Teaching Notes
Is Media Ethics Education DOA?
No one admitted cheating despite pressure from the school’s administrators and pleas from classmates, who feared the scandal would damage the market value of their degrees. Meanwhile, the teacher of the course, New York Times columnist Samuel G. Freedman, refused to comment. But if the disgruntled posts on RateMyProfessors.com are any indication, his students hadn’t exactly been soaking up knowledge. “Maybe he could e-mail his ‘speeches’ to the students instead of making everyone suffer through the most wasted class in j-school. . . ,” one read.
There’s an old cowboy saying that goes, “When your horse dies, get off.” Journalism ethics education is a dead horse. Or else those aren’t vultures circling in the sky.
A Question for Socrates
The question of how ethics is learned, or even if it can be, is as old as Western philosophy. In Plato’s dialog Meno the title character asks, “Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?” Of course, Socrates, being Socrates, resists giving a definite answer. But we can’t. The sad fact is, students had better get an effective ethics education now or they may never.
Last summer I conducted an ethics workshop for some reporters and editors at the Poughkeepsie Journal, a small daily in upstate
But what I remember most is the air of defeat that clung to the staff as we sat on hard plastic chairs in the break room discussing the cases. I could hear in their voices the bitterness and cynicism of employees forced to follow corporate policies they despised. Recently, for example, the paper had started running display ads on the front page and section fronts, a much more grievous ethical lapse, their mumbled asides suggested, than anything the case studies might have to offer.
I don’t want my students to ever wear the gray, defeated expression I saw that day on the faces at the Journal. But given the downward direction in which the media are moving, and fast, how in the world can I prevent it from happening?
Teaching Media Ethics by Telling Stories
A friend of mine who teaches at a big Midwestern university recounts in class the events of her first week as a reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune. She was sent to Duluth to cover Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey on the campaign trail. When they were introduced, Humphrey vigorously shook her hand. “Oh yes, Susan,” he said, “I read your stuff all the time.” He couldn’t have read her stuff, though; she hadn’t written anything yet. “Just a few words,” she explains to her students, “but words that taught this fledging reporter a great lesson about pols and the little lies they tell.”
I usually find occasion during the semester to quote I. F. Stone’s dictum, “Every government is run by liars and thieves, and nothing they say should be believed,” to make the same point. But Susan’s story makes the point better. That’s because it has existential force. Her story vividly captures in a way a secondhand quote can’t the realities of a reporter’s life.
Some might think telling “war stories” is a waste of precious class time. I’ve a colleague who didn’t want to fall into the “trap” of regaling students with stories ad nauseam (“which, let’s face it, is easier than teaching or grading,” he said). So one semester he kept track. When he toted it all up at the end, he was surprised that he’d used less than an hour - out of 45 – talking about his newspaper experiences. And yet, he admitted, it was his stories that students seemed to remember most.
“Stories teach us how to live,” Daniel Taylor said in his essay, “The Ethical Implications of Storytelling.” What he meant was that stories preserve our experience for contemplation and evaluation. Although not all stories carry a heavy message, there’s an entire category of stories, so-called “exemplary tales,” that are told to convey a moral.
Our war stories are potentially just such tales. They can provide evidence, in ethicist John Barton’s words, of “how real human beings live through various crises and trials and remain human.” My colleague who kept tabs on his storytelling has described his stories as cautionary. Most, he said, deal with “screwups I learned from.”
But sometimes the storyteller and the audience can’t agree on what exactly the moral of a story is.
When Susan was a cub reporter on the Tribune, she interviewed the Beatles, who were on their second tour of the States. She got into their hotel room by dressing up as a waitress in an ugly, mustard-colored uniform and accompanying an actual room service waiter upstairs. Ringo took one look at her little plastic name tag – it read “Donna Brown” – and snorted, “What kind of name is that?” The waiter nudged her in the side. “Tell them what you real name is,” he urged. She did, as well as her reason for being there. Rather than throw her out, the Beatles politely answered her questions. They even let her phone for a photographer. The next day her story ran on the front page, with a photo of John sitting at a table and looking up at her and laughing as she poured coffee in his cup. She still has a glossy print of that photo somewhere.
