Education

Teachers Unions: Not Unethical, Just Uninterested in the Public Welfare

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

His union is competent; it's just that he isn't

Public unions and their Democratic supporters (and supported) are not going to have much luck winning the public relations battle with Republicans as long as teachers unions are front and center. Teachers unions are not— I repeat not-–primarily concerned with the welfare of schoolchildren, or the public, or the deficit, or even education. Their priority is the welfare of their membership, and if any of those other stakeholders have to take it on the chin to make sure that the teachers have good salaries, benefits and iron-clad job security, well, that’s just the way of the world.

This doesn’t make teachers unions unethical any more than lawyers are unethical to represent their clients. But it does mean that any time a teacher’s union official claims to be concerned with anything but his members, he or she is lying through their teeth. And that is unethical. Continue reading →

Worst Ethics Column of the Month: Michelle Goldberg’s “The Lara Logan Media Wars”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

There’s nothing so pointless as complaining about a phenomenon that is logical, natural, useful and just, on the grounds that it’s so darn mean. Nevertheless, that is the gist of a Daily Beast column by Michelle Goldberg, another in the increasingly ethics-challenged stable of journalists being assembled at Tina Brown’s slick website.

Ruing the fate that befell journalist Nir Rosen after he not only ridiculed the horrendous attack on ABC reporter Lara Logan by an Egyptian mob, but implied that as a ‘war-monger” she deserved it, Goldberg wrote…

“…it indicated that Rosen has deep, unexamined problems with women, particularly women who are his more-celebrated competitors. But it was also appalling to realize that this brief, ugly outburst was going to eclipse an often-heroic career. The media’s modern panopticon has an awful way of reducing us all to the worst thing we’ve ever done…Again and again, we see people who make one mistake either forced out of their jobs or held up for brutal public excoriation. But the more we live in public, the more we need to develop some sort of mercy for those who briefly let the dark parts of themselves slip out, particularly when they’re truly sorry afterward.”

Ah, yes, the old “one mistake” plea! Continue reading →

“The Strange Case of the Threatening Hypothetical”, Continued: The Verdict Is In!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The Victim

Lawrence Connell, the Widener School of Law criminal law professor placed on administrative leave for using the school Dean in a “violent scenario” to illustrate legal principles to his class, has given a revealing and clarifying interview to the National Association of Scholars website.

This section is most relevant to his current plight, and the fairness of complaints leveled against him by some of his students. It’s also about one of my favorite topics in criminal law, attempt law, which has a significant ethical component, as you will see. But the main point of interest is that includes one of the supposedly racist, sexist, threatening hypotheticals he used.

Q: Can you give me an example of a hypothetical you might have used in class, to which the students who complained might have been referring? Can you describe the context in which you would have used it? Continue reading →

Take “The Natalie Munroe Ethics Challenge”! Today’s Challenge: Who’s A More Unethical Educator—School or Mom?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Decide which of these stories from today’s newswires show more unethical conduct.

First, the Mom:

Tampa mother Ronda Holder was at her wit’s end trying to get her son, James Mond III, 15, to take school seriously. Neither she nor this father finished high school, and she told reporters she wasn’t going to let her son end up begging for spare change. She said they have offered James help, asked to see his homework, grounded him, lectured him and taken away his cell phone. Still he fails. “He’d tell us, ‘That school doesn’t give homework’ or ‘That teacher has a problem with me,’ ” Mond Jr. said. James did poorly in math, poorly in history, and when his latest report card showed an F in physical education, his mother felt it was the final straw.

So, naturally, she forced her son to stand near an East Tampa street corner for nearly four hours on a Wednesday afternoon, wearing a large sign around his neck with the message:

“I did 4 questions on my FCAT and said I wasn’t going to do it … GPA 1.22 … honk if I need  education.” Continue reading →

The Strange Case of the Threatening Hypothetical

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Lawrence Connell, a tenured associate professor at Widener University School of Law in Delaware, is fond of using famous or familiar people in the hypotheticals he presents to his criminal law class.  One of his imaginary scenarios involved him as a murderer, and the school’s Dean as his victim. Now he is on administrative leave from the school, as administrators investigate  him for using “violent scenarios” that some students complained violated the school’s discrimination and harassment codes.

