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An Ethical Responsibility Essays

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An Ethical Responsibility

Ethics and morals, two of the most important traits in an educated human being, are interestingly not taught by schools. Ethics is defined, in Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, as the discipline dealing with what is good and what is bad. Morals are defined in the same dicitonary as those principles of right and wrong in behavior. For Jonathan Kozol, in The Night Is Dark And I Am Far From Home, ethics and morals have similar meanings but extend to include a sense of compassion for others. I agree with his argument that the purpose of schooling is to educate an ethical human being: a person who not only lives his life by facts and knowledge but also by ethics and morals.

The need for schools to …show more content…

While there is a large number of latch key children there is also a larger amount of children who stay is school for almost eleven hours a day. Students here are not only served a free lunch, but ;many are also fed breakfast at 7am and stay in an after school program until 6pm. Is there no one to feed these children at home? Dean of Students, Jose Carballo, says, "Many of these children violate school regulations because they do not know any better…they were simply never taught the difference between right and wrong." After reflecting upon the paths of graduates from his school, Carballo stated that he knew of many who, before the age of twenty, have already had at least one child, been to jail at least once, and were even killed. The school is the only logical answer to the question of who will educate children into ethical human beings. Again those proponents against ethical education, state that schools should not be teaching those rules that are traditionally taught at home. However schools are the only place for such education due to the inability or lack of parental supervision after school. Children are products of their environment: if they only learn facts and not ethics and morals, they will become unprovacative, unfeeling human beings.

This cold unprovacative, unfeeling human being is what Kozol states is the product of schools in the United States, (128). The need for ethics

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