Many of Susan’s students think she’s nuts for not having the photo hanging up in her office. They also think she’s nuts for saying she’d never participate in the same kind of stunt today. To her celebrity-struck students, disguising herself as a hotel waitress to get an interview with the Beatles seems soooo cool. They lose all sight of the fact that it wasn’t a story of vital public interest that demanded undercover methods.
Susan intends one lesson when she talks about her hard day’s night, but her students, living in a paparazzi-saturated culture, draw another. “It may be a lost cause,” she remarked to me.
Or maybe not. Negotiations over what the point of a story is can be part of the point of the story. In the process of negotiating, we test different interpretations, try out different themes. This is helpful. This is educational. Lawrence Kohlberg, the Harvard psychologist famous for his research on the stages of moral development, contended that “the teaching of virtue is the asking of questions. . . not the giving of answers.” Stories don’t necessarily have to yield clear moral rules to be of value. It’s enough sometimes if they just give us something to think about.
30 comments:
In my own experience I believe that technical excellence seems to get more attention than moral excellence. When doing work, or taking a test, or completing a task, most (but not all) teachers and employers seem to care more about how well you completed the task at hand. If you take a test and get all the answers right, you get an A. If you do a project correctly and do it well, you get an A. If you get good grades in high school, you get a good GPA. If you get a good GPA, you get into a good college. If you do well in your college classes and stick to it, you graduate. If you’re lucky, you get a good job. If you do all your work at your job efficiently, you will keep that job and get paid. It seems as if a lot of things in life deal with doing things correct technically. As long as the end product is good, you will get rewarded. This basically says that as long as you get what was asked of you done, it doesn’t really matter how you go about doing it.
I think that moral excellence is extremely important. If someone studies hard for a test, but they don’t get an A it doesn’t mean they didn’t try. I can tell you a countless number of times that I studied for hours for a test, and when it all came down to it I just blanked and didn’t get as good of a grade as I wanted. Sure my technical excellence wasn’t up to par, but at least my moral excellence was. I can also tell you a countless number of people that have cheated on tests or papers or projects, and get amazing grades. They are the ones that get rewarded for cheating while people who actually studied, but didn’t do as well don’t get rewarded at all. I remember my junior year of high school we had to read a book in my history class and write a paper on it. The book was extremely boring, but I made an effort to read the entire thing and take notes on it. My friends decided the book was a waste of time and instead decided to look up summaries of it online. Some students even took other people’s papers and rewrote them. I refused to do any of that and wrote my paper after having read the entire novel. When I got my paper back I received a B. I wasn’t upset with this grade since I knew the book and assignment were challenging, but when I found out that some of my friends had received A’s I grew upset. I actually took the time to do the assignment as told, while everyone else took the easy way out. They were being rewarded for not being morally excellent while I felt as if I was being punished for being morally excellent. I could have easily cheated like they did, but I didn’t and I was the one who received a worse grade.
Now I understand that it’s extremely difficult for teachers or employers to judge on moral excellence, which is why I think technical excellence is weighed more heavily than moral excellence. I think the only class I had in high school that was somewhat based on moral excellence was math. Whenever we had homework to do my teachers wouldn’t grade it on if you got the answer right or wrong, it was graded based on if you tried. The same thing kind of went for tests. If you did something wrong in an equation, as long as you followed through with that mistake then you would only get penalized once. I feel that math is one of the only subjects that can really judge on moral excellence as well as technical excellence. It’s just really hard for teachers and employers to judge on moral excellence, as important as it is.
I don’t think one is more important than the other when it comes to the two. In order to do truly “good work” you need both technical and moral excellence. As the chapter we read says, “If good work requires attention to both the technical aspects of one’s job and to the moral implications of one’s work, bad work clearly requires indifference to one or both of these.” You need both in order to do work. If you’re lacking one, what you’re doing isn’t truly good work even if you get praised for what you did. People need to be morally and technically excellent in order to succeed in doing “good work.”
