The Ethical School Felicity Haynes

Citation

Nolan, T. (1998), "The Ethical School Felicity Haynes", International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. 12 No. 4, pp. 188-189. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijem.1998.12.4.188.2

In the preface the main purpose of this book is set out as follows:

to help students in university education departments reflect on the ethics of their practice, to allow them the opportunity to discuss and debate the propriety of their actions in dialogue with people who may hold assumptions very different from their own.

However, later on in the preface it is stated:

While examples in this book are drawn from education, the process of thinking about the ethical aspects of one’s practices applies equally well to all other professions including law, management, business, medicine and journalism.

Actual case studies are discussed from three traditional ethical positions:

1. 1.

   1Consequences: “The ‘objective’ aspect of ethics which sees practice as externalised individual or social behaviour, in terms of its causes and consequences.”

2. 2.

   2Consistency: “The subjective aspect in which one internalizes practice to see it as intentional.”

3. 3.

   3Caring: “Care in which the carer attends to the cared‐for in a special mode of non‐selective attention or engrossment which extends outward across a broad web of relations.”

Among everyday issues which the book covers are the following: bullying and harassment, blameworthiness, fairness and justice, competing loyalties, controlling information in schools, honesty and confidentiality, pornography on the Net.

This book has a glossary, a bibliography and an index. It is recommended for all interested in the practicalities of moral philosophy but especially for those teaching young people in that it will help “teachers reflect on their own ethics, guiding them to make more reasonable decisions in their own schools, and thereby gradually transforming schools into more cohesive and caring communities”.