: “Think about a time when you had to make a decision about doing the right thing. What did you choose to do? Do you think you made a good decision? Why or why not?” If students are having a hard time getting started, you might give the following scenarios: a time a classmate was being teased by others, an argument with a friend (how was it settled?), a secret that you were asked to keep (did you keep the secret? Why or why not?), a time you witnessed someone else doing something you thought was wrong (did you try to stop them, or did you report it?) Ask students who are willing to share their examples with the class. Discuss the decisions that the students made in their various scenarios, focusing on the following questions: • Why do you think (student’s name) made this decision? • Why does this student now think this was a good or a bad decision? • What do you think about when you’re making these kinds of decisions? What in your life influences the way you make decisions like this? • Would everyone agree that this was the right or wrong decision? What might make people disagree about this? Explain to students that they have been discussing questions of ethics, and whether their classmates made ethical decisions. Tell them that an ethical decision is one that might also be called the right decision, but that (as they may have seen in their discussion), it’s not always easy to know what the right thing to do is. Tell the class that many news stories raise ethical questions, and that the New York Times has a magazine column and a new blog dedicated to these matters. 2. ACTIVITY/LEARNING WITH THE TIMES: Before class, print out the following “Ethicist” columns from past issues of the Times Magazine. (To choose others, visit The Ethicist archive at http://topics.nytimes.com/top/features/magazine/columns/the_ethicist/index.html.) Divide the class into four groups; give each group a copy of a different “Ethicist” column. From June 16, 2002 (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/16/magazine/the-way-we-live-now-6-16-02-theethicist-indiscrimination.html): When the cafeteria at work offers seafood chowder, I dip the ladle as far down as it will go and grab spoonfuls of bottom-dwelling shrimp and fish, minimizing my take of broth. My goal is to get the best food for my money. Am I being unfair to the soup lovers who get to the cafeteria after me? Will Bohlen, Washington Randy Cohen's response: This isn't unethical -- you're simply buying what the cafeteria is selling. Those who arrive later needn't purchase the fish-scented broth that remains -- but it is unseemly. Indeed, it sounds rather piggy, doesn't it? (Of course, pigs seldom eat soup; they're likelier to be soup.) Why not see yourself as one of a community of soup eaters? Give the chowder a stir, and take a representative, ordinary-dispersal-of-thegood-bits portion. I suspect your behavior around the tureen is a metaphor for something, albeit not something an every-man-for-himself kind of person would recognize. But my mom would, and so, I suspect, would yours.

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From February 12, 2006 (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/magazine/12wwln_ethic.html): The president of our local board of education sends her children to the public elementary schools, but when they get to high school, she moves them to private schools. Isn't it her ethical obligation either to send her children to the schools she sets policy for and espouses as so wonderful or to step down from the board? JoAnne Manse, Rutherford, N.J. Randy Cohen's response: It is not. It is the obligation of board members to strive mightily to make the public schools so good that even parents with the means to opt out choose to remain. If the public schools are not yet that good, the president may honorably send her kids elsewhere — indeed, her duty as a parent compels her to. Even where a public school is excellent, parents may seek programs it does not offer — religious instruction, for example. Enrolling her own kids at a school she administers can give a board member intimate daily insight into how her policies are working out, a real advantage in doing her job. Yet voters must select board members not on the basis of where they send their kids, but on how well they manage the schools. And remember: some excellent educators have no kids at all. Ultimately, a board member can home-school her kids for all I care (as long as she doesn't do it in my home); if she is savvy, dedicated and effective, she gets my vote. From February 7, 2005 (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/magazine/27ETHICIST.html): For a number of years, my eighth-grade son has been on the basketball team of his small private school. This year, rather than sports, he decided to take up other social activities like music and pursuing girls. Various parents have called us asking if he was going to play. If he doesn't, there will be no boys' team. Is it ethical to pressure a child by asking his parents if he ''will serve''? Steven Glickman, Bethlehem, PA. Randy Cohen's response: It would be wrong to intimidate a child into playing basketball -- few ethicists would endorse having the ghost of James Naismith make your son an offer he can't refuse -- but there's nothing untoward in their encouraging your son to re-enlist or in their lobbying his parents to that end. And while it may be impossible to delineate precisely when reasonable persuasion becomes unacceptable pressure, a few inquiring phone calls seem well within the bounds of civility. Playing school sports is voluntary, of course, not a matter of academic duty. If there is insufficient interest among the students to field a team, so be it. That's not the fault of your son. Rather than badger him into donning sneakers and shorts, the school would do better to bully all the kids who aren't playing -- no, wait, that can't be right. The school would do better to make basketball appealing to all those kids who have never gone out for the team. A case might be made against a key player quitting a team midseason. There he might have obligations to his teammates. But your son has no duty to join the team. And after all, he's at a stage of life when you're supposed to try out diverse activities, among which pursuing romance and music are two time-tested ones for adolescents. From March 12, 2000 (http://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/12/magazine/the-way-we-live-now-3-12-00-theethicist-exercising-caution.html): One rainy evening I wandered into a shop, where I left my name-brand umbrella near the door. When I was ready to leave, my umbrella was gone. Several others were there, and I took another name-brand umbrella. Should I have taken it, or taken a lesser quality model, or just gotten wet? -- I.F.S., New York Randy Cohen's response: If your umbrella was actually stolen, then your taking another one means that some poor sap will end up umbrella-less, get soaked, catch a cold and die! You'll feel -- what's the word? -terrible. (continued)

Your having been robbed does not justify your robbing someone else. It is more likely, of course, that your umbrella was exchanged inadvertently, and so your taking an equivalent one provides a kind of rough justice. Everyone leaves with an umbrella more or less equal to what he arrived with and everyone stays dry. This system works only if people are honest and don't try to trade up. To be safe, you might want to err on the side of taking a lower quality umbrella, thus letting everyone rest easy when leaving an umbrella at the door. One caution: this is a casual system best applied to inexpensive items. I don't recommend it for cars left in a parking lot. Once the students are in their groups, ask them to read the column they were assigned and answer the following questions: • In one or two sentences, what is the dilemma, or problem, being posed here? • What is Randy Cohen’s response? • Do you agree with his response? • If you were “the Ethicist,” how would you have responded to this person? • (If there are differing answers to the last two questions within the group, have students record all differing opinions that arise.) After the groups have finished answering the questions, have them reconvene to read their columns—and share their answers—with the class. For each column, ask the class to name the core values or issues of ethics that are at play (e.g., honesty or integrity, fairness or justice, equality, generosity, greed, etc.). Write these words on the board. Ask the class if they can think of any bigger issues in the world where these values are also in question. (You may need to prompt them depending on their familiarity with current events.) Responses might include the Madoff case, drug use by professional athletes, bonuses for executives of failed banks, gay marriage, childhood vaccinations, genetic engineering, etc. Discuss the idea that while questions of ethics may range in scale depending on the situation, the issues and values involved are often universal. Remind students of the personal dilemmas they discussed during the warm-up—were any of the same issues at play there? 4. FOR HOMEWORK/FUTURE CLASSES: Have students keep a weekly log of news stories that raise ethical questions. Distribute copies of the Ethics in the News handout (http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/studentactivity/20090417.pdf) for students to use as a guide. You might ask each student to choose one news story per week to write about and have a weekly sharing session or assign one student each week the responsibility for finding an article, reflecting on its ethical issues, and bringing it to class for discussion.