Although I agree with the idea that "good work" should be a synthesis of both technical and moral excellence, I feel as if technical excellence is more reveled in a school and work context. From grade zero, we have as students have been judged on how successfully we complete tasks, not how we completed them. Sure, we were nudged to proceed to technical excellence in a manner consistent with ethics ("don't cheat", "don't fall asleep in class"), but again, our final destination was what was scrutinized, not the moral practices that got us there. Thus, due to this conditioning, moral excellence has become somewhat of an expendable option, viewed as a preferred, not an absolute practice in one's pursuit of doing “good work”.
That being said, while I think the world would be a better (not to mention way easier) place if we were given grades simply based on the quality of our character, I think that our current grading system (that judges based on technical proficiency in conjunction with moral considerations) should remain intact. Instead, I feel we, as a society must up our moral ante. I mean if “good work” really is a combination of technical and moral excellence, then both bare an equal burden of being fulfilled, and since individuals are willing to cheat in order to achieve technical excellence, it’s pretty clear that morals are what need work.
Between Technical excellence and moral excellence, technical excellence gets the most attention. From experience, I can recall a situation in elementary school when there was a contest going on in the classroom. If every student knew the answer to one question, we would all get free ice cream. Every student was scrambling in their textbook trying to find the right answer. Out of the corner of my eye I saw another classmate whisper the answer to another student. Even after saying something to the teacher, there was no proof. It seemed like the teacher didn’t care, shrugged it off and we got our reward for good “teamwork”. In school especially in the younger years, some teachers look beyond the moral excellence. They look for the concrete technical development as for most things in life. If you do something good of moral standards, no one notices. Only the out of ordinary bad is.
You can make technical decisions while being ethical. It blends together. By following the rules you can decide what is right and what is wrong. For example, from the movie Absence of Malice, reporter Meg Carter looks through a file on the investigation of a murder on the strike force leader’s desk. Carter realized what she did was wrong, but not before she victimized two innocent people. As a result, Carter falsely assumed that the government had an evidentiary basis for conducting the investigation. In order to do good reporting, or “good work”, Carter should have done some more research and investigated more on the case rather than just using the first piece of evidence in hand. All the important information sources and getting the facts right are foundational rules of information gathering. Carter didn’t mention anything about the file on the unit’s investigation of Gallagher on the desk. Her reporting is done poorly. You can still go by morals and break the rules in order to get the right facts that lead to a great story, but you must do it correctly. Journalists are supposed to provide information to the public that they may have never known. It is a journalists job to get the right sources. It should not matter how you got the information whether if it was moral or not. You just have to make sure it is the correct information. If you want to use it, refer it. Carter didn’t disclose or justify her actions. It is important to do so if a journalist wants to head in that direction. Technical excellence is the most important because when you make a decision moral or not, the information has to be relayed and conducted the right way. Moral excellence needs to be worked on in the journalism industry til this day, but they are both important.
In regards to moral excellence and technical excellence both are extremely important. Although they are different and one could say that they each apply to different ideas, both have a strong underlying message that relates to good journalism. To me, moral excellence is what people accomplish everday. By trying your hardest, accomplishing a goal to the best of your ability or just taking the time to stop and think about something accomplishes moral excellence. However, technical excellence, to me, being getting a good grade on a test or doing something 100% correct with no mistakes is just unrealistic. Not everyone can achieve technical excellence 100% of the time, but they can try 100%and accomplish that of moral excellence. I do though believe that both are equally important to accomplishing a task, but they each can be looked at completely differently. Although in todays society, especially in work and school environments technical excellence is the most important to doing well, moral excellence is what really gets a person far in life, I believe. When someone trys their hardest, regardless of the results, it is what differentiates a good, hard working person, from that of a person who just gets by by not trying their hardest, just by "knowing" what they need to know.
Based on this question, I would definitely say that technical excellence gets the most attention, at least in my experience. However Consciously, I don't take into consideration that what I do is the best I can contribute. For me personally, I strive to be the best person I can be in any areas of work, whether it be in school, workstudy, home, church etc... Simply put, I am very hard on myself when things do not get done the way they should be done. Growing up as a child, there were many expectations from my family members. I was literally raised in a family where everything I do becomes vital to my life. Take for example, in school my parents always expect me to have good grades. At home, my mother/father always expected me to have my room clean. If those expectations were not met, there were consequences. This practice has been with me from childhood to this very day.
