Educational Ethics in a Complex Age

Throughout my formal training to become an educator, a training that spanned nearly 28 years and included several degrees and a wide variety of instructional and administrative certifications, I never had a course on professional ethics.  I often wondered about that, even as an undergraduate.  I had several courses in school law that prepared me well to "comply."  But of course, compliance is very different than acting ethically.  In fact, acting ethically is sometimes at odds with compliance.

Other professions maintain ethical standards that provide guidance for practitioners in their decision-making and professional behavior.  Practitioners may choose to ignore this guidance, but that is a personal decision.  In fact, all ethical decisions are ultimately personal.

Few would disagree that the field of education, which touches every individual, has a far-reaching impact on society as a whole.  Indeed, schools have been credited with preparing and inspiring some of our greatest leaders.  Unfortunately, they have also been cited in the past as having served as important tools used by dictators and despots. 

As our society becomes ever more complex, educators in the United States face significant ethical challenges.  The lack of training in understanding and dealing with these ethical challenges concerns me.  My concern grew recently as I read about  changes made to the Texas social studies curriculum.  According to many accounts, changes made to the curriculum reflected political ideology rather than historical fact.  The fact that the changes were adopted by elected officials who voted along straight party lines seems to lend credence to this contention.

Today, educators face serious issues of ethics and conscience.  Just a few of these include:

• The politicization of the curriculum,
• The narrowing of the curriculum allowing only a few students to explore their talents and passions,
• The emphasis on high-stakes tests that steal time from learning and discourage risk-taking,
• The emphasis on conformity rather than creative and divergent thinking.

Teachers face tough ethical questions every day.  Yet, our teacher preparation programs don't seem to understand this.  Teachers enter the profession unprepared and unaware of the compromises that they will be expected to make.  This leads to disillusionment, frustration and stress for the most highly committed and principled among them.  I have noted that over the years many colleges and universities offer "stress management" courses for teachers.  How much of this stress comes from teachers constantly being asked to compromise on what they consider to be their core values as professionals?

Preparing Students for the Crowd not the Herd

We hear a great deal about the influence and benefits of the "Crowd" in today's business and technology literature.  In The Wisdom of the Crowd (2004), James Surowiecki described how the collective intelligence of a group of people with different levels of expertise and information can often solve complex problems more accurately and efficiently than an individual no matter what the individual's level of expertise.  Other subsequent publications have described how businesses are  beginning to use social media technology to harness the power of the Crowd to solve problems and spur innovation.  Jeff Howe coined the term "Crowdsourcing" to describe this practice in a 2006 article published in Wired Magazine.

The benefits of Crowdsourcing for business and industry are obvious.  As Bill Joy, one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems observed, "No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else."  This was what motivated Eli Lilly and Company to launch Innocentive in 2001.  Today, according to their website, Innocentive provides an online "Open Innovation Marketplace" that brings businesses and other organizations seeking innovative solutions together with a network of over 160,000 of the world's brightest problem-solvers.  Interestingly, anyone can register to be a "Solver."  No special credentials are required.

In the world of technology, the benefits of Crowdsourcing abound.  The most striking example is the Linux operating system that launched the "Open Source" movement.  Linux not only democratized the Internet by making it possible for anyone to host an inexpensive server, it also changed the way we think about the creative process.  Today, the concept of "Open Source" has expanded to include creative and collaborative efforts of every sort.  So pervasive has the "Open Source" movement become that in 2001 an organization known as "Creative Commons" formed to help protect and manage the open content being produced.

Crowdsourcing offers tremendous opportunities for the aspiring innovator.   No longer does one have to hope to get their foot in the door of some large corporation and slowly work their way up the corporate ladder.  Crowdsourcing eliminates doors and ladders.  It is a meritocracy.  The person with the best solution wins.

The downside of Crowdsourcing for the worker/innovator is equally significant.  Crowdsourcing shifts the entire cost of failure away from the corporation and on to the innovator.  Thus, many who participate in the Crowd do so as an avocation rather than as a vocation.  As more and more companies begin to recognize the benefits of Crowdsourcing, however, one might expect that the percentage of the R and D budget devoted to this practice will increase.

Working within the Crowd takes confidence and skill.  It often requires sharing ideas with strangers who have nothing in common but the desire to solve a particular problem.  Those who choose to participate in the Crowd need unique communication skills that allow them to not only work with others, but also to advocate for themselves and their ideas.  As has always been the case in the arts, success in the Crowd is not determined by one's credentials or curriculum vitae, but by one's work.  Excellent work can go unnoticed in the Crowd, though.

As educators, we tend to believe that most of our students come to us with highly developed technology skills.  We see them texting and chatting insatiably.  They participate in groups on Facebook, share photos, music and feelings.  But are these the skills needed for success in the Crowd or are they merely preparing them for participation in the digital "Herd?"

Unlike the Crowd, the Herd does not coalesce around a problem, but rather around a belief or a social preference.  While the Crowd requires diversity and open mindedness to be effective, the Herd seeks homogeneity and reaffirmation of its beliefs.  The Crowd demands productive contributions, while the Herd simply requires membership.

It is imperative that we, as educators, prepare our students to work productively in the Crowd.  We must not assume that they are learning the  skills necessary to do so elsewhere.  If we do not meet this challenge, our students may never emerge from the digital herd.