To me, teaching ethics in professional communication sounds very similar to teaching creative writing. You can present students options, have them read other authors, but, ultimately, they must figure out their own way of functioning in the world and bring that to the page (or in ethics, bring their honed decision-making process to situations of conflict).

With the help of Dombrowski, I see ethics more as a way of life, a “burden,” as he calls it, than a set of guidelines to be taught. But, part of me says, “Our students need those guidelines for practice!” I believe that by proposing conflict-situations to students, and allowing them to view perhaps how others have handled certain ethical dilemmas, they can be “changed through the interaction,” as Dombrowski indicates (p. 336, 337). I have witnessed this in my own English 102 classroom when I have students debate. Those who take advantage of the opportunity come away from the discussion with a better handle on their own beliefs and what kind of ethical choices they must make by having beliefs. (This worked not-as-well in English 101 in which my students struggle to commit to any opinion strongly, or at least share such commitment.)

I also enjoyed this week’s readings because they advocate the idea that we have an obligation as fully self-aware beings, to accept and process the undercurrents of not just our professional lives but our personal lives in order to become, simply, fully realized people. This philosophy is similar to that of creative writing in which we are taught to become more engaged with the world by noticing and sensing things around us and to marry that way of interacting with a way of writing.

Perhaps this experience I’ve had in which “intuition” is admired as a pseudo-synonym for “dignity” or “sensibility” causes me to take issue with how Gough and Price use the word.* (Not to mention the awareness I have that “intuition” and “feelings” have, in the past, been considered feminine traits and therefore “fluffy” or dumb.) When Gough and Price insinuate that “intuition” and “feelings” are irrational tools of deciding, I think they are contradicting themselves. How can we be “knowledgeable, self-conscious or self-aware, self-reflective, and self-critical” people if we do not pay attention to feelings, “gut reactions,” and the intuitive sense that humans simply have (p. 322)? I see the danger in making decisions based on reactions or impulses, but I often think the “right” thing is decided upon through some process of thought that may not be articulateable but that many people agree upon because we have similar thoughts/feelings.

(Why are feelings and thoughts considered so different, anyway? I would be hard-pressed to give an example of a feeling vs. a thought.)

Smartly, our past friend Brumberger points out that “we have historically labeled as ‘intuitive’ or ‘talent’ those thinking abilities for which we do not have well-defined norms” (p. 379).  In other words, saying “intuition” is another way of saying “we don’t know how to teach this,” but I believe all authors this week offer a way to teach it: by focusing on specific situations students can be invested in. In such a method, we do use our internal sense of what’s right and wrong to guide us through our decision-making process. And we can only learn to be ethical through practice and through a certain level of awareness, philosophy, engagement, spirituality (however you want to say it). If we are truly empathetic people, we will be ethical people. (I think.)

 

*That being said, I greatly admire the definitions offered by Gough and Price! I was not taught ethics through a set of guidelines in a textbook, but within the context of certain ethical questions I was engaged in, either with literature (like in high school discussions about of Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath) or with day-to-day life questions. I do think I would have benefited from the distinctions of ethics vs. propriety vs. legality, etc. and from a rational system for reaching an ethical decision.