In my view, I think it is important to have some type of middle ground or somehow incorporate both technical or moral excellence because, we are not always perfect and cannot always excel in everything. I agree with Kaitlyn that as long as you put your effort into studying for the test and were honest about it, you can always do better for the next test. For me personally, my moral excellence definitely needs more work. It seems difficult at times, but we need to acknowledge what our strengths and weaknesses are and just work from there. If I sound off tangent, I apologize but I hope that answers the question.
It depends on the situation, really. Most of the time, it is technical excellence will get you more attention. A student who cheats (but is not caught) and gets an A on a test will get more attention than a student who does not cheat and gets a C. However, this is only true until the student gets caught. In the event of a scandal, those who practice moral excellence and are found innocent during the scandal are held in higher regard than those who failed to do so. The only problem with this is that, as a society, we only praise people after we have proof of their excellence. Those who have moral excellence are only given attention after it is shown that there have been others who are morally bankrupt. It is because of this that technical excellence typically gets more attention being that it is much easier to show when one has been technically excellent.
Personally, I would rather be known for my technical excellence for that reason. I can say that I am morally excellent all I want, but it isn't until someone on the same level as me (but is morally bankrupt) is caught that people are likely to believe me. If I am displaying technical excellence, the proof is in my grades, not just in what I say.
I feel our society puts more emphasis on technical excellence than it does moral excellence. In high school, the students who made the dean's list were always praised and had their names published in the quarterly newsletter, but it was never a question of whether or not they deserved the praise. I know for a fact that there were many groups that worked together on individual assignments for class by dividing the work so and sharing answers before it was due. This certainly was not morally correct, but because of this action they received high praise, because they were never caught. I think the fact that they never doubted their actions just shows that to them, achieving the technical excellence was worth abandoning moral responsibility because with technical excellence, they received compliments and awards.
Personally, I hold moral excellence to a higher standard than technical excellence. I don't believe that the praise that comes with technical excellence is worth anything if you had to compromise moral excellence in the process. It can only be considered "good work" if you worked hard at it and took the time to do all of the work yourself.
i'd like to interject my sense that cheating isn't technical excellence. if you cheat to get a good grade or a job or anything else, you haven't achieved technical excellence. That is, you don;t really know how to do anything, you don't really possess knowledge or insight. you're a fake. you're a lie. you're . . . a cipher.
I believe that in an academic setting, technical excellence tends to receive more attention than moral excellence. We aim for technical excellence in order to receive good grades which are supposed to be indicative of our work (both technically and morally). However moral excellence seems to have become an afterthought, or something that is addressed only as a punishment. For example in their syllabi, professors always include a section about plagiarism and the potential ramifications of plagiarizing an essay. We have to be reminded that we should be morally excellent, but we are expected to be technically excellent. Another example is the fact that the Journalism Department decided that they needed to start asking students for source lists due to the fact that some students were making up sources. Students were either so desperate to achieve technical excellence (or too lazy to strive for it) that they compromise their morals.
“Good work” should ultimately be the merging of technical and moral excellence, but I don’t think this is necessarily the case. In academia, grades are representative of our technical success but not necessarily our moral success. A person can cheat or plagiarize or be unethical and still been seen as completing “good work.” For me, I really think that the combination of technical and moral excellence is essential for success. I think that a lot of my technical choices are guided by my moral ones. I want to get good grades, but I want to earn them. In the warped vein of Gertruide Stein, an A is (not) an A is (not) an A. All grades are not created equal. One person can cheat and get an A while the other receives the same grade on their own. Has one done “bad” work and one “good work?” I believe so, because I believe it’s essential to have both technical and moral success in order to be a professional.
I agree Prof. Good, but to everyone else, you have a percieved technical excellence, and for most people, perception is reality...until it is disproved and even then some have a difficult time accepting that truth.
