By Rod Johnson

Rodric believes Moroni included special instruction for Modern times and wants to share his unique perspective the same way Moroni shared in The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ.

Educational Ethics: An Educator's Perspective

Educational Ethics
Recently with the changes in society regarding family and sociability, changes also occurred in ethical views. Ethics has been the topic of the day since the introduction and popular acceptance of secularism in Western culture. Of course, ethics existed prior to secularism cloaked in one religion or another; but now, ethics stands alone as its own philosophy and is essentially the making of the consciousness of the giver of the ethic. Instead of focusing on what tenets of a religion teaches or postulates based on some grand philosophy, ethics is the culmination of understanding, morals, and feelings of the individual, which, for many, replaces religion.

Clear Parameter

Education professionals have awareness enough about
what occurs in society to make decisions based on personal understanding and comprehension regarding ethics. They must for the sake of diversity use a different standard to judge other than religion in today's society. There must exist some personal understanding about what requires their attention and what should be best left to others.
People have the privilege to make decisions for themselves—even if in doing so it will cause harm in giving the choice. It is the ethical obligation of an education professional specifically to have accountability—even if others would not know of a particular situation under any circumstance save revelation was given them.
In ethical endeavors, it is important to have the ability to articulate the ideas and understanding that helps to promote individual educators' perspective on varying ethical issues. Enabling others to understand differing perspectives facilitates the opportunity to agree or disagree well informed. Principles of justice that agree across religious and philosophical perspectives help with consensus on appropriate and inappropriate behavior; however, they must be examined and decided upon to create a standard of ethics for a guild or professional league of diverse compatriots.
Applying the ethical perspective is just as important as having one according to Stanovich in a text entitled How to Think Straight About Psychology. The ethical perspective must be something that can fit all circumstances so that there is never a time where wavering is a possibility.

Educators Should Promote Diversity in Religious Beliefs and Philosophies

Source: robertjrgraham.com
The ability to ascertain things and apply ethical limits to them is essential in understanding societal roles. A standing principle the author holds to with religious candor is to honor the religious diversity and culture of students and associates.
Why such a position in education? Education is barren and utterly impossible to achieve without some moral code and cultural tradition for students to identify with in order to give some perspective to the things students learn. Some creed, some purpose of life must exist outside of education that drives the wills of students and teachers to help motivate research.
Religion is good, which is a psychological fact--as long as the practices fall within acceptable social norms. Education could possibly be the context of a religion! Ethics change as society changes. Morals need basis in something higher than the individual, even if the deity is merely the constitution of a nation.
Educators having centrist positions on all views, which, in such a democratic republican culture as the United States, seems to be the most ethical stance to take. Instructors, purveyors of education in any form have an obligation to peers and students to maintain a consistent level of behavior so that their judgment can be trusted.
The importance of trust regarding a professional instructor-learner based relationship should never be overestimated. Without trust, education in any form will not progress. Yet, “a trusted researcher can use” his or her “research to justify the continuation of morally reprehensible practices to disguise and thus entrench oppression, to get people fired, to get schools and colleges closed down, to justify inequalities, to deflect attention from much required action or intervention,” (quoted from Pendlebury and Enslin's article on page 364 from the August 2001 edition of theJournal of Philosophy of Education--article entitled Representation, Identification and Trust: Towards an Ethics of Educational Research) as did one educator entrusted with the learning career of the author.

Supporting Another's Stance is Not Acceptance of His or Her Views

Source: www.flickr.com
Rodric A. Johnson, the author, experienced an incident as a young elementary student being the crux of the cruel moral opinion of a teacher attempting to impose her world-view of racial separation without segregation. To emphasise her disdain for interracial relationships, the teacher stood Johnson and another student in front of the class and categorically protested interracial association to the audience of eight and nine-year-olds. Ethics acts just as much an anchor for religion in a free society as religion behaves as a lodestar for ethics.
As much as Johnson disagrees with racial prejudice, it is his ethical obligation to allow others the right to behave and believe in such positions without fear of retribution as long as those positions do not disenfranchise fellow human beings of freedom, which he personally ascribes to divinity, God. Pendlebury and Enslin in their article suggest that educators should allow others to express their view or “lights” as they call it and let those lights stand without the purveyors having to kowtow to others. Education is about the diversity of ideas more than it is about conformity to popular views.

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