Developing an Ethic of Teaching
The Situation
You have been asked to serve on a team that will present an in-service workshop to teachers in your school district about ethical issues in teaching. The consensus of the team is that professional development should help teachers develop and demonstrate in their behavior a clear commitment to a professional ethic-a knowledge of what is right and wrong. The team believes that the history of education provides many ideas about teachers' ethics that can be applied in the present. It has assigned you the task of presenting a brief historical overview of teaching ethics in Western education, encapsulating the views of some of the great philosophers-ideally in twenty-five words or less. You return to your notes from this class to prepare the following list for use as a one-page handout to spark discussion at the in-service workshop:
The Sophists: Good teaching aims to create effective persons who can organize their ideas and language to meet changing social, economic, and political situations.
Socrates: Good teaching aims to create critical thinkers who are not afraid to challenge current opinions, even if they are popular ones.
Plato: Students have different intellectual capacities. Teachers should divide students into groups based on their intellectual ability and concentrate on the most intellectually gifted, providing experiences that develop their abilities.
Aristotle: Good teaching always requires that teachers know their subject thoroughly and that they know how to teach it.
Isocrates: Good teaching requires knowledge of the liberal arts and sciences and effective communication skills.
Quintilian: Good teaching is based on designing educational experiences appropriate to the stages of human growth and development.
Aquinas: Good teachers should be experts in what they teach, active in teaching it, and love and respect their students.
Erasmus: The good teacher, well-versed in literature and history, should be a social and educational critic.
Luther: The good teacher should educate students who have intellectual, vocational, and religious knowledge and values.
Thought Questions
- Plan how you would answer teachers at the workshop who request a fuller description of the position of these philosophers.
- How would you lead a discussion of the importance and applicability in today's classrooms of these historical views on ethics?
- Which of these principles will you use or reject in your own professional development? Which of the ones you accept seems to have the highest priority?
- Describe some of the ways you plan to express your commitment to your own ethic of teaching in your everyday activities as a teacher.