In my own experience I believe that one side of a job is not better than any other. I believe that in order to be good at what you do specifically towards your job you need to be good at the technical excellence side as well as the moral side. Having worked in different jobs and internships I have noticed that working with people and giving opinions on certain situations each side of this excellence means a lot of companies.
Even in schooling situations as a student you can hand in all your work get good grades on tests but did you do the little things that count also in school, by going to class, participating and getting there on time. There is no doubt in my mind that when doing "good work" you need to have both of these qualities no matter what it is that you are doing in your life. I feel that these two qualities go hand in hand if you want to be successful at something.
I believe both are important based on the situational. In society I have to say that technical excellence is definitely more important, but I don’t think that morals are ignored either. I believe that “good work” depends on the work and what it requires. We keep on talking about school and grading but what about professions? For example, take someone who is about to become a surgeon. They need to be technically excellent at their profession. If in medical school they just got graded on their moral character - I would be very very hesitant as a patient. But knowing that they go through rigorous technical proficiency makes me trust them as a patient. They are upheld to their highest skill set. Technical excellence is more important because they know what they are doing and do “good work”. They do have to have morals because they are dealing with life and death but weighing those morals will not help them when they are preforming surgery. Then to flip everything, you take someone who is a journalist. They could write crap but still be a great journalist because of their moral excellence. They do “good work” when they write the truth and inform the public. If their skill set comes with even better technical vibrato then they might become further recognized, but even the best writers still have a duty to the truth and set of morals.
I’m not saying that either of these professions needs just one. I believe that they need the morals and the technical capabilities to display the dimensions of “good work” but I can understand when one could be a little more important than the other. Personally, I believe that it should be a give and take. We need both to succeed. We are not perfect in either aspect, far from it. Possessing only one form of excellence only narrows any capability of “good” you want to have. “Good work” is the best you can give moral and technical. “Good work” is when you give all you got skillfully and truthfully.
In my own experience at school, I think that technical excellence is more frequently recognized over moral excellence. I think this is because technical excellence is easier to see in a classroom and in a student’s assignments than moral excellence. Admittedly, no examples of either -moral or technical excellence being favored over the other comes to mind. This is probably because issues of morality are a private matter and can easily be kept separate from the classroom environment, especially since classes only meet twice a week. For myself, I think that moral excellence is more important in most cases than technical excellence. Since I am going to be a teacher, I like to believe that every person has the ability to be great at something. Because of this, I hope that those people who strive to excel at an area while maintaining their moral integrity are recognized as being the most successful. That being said, my recent work experience has shown quite the opposite to be true.
For example, one employee who has been constantly late or absent, and rarely comes to work wearing his uniform was fired when he didn’t show up for yet another shift. Two weeks later, it turns out that the owner of the store had decided to hire him back, even though another more hardworking employee had already taken on his shifts. This infuriating example illustrates the exact opposite scenario of what I think ought to happen. This employee was very personable and therefore a good worker in a customer service oriented environment, but he did not respect his job or fellow employees. The owner of the store clearly values occasional technical excellence over moral excellence.
From my experience, technical knowledge is more valued then morals. School and work values what you can do more than your judgment of what’s wrong and right. This does not mean one does not value morals. When finding work, a lot of interviews ask questions to understand your moral stands in things. Though, in school, your grade is valued not by what you think is right and wrong but what the textbook stays is right and wrong.
Schools say that good work is produced from technical excellence. Though, I don’t believe this is right. I think that it is necessary to have both good technical skills and moral values. Technical excellence is tested but morals are of your own. Technical excellence can be cheated. You could cheat though every test and receive an “A” for technical excellence but would it be morally right?
I really think that the type of excellence used is based upon the person. Sadly, I feel that most people these days don't really care about moral excellence because people are lazy. People will do the minimal amount of work to succeed. The question is whether or not achieving technical excellence is truly deserved or not. However, I think that both technical excellence and moral excellence are important in today's society. Even if people don't strive to achieve moral excellence all the time, I think that people still have their moments where they do something because they want to do the best they can at something. But as I mentioned earlier, I feel that a lot of people just don't care about ethics or morals anymore because sadly today's society is solely just based on money. As other people mentioned, I agree that technical excellence is used in the classroom. Students who achieve high grades mostly use technical excellence but is their high grades really deserved or not? For the most part, I feel that in order to do "good work" moral excellence is extremely important. People who want to do good and learn will be more likely to try harder and work hard to see the results. The problem is that you can't sculpt people into wanting to be morally ethical.
