Tuesday, April 16, 2013

The Ethics Lesson

Sometimes my professionalism slips for a week or so, and instead of discussing the usual run-of-the-mill conversational bullshit, I throw my students a bone of contention to gnaw on. A couple of weeks ago it was some of Kholberg's classic moral dilemmas. I'd better quickly mention I teach young adults at university level. The first dilemma to go under the microscope of the young and hormonally disturbed mind was this one - concerning money and family indebtedness:
Ali is a fourteen-year-old boy who wants to go to a summer camp. His father promises he can go if he earns the money himself. So Ali works hard and saves 400 TL, enough for the camp. But just before camp starts, his father changes his mind. Some of Ali’s father’s friends have decided to go on a fishing trip, and Ali’s father doesn’t have enough money to go. So he tells Ali to give him the money he saved for camp. Ali still wants to go to camp, so he thinks of refusing to give his father the money.
      What should Ali do..? And why..?
Anyway, after giving the little darlings a couple of minutes to think it through, I asked them what they thought Ali should do. The answers were pretty much universal - a big fat "No teacher, Ali shouldn't give his money to his father." A few said they'd fork it over, but they didn't feel too happy about it. 'Grudgingly' was the adverb they were looking for I think.

Part of what I do is to keep conversations going, and just about the best way to do this is to piss people off. Well, erm okay, not piss them off so much as to try and get them to re-think what they've said. Luckily, this almost always boils down to the same thing. Gotta love my job in this respect, it's not often middle-aged leather-elbow-patchers like me get paid to mess with teenage heads.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

mathematics aside, it becomes a question of hedonism... what gives you (the potential actor) the most pleasure?

have you read "The Giver" by Lowry?

-Imp

Tab said...

Nope, not yet - but it's on kindle so I'll give it a whirl.
thanks Imp.

Tab said...

Read the Giver, not a bad at all. Thanks for recommending it.