By The Chronicle

The day after I met with a group of students and parents at a Long Island high school where several members of the administration are charged with grand larceny ($11.2 million is missing from the district coffers), the ex-chief of WorldCom, Bernard Ebbers, was found guilty of orchestrating a $11 billion accounting fraud.

That very same week, the Bush administration came under heat for creating public relations pieces disguised as news clips for the State Department and the Department of Defense. The Government Accountability Office charges that several videos, which were more propaganda than news, were also illegally distributed.

This isn’t all: the week before, I sat as a member of an ethics committee at a hospital where part of the discussion revolved around the fact that there are physicians who make decisions contrary to ethical standards because they fear lawsuits if they don’t do everything in their power to keep patients alive, although the procedures are futile, expensive and painful, that is, cause more harm than good.

Everyone who is involved with schools knows the complaints about plagiarism. This university and many others subscribe to Turnitin, a program that makes it easier to catch those who present someone else’s writing and ideas as though the were his or her own.

But where there is a will – and much temptation, for more money, more power, better grades – there is a way. The reality is that we will never be rid of corrupt and theiving administrations, lying politicians, craven physicians and cheating students. And you can add to the list, disrespectful teachers who abuse their power over those who sit in their classrooms.

Are we left then with having to live in an immoral world? Of course. Nothing is perfect. But it doesn’t mean that things can’t be made better. The liberal arts project, to which the University is dedicated, is built on the assumption that through education the world can be made a more humane place, that it is possible to learn how to act more considerately, behave more thoughtfully, care about others more thoroughly and create a more just society.

The problem is that even while many recite this ideal as the foundation of education, other values are given priority. School have caved in to the notion that material success is the main goal in life. Liberal arts colleges need to resist the pressures to become merely vocational and professional schools. Why? Because we see the evidence that when ethics is reduced to nothing more than knowing and following the law, the kinds of judgments that are needed to live a truly ethical life are never learned and we all pay the price.

In the rush to accomodate to parents’ and students’ demands to educate for success first and foremost, gone is the vision of the good life that encompasses others’ interests and concerns, gone is educating in practical judgment and gone is the training in moral courage.

Ethical education is possible and we know quite a bit about how to accomplish it. We know, for example, that the foundation of ethical behavior is empathy and that there are ways to help people become more sensitive to the lives of others. We know that ethical behavior requires that people be able to think for themselves and that there are ways to develop ciritical thinking. We know that those who believe that their actions matter are more likely to do something about injustices than those who perceive themselves as victims. And we know role models are significant influences in the lives of the young.

An ethical education isn’t the same as reciting a list of dos and don’ts and it is the opposite of the narrow-minded, moralistic thinking so prevalent in those who tout character education and a return to traditional values. The truth is that many traditional values were far from ethical and most moral crusades are nothing more than priggishness or worse wrapped in high-minded rhetoric.

So if you think something is wrong with theft, fraud, lying, cheating, cowardice and disrespect, then ask yourself, what kind of education am I getting? What do I really believe? Which teachers do I admire? What values are really being taught? Do I think for myself? What do I want out of life? What would the world be like if everyone acted the way I do?

William Wordsworth wrote: “What we have loved, Others will love, and we will teach them how.” Do you know what your teachers love?

Do you know what you love? To know the answer to this is perhaps the most important lesson you can learn. Getting it right may be the most important thing you can pass on to anyone. And that is at the center of ethics.