My hero Barbara Jordan concluded that while religion should not be taught in school, ethics must be taught in school. I agree that it must be taught, but it will never replace regulation because a small percentage of people succumb to their baser motivations even if they know it's wrong. A bit of a smaller percentage simply never cared anyway, and passed their ethics education by cheating or lying.
Oh, and corporations have no ethics anyway and that's where the real problems begin.[/quote]You may have misinterpreted what I suggested. I'm not suggesting that ethics education would substitute for regulation against exploitation. I'm suggesting exploitation awareness education would reduce the effectiveness of exploitation, thus making regulation less needed. It's not about making perpetrators more ethical. It's about making potential victims less vulnerable by making them smarter. It's a different approach to economic teaching, consumer-oriented, not just business-oriented.
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An interesting idea...I am a strong proponent of education. I am just uncertain that a federal mandate is the appropriate way to achieve this goal.
Maybe it is...
And the other concern is that while it might be great to begin educating our children...it would likely take 10 to 40 years before any noticeable impact occurs...
Now, just becuse the journey is long does not mean that it might not be worthwhile to take it...but why would this not become an issue of discussion in the context of Obama's education proposal?
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In the 1970's my first wife who had been teaching typing and shorthand in high school went back to graduate school
and got a Specialist Degree in Consumer Education and was teaching courses in this at Gramling College at the
time she lost her life in an auto accident. I don't know to what extent this field continued to develop but I do know
that some school systems have a half year of Consumer Education combined with a half year of Career Development.
[/quote]If
this wikipedia description is correct, then it's two individualistic. It should be a Consumer/Citizen education with focus on the overall economy as well as the individual, the part-whole relationship.
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Yes, most school systems are making some attempts at teaching consumer education.They just aren't doing it
very well. At least two thirds of the schools don't do very well at teaching anything very well. Text book companies
are the curriculum developers. Building principles are the Boss Man of the operation. About a third of the teachers
manage to cope with a sick system and still do a good job of educating the one third of the student body that is
prepared to receive an education. If this were not the case, the country wouldn't be in such the terrible state that
it is in--about to fall off the clift.