Students indifferent to justice just aren’t going to be won over to it by anything that I could say. Or that anyone else could say. A university course is not a revival meeting. I don’t cure palsies and I don’t plead with students to come forward to declare themselves for ethics. And if I did – and if they did – it wouldn’t mean a thing. Talk is cheap. Talk consisting of high-minded oaths and declarations of one’s moral seriousness is even cheaper.
If I’m understanding him correctly, he’s saying that one’s character is shaped long before they arrive in college. There’s nothing a professor could teach a Bernie Madoff that could have stopped him from his shenanigans.
There might some truth to this. I’ve worked with youth in youth groups and they seem malleable and teachable. I’ve worked with adults and they seem set in their ways. But we don’t give up. Mr. Owen’s thesis is hopeless. He seems to look at adults and conclude that they are who they are.
I don’t buy his argument. All it leads to is a conclusion that people are generally bad and need to be governed by heavy regulations and oversight. It’s an argument for more government.
I reject Mr. Owen’s argument and think people can be taught and inspired to be good. I’m convinced that we all have a moral sense as James Q. Wilson eloquently and thoroughly argues in his book The Moral Sense. We are born with it, but it can be demeaned, rationalized away, and weakened. This is what’s happened over many decades. As a result we have lost confidence in the values that are derived from our moral sense. And we find ourselves in our current situation.
Mr. Wilson says, “Maintaining limits is a way of asserting community. If the limits are asserted weakly, uncertainly, or apologetically, their effects must surely be weaker than if they are asserted boldly, confidently, and persuasively.” So we don’t throw up our hands and say we are who we are. Instead, we assert ethics boldly, confidently, and persuasively at home, at church, in schools, in college, and in business until we are at a higher level of self governance. Otherwise we diminish ourselves to the lowest common denominator.
David Childers from Ethicspoint writes a good article about social media and compliance programs in the SCCE journal. He identifies all the new tools such as Twitter, blogs, wikis, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. that can be used in compliance training. But how?
This is the golden question that everyone is struggling with. Training has traditionally been done in a classroom. The teacher lectures, the students take notes, then there’s a test and grade. Or corporate headquarters pushes out the training that everyone needs to watch, then certify completion.
But things are undoubtedly changing. Education seems to be more about conversations and groups. It also seems to be peer-oriented and self-directed. That’s where the new tools come into play and will have the most impact.
These tools when used correctly can be a powerful force in creating an ethical culture. If you can get conversations going about ethics and doing what’s right, then you’re on your way. But it has to happen naturally. It’s not really something that’s contrived. It may start as a few questions. It might start with a video. In many ways, the compliance group just creates the tools and plants the seeds of conversations and then stands back. In other ways, it’s about sharing the struggles of difficult situations. It’s also about experimentation and seeing what works.
It will be very interesting to watch evolve. I also think it will be fun to experiment with.
Seth Godin, one of my favorite bloggers, has a good article about education called Education at the Crossroads. It seems like everything is at the crossroads these days. He points out that education is going from scarce (think about the whole admission process) to abundant. In the past you had to be admitted to Stanford or MIT to attend their classes. Now the classes are online. In the past education was expensive. Now for $25 a month you can go to Lynda.com and watch an unlimited amount of software training courses. Finally, Seth points out that in the past schooling was about tests and credits. Now about learning.
How does this apply to ethics training? The current state of ethis training seems to involve a few companies that create training modules who then sell access to those modules. It also involves seminars and a few good books on the subject. In Seth’s opinion all education (this would include ethics training) is moving towards abundant, free learning. I think there’s something to this. I’ve always wondered why ethics training needs to be canned? Why does it need to be formal and certified? I see a lot of opportunities out there to change the way ethics training is done.
For example, there is a great YouTube video called The Fifth Down Game about the famous game between Dartmouth and Cornell. If you get a chance, check it out. It presents a great scenario for a discussion about ethics. I think these sorts of videos are the best ones to teach and inspire ethical behavior. I’m always on the lookout for these sorts of stories. They’re free (on YouTube). They’re abundant. The most important part is that it’s about learning rather than marking off a checkbox stating “trained.”
I took a class in college that forever changed the way I thought about learning. It wasn’t the substance of the class that changed my viewpoint, it was the way the teacher allowed us to learn. The point where I saw things differently was when he allowed me to draw pictures rather than write a report. That probably sounds juvenile. But it brought something out of me that I didn’t know I had. I was able to draw different literary theories in visual form. I loved it. I understood difficult concepts as a result of this exercise. He even shared it with the class and they better understood the concepts.
So when I see someone do something like the following presentation, I like to pass it along as a good example of how to share your message.
This type of thing is not easy to do. In a comment the producer describes the process as follows:
The team at O&M and the folks at Unilever were so amazing on this with great ideas and feedback all the way through. We did previs in Maya, and designed in Illustrator and After Effects. CG was a mix of Maya and XSI, tracking and roto were a mix of Flame and a motion tracking package. Nothing proprietary, just hard work. We shot it together with Steve Gordon, a great director at our sister company Sons and Daughters.
Hard to do, but if you’re trying to get your message across it’s worth it.
