An Ethical Education

We may not all see eye to eye in this age upon what exactly constitutes wisdom, that sense of the better kind of life to be led. Nevertheless, most of us would still agree that wisdom is equally if not more valuable than mere knowledge of systematized fact and empirically-verified truth. The very first sentence of the Report of the Committee on General Education appears to concur, noting that “a responsible education must help students develop their capacities for reasoning and for responsible judgment.”

Though espousing these ideals, the report nevertheless fails to preserve perhaps the Core’s greatest virtue—a required component in morality and ethics. Without such a requirement, the report, despite its best intentions, threatens to push the University in the direction of a value-free shopping mall. We’re all happy to see the Core go, and the proposed system of distribution requirements will likely lead to happier customers. But, even with beefed-up advising, the new system seems woefully unprepared to guide students to “grow in wisdom” as Dexter Gate encourages us to do.

Perhaps it is impossible to reach consensus on a list of great books that we all should learn, but can’t we still make the argument that there are at least great questions in ethics which we all should carefully consider? Certainly, the University should not be molding students who think in the same way, especially on moral issues, but it does have a responsibility to confront students with these difficult dilemmas. Our motto today does not carry the explicit moral connotations that it did in 1636 when Harvard was an overtly Christian school, but veritas is useless—if not dangerous—unless it is employed for ethical purposes.

Nowadays, it is politically easier to allow students to choose whether they want to engage in a demanding class on ethics or not—as the Committee proposes. Yet how many of us end up regretful senior year that we did not take that rigorous philosophy class because of concerns about our GPAs and time-commitments? How many of us will look back 20 years from now with appreciation not for the gut classes but for those that really forced us to buckle down and tackle some thorny topics?

Most of us are well-intending folks, but we often hyper-schedule to the point of not having the time to really wrestle with a lot of the tough ethical questions. Getting to senior year, many of us are still unsure of how best to make use of our broadly-educated selves. There is a certain ambivalence and uncertainty in our generation’s ethical dimension—manifested in our political apathy, lukewarm career choices, etc. We are a group that is bred to pursue “greatness” and as a result do not always devote enough attention to the concept of “goodness.” We are not explicitly amoral, but we often remain ultimately passive on critical moral issues merely because of the complexities of taking a stand in our ever-complexifying world.

We naturally have at least peripheral encounters with ethics during our four years here—from Shakespeare and history classes to blocking group and clothing choices. Nonetheless, ethics deserves its own dedicated space for concentrated, intensive study, and future students who most need such a space may not find their way into one unless Harvard mandates it as part of the new curriculum.

The Committee considered complementing the tripartite distributions requirements with such a course—one that would not expect people to walk away with answers but would attempt to “contribute to students’ ethical and intellectual development by providing an occasion to reflect self-critically on what they believe and why.” But the Committee in the end gave in to worries that such “exceptions,” without “clear principles by which to limit them,” could turn the simple distribution system into a messy laundry list like the Core. Such a concern, however, does not account for the fact that the Report already allows exceptions via its defense of the existing expository writing and foreign language requirements. Some type of “Moral Reasoning” component must be continued along with these other two requirements. (And unquestionably, other existing mandates of the Core—such as a “Foreign Cultures” course for those who do not study abroad—deserve careful consideration on a case-by-case basis as well.)

By no means am I advocating that we preserve the existing Moral Reasoning requirement in its present configuration. Many of us are all too familiar with its limitations, but these structural inadequacies should not lead us to abandon its ideals altogether. We must design a new requirement—rigorous, pedagogically innovative (like the proposed General Education classes), and as engaging as possible. Certainly, there are several logistical obstacles we will need to overcome, but the tabula rasa that the Curricular Review process gives us is the perfect opportunity to engage rather than avoid these impediments.

In this time of moral and cultural pluralism, we hesitate to connect education with morality, but it has arguably never been more important for Harvard to explicitly make this fundamental connection. I applaud the Committee’s efforts to simplify the curriculum and put more faith in student choice. But should the study of ethics really be a choice? We can “strongly recommend” that students take some class on ethics, but, even if the majority would heed such a recommendation, it would ultimately be far more ethical to require it. A clear mandate would send an important message to universities everywhere that an undergraduate education is incomplete without the study of ethics. A required ethical component would not be “another exception,” but a worthy cornerstone—a foundation in a broad education to reflect upon the ethical purpose that a broad education should and ultimately must serve.



Henry Seton ’06 is a social studies concentrator in Adams House. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.