Ethics Newsline®

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

MONTREAL
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is reporting that the Quebec Federation of Labour’s Solidarity Fund is selling its $70 million stake in one of North America’s most successful T-shirt and apparel companies, Gildan Activewear, and taking its representative off the company’s board due to alleged unfair labor practices.

The Solidarity Fund is claiming that Gildan fired 38 workers at its plant in Honduras, were the workers were involved in a union-organizing initiative. The company has grown in value and size, employing almost a thousand workers in Quebec, partly due to roughly $23 million in loans from the Solidarity Fund.

Gildan is vigorously contesting the allegations of the Solidarity Fund and the Honduran workers, claiming that it operates all of its facilities in an ethical work environment and respects the labor laws of every jurisdiction in which it operates.

CHICAGO
Pushed to tighten their belts, many of the nation’s businesses may be overlooking one resource vital to their bottom lines — the health of their workers, according to two studies released last week.

One in eight workers is suffering from pain that also hurts their productivity, costing an average of five working hours a week, according to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

The loss, which the studies claim is due more to a slow drain on daily productivity than outright absence, adds up to an annual cost of more than $61 billion for U.S. businesses — a figure far higher than necessary.

The report’s lead author, Dr. Walter Stewart, says many of those hours could be recovered if firms adopted awareness campaigns or preemptive measures like ergonomically friendly workstations, reported the Associated Press.

A second report released last week warns that 80 percent of surveyed workers say they plan to look for a new job as soon as the economy recovers, with many saying they are being pushed to do too much with too little help.

While only a fraction of those with wandering eyes will actually move on, the number is still “very, very high,” says Frank Scanlon of the Society for Human Resource Professionals, which undertook the survey.

Nearly 40 percent of workers say they are clocking average weeks of at least 50 hours, yet feel unable to complain for fear of being pink-slipped like their former coworkers, according to the report from CNN.

“People have been traumatized by the last 15 years of downsizing and the last few years of recession,” Joe Robinson, founder of the Work to Live Web site, told CNN. “Everyone’s afraid they’ll be next.”

HARTLEPOOL, England
The English port of Hartlepool last week became the staging ground for a fight over who should be responsible for dealing with 13 decrepit and toxin-laden U.S. ships crossing the ocean to be destroyed by a U.K. firm.

The 13 ships — part of a vast collection of abandoned military vessels rusting in a Virginia river — were scheduled to be destroyed in Hartlepool by British salvage company Able UK, which won the $16.7 million contract for the work. Because they were built many years before environmental constraints were a consideration, the ships contain asbestos, PCBs, and heavy oils that could leak if the fragile hulls are damaged.

Under pressure from environmental and local groups, the U.K. Environmental Agency (EA), which had signed off on the deal, reversed its decision and pulled its support, saying Able UK lacked some of the needed licenses.

Now with one ship in port and three others already on their way, the fate of the 17 vessels is up in the air and scheduled to be decided by the High Court next month, reported Deutsche Welle.

The debate pits a straightforward business deal against protest groups that say importing ships built with asbestos and toxic materials makes little sense and turns Hartlepool into “America’s dustbin.”

Peter Mandelson, the minister of Parliament for Hartlepool, last week said environmental group Friends of the Earth had “alarmed and whipped up public opinion” to the point of irresponsibility.

“Like all ships, they contain some hazardous materials, but they are not inherently dangerous and they are not carrying any toxic cargo,” Mandelson said.

“These ships have ended their useful life and we need the work in this area,” a local carpenter agreed in a report from the Reuters news agency. “We’re living in one of the biggest chemical complexes in Europe and this won’t make any difference.”

But Friends of the Earth campaign director Mike Childs said such observations were partly beside the point.

“We don’t want these ships in the U.K.,” Childs told Reuters. “America has the capacity to deal with its own waste and the moral obligation to do so.”

The Deutsche Welle report, citing comments from Greenpeace, notes that such principles are not always the rule either in the States, which has sent ships to Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan for destruction, or in the United Kingdom.

“While the U.K. appears to be the victim in this case, Britain is one of the largest exporters of vessels and toxic waste, mainly to countries such as India and China where the working standards are lower and the risk of pollution on delivery is higher,” said the Greenpeace spokesperson.

WASHINGTON
One week after the Bush administration said it was dropping investigations of more than 70 power plants accused of violating the Clean Air Act, a handful of Northeastern states said they would pursue the abandoned charges.

Attorneys general from Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York say their efforts are necessary to preserve the health of their people and environments, which lie downwind from the allegedly pollutive facilities.

The states’ will focus on a few of the more than 70 power plants that were being investigated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for allegedly emitting excessive pollution under the Clean Air Act.

In September, the Bush administration relaxed clean-air laws, giving the energy industry more leeway to modify deteriorating plants without upgrading their antipollution devices.