Widener University spokesman Dan Hanson, meanwhile, has declined to provide more details on the matter, but insists that Widener is committed to academic freedom.

Right. Continue reading →

Why Students Lose Respect for School Authorities, Case Study 309,456: “The Red Scare”

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Inappropriate, Thomas!

It is not directly relevant to Natalie Munroe’s complaints perhaps, but when students today seem less than in awe of those adults who claim to be qualified to guide them to wisdom and success in school, they often have good cause to be wary. Take the example of Stephanie Plato, a sixth grader at Cobb Elementary School in Houston’s Channelview school district.

Stephanie was suspended from school because the red and blonde highlights her mother let her get died into her hair as a 12th birthday present violated the school’s code of conduct.

You read that right.

We are not talking electric orange here, or anything strange and disruptive. Just a few red highlights in her naturally brown hair. But the school dress code bans “inappropriate hair color”…such as red.  Don’t ask me why. It doesn’t matter why. It is stupid. Continue reading →

Ethics Perils of an Over-eager Bieber Prompted By An Unethical Interviewer

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

In the current Rolling Stone magazine, teen singing sensation Justin Bieber opines on the morality of the U.S. health care system (Bieber is Canadian) and abortion, saying, among other things…

On abortion: “I really don’t believe in abortion. It’s like killing a baby?”

Abortion in cases of rape: “Well, I think that’s really sad, but everything happens for a reason. I guess I haven’t been in that position, so I wouldn’t be able to judge that.”

On the U.S. and its current health care system: “You guys are evil. [Rolling Stone notes that he  says this “with a laugh.”] Canada’s the best country in the world. We go to the doctor and we don’t need to worry about paying him, but here, your whole life, you’re broke because of medical bills. My bodyguard’s baby was premature, and now he has to pay for it. In Canada, if your baby’s premature, he stays in the hospital as long as he needs to, and then you go home.”

So to sum up: in the course of one interview, Rolling Stone managed to prompt a 16-year-old to… Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Teacher Natalie Munroe

/ Jack Marshall / 62 Comments

This isn't Natalie...just on the inside.

Teacher Natalie Munroe was suspended from her job at a Philadelphia-area high school after her online rants about her students, co-workers and administrators were found, read, and distributed by some students and parents.

Munroe, however, neither had the common sense or the understanding of her obligations as a professional to apologize, and has decided to be defiant instead. She pulled down the offending blog posts and is now defending herself, arguing (naturally) that her First Amendment rights have been violated (yawn!), that her comments were “taken out of context” (an old stand-by), that her insulting opinions about her school duties were but a small proportion of what she posted (and, she might have mentioned with the same rapier logic, an extremely small percentage of her total communications output since birth, and an infinitesimal percentage of all the words uttered by homo sapiens since the Stone Age ) and most of all, that what she said about her Central Bucks East High School students, none of whom were mentioned by name, was all true.

You can read her self-absorbed excuse-making here, if you have a high boredom and annoyance threshold. Or you can read one of the blog posts that got her suspended, in which she confesses how she would like to describe her various students to their parents, listing, among other descriptions… Continue reading →

Are GOP Leaders Obligated to Condemn Doubters of Obama’s Birth and Beliefs?

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

No.

But NBC’s David Gregory thinks so. Here was his exchange with Republican Speaker John Boehner on “Meet the Press” yesterday: Continue reading →

The Dilemma of the Legless High School Pitcher

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Seemingly an inspirational movie in the making, Anthony Burruto is a student at Dr. Phillips High School in Orlando, Florida. He has been playing baseball since he was 8 years old, despite the inconvenience of having both of his legs amputated when he was an infant. He plays the game on prosthetic legs that are all he has ever known, and does it well as a pitcher who can throw a mean curve and a fastball that has been clocked at 80 mph. This is Anthony’s sophomore year, and his goal was to play on Dr. Phillips High varsity baseball team this spring.

After two days of try-outs, Coach Mike Bradley cut him. Anthony’s metal legs, adept as he was at using them, made him too slow off the pitching mound when he had to field a bunt, said the coach, and teams would take advantage of his inability to jump off the mound quickly.

Sorry, kid.  Continue reading →