Ten Ethical Failures That Need Our Children To Resolve
The culture of our modern world is showing marked ethical decline. Any recovery in the damage incurred will take time and energy to resolve. Effective correction to remove entrenched attitudes may therefore fall to the next generation to resolve through additional teaching resources.
If the current situation is to be corrected greater emphasis is needed on the role of citizenship in the educational programme within the National Curriculum. To equip young minds for the future in the aftermath of the current global recession, arguably created by greed and a decline in ethics, citizenship should be elevated to equal the status of numeracy and literacy in the curriculum.
As an indication of the size of the challenge the following are suggested as examples of the collapse in ethical values. Perhaps the greatest concern is the sheer number of examples that could have appeared in the list. This selection is the current personal view of the author who is open to suggestions. The list is intended to be dynamic and he intends to update it each month based on feedback. To contact Alistair Owens please visit www.keen2learn.co.uk.
1.   Greed in the banking industry: Incompetence, driven by the incentive of huge personal commissions moved banks from a pillar of society to abject loathing and distrust in just one year. Bank loans now have the opposite meaning.
2.   Sir Fred Goodwin: (ex head of Royal Bank of Scotland) Stands to be recorded in history as the focus of the unacceptable face of greed by retaining massive pension rights in deference to the vast holes he helped create in everybody else’s pensionable prospects.
3.   Disruptive behaviour in schools by children: Possibly the single greatest drain in teaching capacity. A huge proportion of time and energy is lost in dealing with a few miscreants who show little respect to the learning process, or the concept of authority.
4.   Abusive behaviour by parents towards teachers: Parents entering the classroom, making abusive phone calls or letters sets an appalling example to their children.
5.   Benefit cheats: The significant mass of people who believe the state owes them a living, and then steal funds paid by their hard working fellow citizens.
6.   Joy Riding: The use of euphemisms to mask criminal behaviour. Joy riding is theft; inevitably leaving insurance companies to pay the bill, the car owner to pick up increased insurance premiums and suffer a loss of transport. It is not just children having some adolescent fun.
7.   Excessive Professional Fees: Incredulous to think £30m was taken personally in government fees in one year by one solicitor to arrange claims for ex miners. Or the Leeman Bros financial consultants who were paid £100m in the first six months after the collapse of the bank. Or the court case to resolve the theft of £1.8m in a bank raid which has so far cost £24m in legal fees and is still ongoing.
8.   Litter and Fly Tipping: The highways, byways, streets and seas that are strewn with litter cast aside by people who think their rubbish actually belongs to everyone else who should pay for its removal.
9.   Supermarkets: Years of market dominance has closed local shops, introduced the concept of designer foods flown in from the other side of the world, and bought land that now lies idle just to prevent the competition opening in the same area
10.   Paparazzi: Influenced by the high commission potential, the paparazzi have predominately abandoned any ethical approach to their work, creating an often abusive attitude impinging on the privacy of others. Epitomised by the recent publication of photographs of secret documents that could have jeopardised the security of the nation. The government official involved resigned, the photographer, or editor who published the document did not.