The EPA then told its enforcement lawyers to drop their investigations into many plants accused of violating the tougher version of the law, saying the newly relaxed laws trumped the old standards.

The EPA also said it is considering dropping 13 other cases already referred to the Justice Department for action, reported the Washington Post.

Last month, 12 states and more than 20 cities sued the Bush administration over the relaxed rules. Last week’s action piggybacks on that effort by directly targeting the power companies, which the states claim should be held accountable for allegedly breaking the law, even if that law has recently been relaxed.

“There’s no question some of these cases are so egregious that court action is inevitable,” Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal claimed last week.

The New York Times noted that even though the states’ scant resources will force them to focus on a fraction of the cases abandoned by the EPA, they may have leverage the federal government lacks.

“Under provisions of the Clean Air Act, any individual can sue over pollution violations and seek huge fines that could force some of the utilities back to the bargaining table and reduce pollutants,” the Times reported. Coalitions of individuals and states could also bring the issue to the forefront in the next presidential election, according to the Times.

NEW YORK
After years of mounting home-run records and raised eyebrows, Major League Baseball (MLB) last week said it will subject its increasingly muscle-bound players to steroid tests for at least the next two years.

Last week’s announcement follows news that random tests of nearly 1,200 players this year detected steroids in 5 to 7 percent of the samples, reported the Associated Press.

That figure crosses a threshold spelled out in baseball’s labor deal with the MLB, kicking in a contract clause that mandates random steroid tests for the next two years. If the rate of positive tests does not fall below 2.5 percent, the tests will continue in 2006, noted the New York Times.

While this year’s tests were anonymous, future tests will be tied to the taker, allowing MLB to hit users with penalties ranging from treatment for the first positive test to suspensions of up to one year and fines of $100,000 for the fifth positive result.

Before this year’s round of tests, many had called on MLB to start testing players after sluggers began showing up for spring training supersized and slamming record numbers of home runs.

Former superstars Jose Canseco and Ken Caminiti, both seasoned MVPs, had estimated as much as 50 percent of players were using steroids, noted the Times.

While last season’s 5 to 7 percent positive rate “is hardly the sign that you have rampant use of anything,” according to baseball labor executive Rob Manfred, some say other factors may have suppressed results.

Chief among those factors is the possibility of designer steroids like the newly discovered THG, which was not among the substances tested for in 2003 by the MLB.

A grand jury in San Francisco has subpoenaed power hitters Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi, as well as nearly 40 other athletes on record as clients of Balco, the company that engineered THG. Both men have said they only received nutritional supplements from Balco, noted the Times.

MLB says it will begin screening for THG when it starts the next round of steroid tests in March.

“Hopefully, this will, over time, allow us to completely eradicate the use of performance enhancement substances in baseball,” MLB commissioner Bud Selig said.

NEW YORK
Despite a 1998 agreement to stop marketing their products to children, four leading tobacco companies have continued advertising in school editions of three news magazines — a practice that now will cease under an agreement announced last week.

The tobacco firms — Brown & Williamson, Philip Morris, R. J. Reynolds, and U.S. Smokeless Tobacco — agreed to pull their ads from the education editions of Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report.

The deal came after several state attorneys general complained about the practice, which New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer called “a clear violation” of the $206 billion settlement between companies and 46 states in 1998, noted the Reuters news agency.

Between January 2002 and June 2003, nearly 120 ads for cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products appeared in the student editions of the popular news magazines, which are distributed free or at low rates to schools.

BERLIN
After weeks of emotional debate, the board overseeing Germany’s national Holocaust memorial last week said they would not abandon the services of a firm that supplied the cyanide gas used in Nazi concentration camps.

The memorial project, in the works since 1988, was put on hold in September after organizers discovered the tie between German firm Degussa and the country’s Nazi past.

Degussa, which had been hired to treat the memorial’s 2,700 vertical slabs with an anti-graffiti chemical, was co-owner of the firm that made the cyanide-gas tablets used to kill millions in concentration camps.

Complicating the debate was the discovery that a Degussa subsidiary already had supplied a thinner used in much of the memorial’s concrete foundation and slabs.

Rejecting Degussa’s services would have meant ripping out the foundation, setting the financially struggling 15-year-old project even further back, reported the Associated Press.

While critics said Degussa should be spurned for its role in murdering millions, others pointed to the company’s modern acts of atonement, including helping establish a compensation fund for victims of the Nazi regime.

The debate has pushed Germans to further explore the nation’s ability to make peace with its troubled past, according to the AP report.

“We knew at the very beginning that we’re now building with companies that are of course German and that existed before 1945,” one German lawmaker told ZDF television. “But we decided earlier, when we decided to build the memorial, that we would have to do it with these burdened companies.”

Current plans call for the $30 million memorial to be finished by May 2005.