I had to think about this quite a bit to really gain an understanding of my own habits regarding work and school. While I do pay attention to technical excellence, I believe moral excellence guides my practices more prominently. I try to attain both characteristics; however, if the two are clashing I weigh the consequences of both to come to a conclusion. Usually, this means morality triumphs over technicality. For example, I consider it more important to complete an assignment with a goal of understanding it than to acquire a correct answer so that the assignment is perfect. At work, I believe that it is morally wrong to lend a USB drive that is in the lost and found to a person that is not the owner of it, even though, technically, my supervisor says it doesn't matter. (I consider that there may be personal information on those USB drives). I think this mindset indicates that both characteristics are very important to my idea of "good work." I want to do my job well, but I want to make sure what I am doing is truely good for myself and others.
-Charlene
PS: I can't figure out how to change my name from my N#.
I believe that technical excellence can sometimes overshadow moral excellence. More so that people are often quick to overlook moral shortcomings. But when moral shortcomings are made obvious they can be harshly punished. For example a great essay may get a student A’s even if they have copied it from sites or not down proper references. Many times this will go overlooked. When they are exposed however moral shortcomings can lead to expulsion. Being morally loose is risky.
As a creative writer I believe that for me there are not as many ethical issues as if I were a journalist. Therefore the technical dimension of ‘good work’ is more important due to the fact that my title in itself makes no claim to holding up the truth. If I were to write creative non-fiction however like ‘True Blood’ by Truman Capote I would find that the moral dimension of ‘good work’ would supersede the technical issues. This is because even though creative non-fiction allows you to talk highly subjectively you cannot wholly distort the truth. I feel like the non-fiction book ‘The Journalist and The Murderer’ by Janet Malcolm is a great example of this. The book studies the ethically shortcomings a journalist goes under to reach a scoop. Which includes pretending to be working for a murderers cause and becoming intimate with his family members and his case.
It has been my experience that a mixture of both technical and moral excellence seems to get the most attention in college. I support this by saying that operating in moral excellence will inevitably lead to technical excellence.
Now, I have not been the most moral person in my life, but I do uphold a certain moral standard as a student. I do not and will not cheat. I look at cheating as all encompassing. Everyone is cheated, not just the question(s) on a test. That is not fair to my teacher and classmates, as well as myself.
I consider technical and moral excellence to be equally as important. Doing homework, most of the time, is not a moral activity. Homework is just work. It is not the act of doing the homework that requires moral excellence, for that takes, to a certain degree, technical excellence. Moral excellence, however, is a key component in making the decision to do the homework in the first place. That is why I say that the two go hand-in-hand.
In my own experience technical excellence prevails. I think technical excellence gets the most attention in high school more than college. In my school they pounded the idea into kids heads that they had to be good at everything and get good grades in every subject, when in reality I sucked at science and knew I never wanted to go anywhere with it, but was forced through four years of it and four years of bad grades in it. The teachers are more "teachy" and the classes are shorter and all the students are always competing with one another for "high honors" or the best college t shirt. Grades matter in high school, and getting the work done by any means is a way to go about that. Petty homework that held no long-lasting impression was what we got every night and I know hundreds of students who passed around homework copying answers just to get the credit. Teachers knew and yet they didn't change anything. The best class I had where technical excellence didn't hold any weight was my AP Studio Art Class, and my teacher taught a college courses and understood teaching in a way that allowed for your character to go into your work and yield a well balance between technical and moral excellence. However, since I've been at college and in my English major, moral excellence has been valued at the same level of technical excellence. If I'm doing my best in a class and putting myself out there to participate and my grade don't show for it, my teachers find a balance. I've landed several A- final grades when I could have easily gotten a B+. So what's the difference between a B+ in college and an A-? Your moral excellence inched a little bit further than the norm. That's how I see it. I do honest work, that isn't always my best, but college professors just know. A lot of them get it, they aren't idiots.