MONTGOMERY, Alabama
Remaining defiant until the end, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore was removed from the bench last week by the state’s Court of the Judiciary for refusing to obey a federal court order mandating the removal of a 2.5-ton granite monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments.

According to the New York Times, the presiding judge of the Court of the Judiciary, William Thompson, stated that by refusing to remove the monument, “the chief justice placed himself above the law” and, worse, “showed no signs of contrition for his actions.”

Moore was put on paid leave in August after defying a federal appeals court ruling that ordered the removal of the Ten Commandments monument, which the chief justice had secretly installed in the courthouse rotunda in the middle of the night two years ago. The U.S. Supreme Court recently refused to hear his appeal.

Emerging from the courthouse after the unanimous decision was announced, Moore proclaimed to supporters: “I have absolutely no regrets. I have done what I was sworn to do,” according to the AP.

Moore went on to state, “It’s about whether or not you can acknowledge God as a source of our law and our liberty. That’s all I’ve done. I’ve been found guilty.”

The state’s attorney general, William Pryor, Jr., who was once an ally of Moore and who has been nominated by President Bush for a federal appellate judgeship, led the prosecution.

According to the Times, Pryor stated that “the chief justice had put himself above the law.”

According to the AP, the state Court of the Judiciary is “an ad hoc panel of judges, lawyers, and others appointed variously by judges, legal leaders, and the governor and lieutenant governor.” A decision for removal must be unanimous, though it is not permanent. Moore was elected to his position, and, according to the Times, could run again in the next election.

Showing no remorse for his actions or their consequences, Moore told the Times: “I’d do it all the same all over again. I said it back then and I’ll say it again now: God is the basis of our law and our government. I cannot and will not violate my conscience.”

From the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO):

“Despite slow but significant progress achieved in the 1990s, girls continue to face ’sharp discrimination in access to schooling’ in a majority of developing countries, according to a global report released today in New Delhi.

“Gender parity in education remains a distant prospect in 54 countries including 16 countries in sub-Saharan Africa as well as Pakistan and India, says the latest ‘Education For All Global Monitoring Report,’ the most comprehensive survey of education trends worldwide. In China, the most populous country in the world, boys will continue to outnumber girls in secondary schools for many years to come.

“‘While not a complete surprise, these results are obviously a cause for deep concern,’ says Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO. ‘Gender parity in education is a priority not only because inequality is a major infringement of fundamental human rights but because it represents an important obstacle to social and economic development.’

“Gender equality in education is one of the six goals of the Education For All program endorsed by 164 governments at the World Education Forum, in Dakar, Senegal, in April 2000. As a first step to achieving equality, they set the target of 2005 to achieve gender parity (equal enrolment of boys and girls) in primary and secondary education.

“The report measures efforts being made in all parts of the world to enroll more girls in school. In the decade to 2000, the number of girls in primary school increased faster than that of boys, with the global Gender Parity Index (GPI) rising from 0.89 to 0.93 (a GPI of 1 indicates parity between the sexes). But 57% of the estimated 104 million primary-age children out of school worldwide are girls, which suggests that discrimination remains a pressing problem. Of the 128 countries for which data for the reference year 2000 is available, 52 have already achieved gender parity or will have done so by 2005 at primary and secondary level.

“Amongst the poorest performers in terms of girls’ access to primary school, according to the Report, are Chad with a GPI of 0.63, Yemen (0.63), Guinea-Bissau (0.67), Benin (0.68), Niger (0.68), Ethiopia (0.69), Central African Republic (0.69), Burkina Faso (0.71), Guinea (0.72), Mali (0.72), Liberia (0.73), and Pakistan (0.74)…. Girls’ enrolment in these countries is only three quarters that of boys. India, with a GPI of 0.83 at primary level, is only slightly ahead.

“While the situation globally leaves girls at a disadvantage, the Report points out that because too many boys do not finish secondary education, the balance has tipped in favour of girls at this level in several countries including Bangladesh (1.05), Denmark (1.05), Mexico (1.05), New Zealand (1.06), Bahrain (1.07), Iceland (1.07) Russian Federation (1.07), Trinidad and Tobago (1.07) Colombia (1.10), Philippines (1.10), Malaysia (1.11), United Arab Emirates (1.12), United Kingdom (1.17), Suriname (1.18) and Sweden (1.26)….”

“Education is the chief defense of nations.”

– Edmund Burke (British statesman and orator, 1729-1797)

Here are two incontrovertible perceptions about our age: Complexity is rising, and trust is ebbing.

Take these perceptions separately and each strikes us as obvious. Take them together and we can see why the crisis in the mutual fund industry raises such alarm.