In society the weighted importance of technical excellence and moral excellence can be very subjective. Depending on what you're majoring in, or what you're profession is one may hold more weight than the other. A biochem major has to get an A on their exam, whereas an English major can get a B on the paper and pull off an A- in the class for participation and effort. Different fields want to see different things from different parts of your brain. Biochem wants to see that you KNOW what you're doing, that you've studied the facts and can ace the exam, English may want you to think abstractly and originally and "suck the marrow out of life." Either excellence can be valued higher in different situations. As an English major and through my experience I've come to value both. You can't not study for the exam and expect an A in the class. Life doesn't work like that. Technical excellence exists so that you have a grading scale to challenge yourself and see your progress. We need technical excellence to have some sort of order or form to our methods of learning and to compare to other students. I can totally understand that we need grades to keep things ordered and coherent. However I have to come to understand from my journalism major and my english major, that sometimes the terrible grades you get in the beginning will NOT affect the outcome of the class. Moral excellence is about trying harder and being original and putting in your best effort. It's a little like gym class. You may suck at the mile and can't get the best time like all the other kids, but if you're panting and sweating and about to pass out when you cross the finish line, you can get the same grades as the other kids.
For me they both hold their own weight, and it's about finding a balance and understanding between the two. Not every teacher, student, worker or person understands this, but from what I've experience there are enough people out there that do get it.
In my school experiences it has become apparent that technical excellence gets the most attention as opposed to moral excellence. In high school especially, teachers are just concerned with their students receiving good grades and getting them prepared for standardized testing, such as the S.A.T.'s. They spent a small fraction of that time, if any, teaching us good moral standards. Moral excellence is thought of to be taught in the home environment, but is not as crucial in school. However, work provides more of a balance of the two. I have worked in a hospital and as a customer service representative at a state park and both jobs relied heavily on moral excellence. If patients or customers are not happy, then I would get fired.
The lack of attention to moral excellence in high school yet not in the real working world is troubling to me because school is supposed to be preparing young adults for the real working world. Therefore, if students are not being held responsible for their lack of moral excellence, they may struggle when put into real situations outside of school.
I do not believe one "excellence" is more important than the other. They are both equally vital. An employee may be great at completing tasks, but if they have no moral character and do not know how to work well with others, they will never get promoted or earn a successful living. The same can be said if someone is morally excellent but incompetent at their job. Employers view your resume before interviewing you, which means if you have a lack of experience because you cannot complete tasks efficiently, you will not even get the opportunity to show off your moral character. A balance of the two is crucial in today's working world.
In my experience, there has been more emphasis placed on technical excellence rather than moral excellence. In both work and school, there has always been greater attention paid to task completion, which I see as technical. There is an expectation that tasks should be completed quickly and thoroughly, yet not much is done to track the morality that went into this work. Rarely are students solely recognized or graded on doing the right thing morally.
In school, unethical behavior such as plagiarizing and cheating is frowned upon and punishments for committing these acts are enforced by professors. Yet I feel as though a lot slips through the cracks in terms of plagiarized work and cheating. I think that moral excellence is vital and that more emphasis and reward should be placed with a person’s work ethics rather than only on their technical abilities. Moral excellence is a very important value that children should be taught early on in their schooling and they should receive positive feedback when they achieve tasks in an ethical way. I think this would allow for people to have a well-rounded perception of what “good work” should be. Technical excellence should still be considered valuable as well, yet I do not believe it is the whole of what “good work” is.
I believe technical excellence overshadows moral excellence in the work place and school. Getting your work done is all that really matters until of course something goes wrong. But when something does go wrong, everyone seems to question your morals. In my own workplace, there seems to be only a moral code when your boss' job is on the line. One of former co workers use to drink all the time on the job, my boss knew this but decided to never say anything. He eventually had to fire the man because his boss caught the guy drinking. My boss didn't want to lose his job, so his so called moral fortitude kicked in. The guy drank all the time because he knew he could get away with it. It's like a teacher saying here is a test, but you can cheat during it so you don't have to study. But that's the thing when it comes to school, even if the person got an A on the test does that mean that person deserved it? He or she could of cheated. The person who received a C could of studied extremely hard and get no where. This to me is a scholastic predicament. This is why I have never been a big supporter of tests, I believe they don't really show if you know the material or not. That's a different topic though.
I believe technical excellence is more important to the average person than moral excellence. Who cares how you get something done, as long as you do it. I believe that's how most people think while at work and school. I believe we have all felt this way. In the end I believe moral excellence is more important that technical excellence, but really not by much. To me, it can't be. You need to have a lot of technical excellence in your life to be successful. You need to get that A, and get into a great college, and get that big job. Moral excellence really isn't going to get you those things, but you know what moral excellence can give you? A good's night sleep, because you know you did the right thing or you tried your best.
From my experience at work and school, technical experience tends to get more positive attention from my peers and supervisors. If i perform my job well, my manager gives me more hours at work, or gives me a more flexible schedule. Likewise, in school, if I attend class and do my work to the best of my ability, my teachers usually think more highly of me and will let a missing homework assignment slide every once in a while. That is not to say that moral excellence goes unnoticed. I have found that being a good person and being honest often makes up for a lack of technical skills, or even a lack of effort. If I don't do well in a class or at work, but my superior sees me as a nice person, they usually grade me a little easier, or ignore some of my short comings. I do however, think that technical excellence is more important than moral excellence. Being good at your job should be your first priority. An immoral person will not last long in a field, but someone who is indifferent morally and great at their job technically will have no problem holding onto their position in any field. Therefore, being moral is not weighted as heavily as being good at something.
Unfortunately, I think technical excellence is celebrated over moral excellence in school and the work place. Our performances are usually judged solely by what is seen on paper. Lots of bosses and professors don’t take the time to get to know their employees or students. If a student has a hard time in math and fails a test, then they will most likely receive a low grade for that course. It doesn’t matter if they got extra tutoring and honestly tried to their best ability, technically they still failed. On the other hand, you could have a student in the class who cheated on their exam and receives an A. As long as they don’t get caught, they are in the clear.
The same goes for people and their jobs. With the economy being so bad, people are willing to do whatever it takes for them to keep their jobs. An employee that goes above and beyond the requirements will usually be rewarded, even if they had to stab some people in the back along the way.
I think it’s nice to imagine a world where moral excellence is the norm. It would really allow people to value and respect others and produce good, honest work. I think its up to everyone to make the choice for his or her selves and decide whether they want to throw away their ethical values for success. I don’t think it’s worth it.
Moral excellence and technical excellence are both very important and crucial in the world of Journalism, or in any career. Many of us strive to be the best person we can be which includes reaching the highest level of moral and technical excellence that we can reach. Some however just strive to be the best and will do what it takes to get to the top, even if that means going against their moral compass to do so. In the work world, many times, moral excellence is overlooked if a person is good at their job and helps to benefit the company. You must be aware of your accomplishments and own the work the you do because people are conniving to the point where they will try to get close with you in order to steal your accomplishments and make it there own. As unfortunate as this is, it just proves that technical excellence is weighed more heavily than moral excellence, Its not about the type of person you are its about the task at hand, and who will do the best job, even if that is misconstrued.
I have learned through my part time jobs the importance of both technical and moral excellence. While applying for a job at a retail store, I was asked to take a personality test and a test to question my morals. This test gave me different situations and how I would handle them. It is very difficult for an employer to recognize good moral and technical character from an interview. I can see how difficult it must be for employers to see through a phony interview. I worked with someone once that always tried to take credit for my sales. When we made a sale we wrote it down for our boss to keep track of who was doing well, and I noticed that when he was ringing up my customers he would enter his name into the computer. Of course I realized this and informed my boss immediately. He was not fired for his lack of moral excellence because he had all of the technical skills, and when he worked, he would make numerous sales. As long as he wasn’t stealing or showing up later, my boss seemed okay with the fact that he would do such a thing.
It is important to be both morally and technically correct in life because I believe that this will not go unnoticed. You have to be able to trust the people your working with and if you are trustworthy and hardworking, this is what is important above all else.
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