The rise of complexity is easy to document. It’s evident in technology, with the increases in the speed and power of computers. And it’s evident in the sciences, where cellular biology vies with cosmology and quantum mechanics to present the most gee-whiz discoveries. Watching today’s proliferation of intricate, exacting, and detailed ideas, I wonder whether experts in any of these fields can comprehend the other fields — the way scientists in the 1950s could read Scientific American and grasp each others’ conceptual territories.

The ebbing of trust is similarly easy to trace. From Enron and Arthur Andersen to Sammy Sosa and Kobe Bryant, from Jayson Blair to the Catholic Church, we’re spiraling downward into a perceived collapse of fidelity and integrity. When both individuals and institutions fail us, much of what we thought we could count on seems destined to let us down.

If either of these trends existed alone, we could get by. As long as the world didn’t seem impossibly complex, we could survive without trusted advisers. We’d simply figure things out for ourselves. And we’d do fine in a complex world as long as we could trust those who understood it to run it properly.

The problem comes when the trends intersect and complexity meets distrust. That’s what the mutual fund crisis is all about.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing that mutual funds are as complex as quantum theory. But complexity is relative. Consider the sheer size of this fund industry, with some $7 trillion under management. Think about the speed at which its transactions operate through a subtle set of interrelations in a complicated global trading universe.

More importantly, consider the penetration of mutual funds, in which 95 million Americans — half the nation’s households — hold investments. A lot of employees with holdings in these funds don’t think of themselves as “investors.” Investors spend their evenings learning about financial matters. Ordinary employees do other things. They may not even realize that the news about mutual funds actually applies to them. In the old days, they understood putting money in a savings account or under a mattress. Today, the relative complexity of financial matters is baffling, so they leave their money management to people they trust.

Or thought they could trust. That’s why the current collapse of confidence is so significant. Unless families are prepared to learn a lot about financial markets, they’ll have to depend on trusted advisers. When that trust fails, the massive structure we’ve created to promote retirement savings — and the huge amounts of capital thereby available to fuel the economy — is at risk.

Little wonder, then, that Arthur Levitt, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from 1993 to 2001, is so upset about the mutual funds mess. “What’s happening today,” he told the public television program “Wall Street Week with Fortune” last Friday, “is the most outrageous of any of the violations of any of the frauds we’ve seen in this century. More people were involved and the nature of the violation was an absolute rip-off of the public.”

That same day, the SEC’s current chairman, William Donaldson, told a group of investment industry professionals in Florida that the Wall Street scandals represented “a fundamental betrayal of our nation’s investors” and that “the securities industry has found itself stuck in a legal and ethical quagmire.” He expressed confidence that investment professionals would “pull the industry out of the muck,” but noted, “You can be sure that if you don’t, those of us in government will.”

The finance community likes formulas, so here’s one: The need for trust increases as the square of the perceived complexity of the financial system. Double the perception of complexity, and you need to quadruple the trustworthiness of those involved. Triple the complexity, and trust needs to grow ninefold.

The present trend is just the reverse. New complexity, it seems, has lowered the trust levels. It has simply provided the villains with new thickets in which to hide. The upshot, we fear, is that those in charge may have been systematically ripping us off. Not ripping off them, the investors, but us, the ordinary folks.

That’s why this ethical collapse is potentially so important. It has a very big footprint. If it’s not quickly contained by regulators and courts, the drain on mutual funds — as millions of ordinary non-investors thrash around without much guidance, trying to find places to put their money when they can’t trust anybody — could be significant. The drain on ethics, whose goal is to promote trust in goodness, could be even greater.

(c)2003 Institute for Global Ethics

“Here we have a man presumed to be the most prolific serial killer — a man who preyed on vulnerable young women, and I thought, as many of you did, if any case screams out for the death penalty, this was it. The mercy provided by today’s resolution is not directed at Ridgway, but toward the families who have suffered so much, and to the larger community.

– Norm Maleng, discussing last week’s announced plea bargain between prosecutors and Gary Ridgway, the confessed serial killer of at least 48 young women in Washington State. Maleng, a prosecutor in the case, was forced to choose between seeking the death penalty for Ridgway based on evidence in seven killings or foregoing the death penalty in exchange for Ridgway’s cooperation in bringing closure to the families of 41 other murder victims. (“In Deal for Life, Man Admits Killing 48 Women,” New York Times, Nov. 6)

WASHINGTON
The beleaguered mutual-fund industry took another beating last week with a series of announcements, resignations, and congressional testimony on fraud, illegal trading, and insider dealings.

Among the developments:

• Lawrence Lasser, head of Putnam Investments, resigned his post as chief executive amid allegations of market timing and improper trades by Putnam executives. Putnam, which manages $272 billion, is the nation’s fifth-largest mutual fund firm. Six states and the city of New York have pulled their funds from Putnam as a result of the growing scandal, reported the New York Times. Individual investors have begun following suit, withdrawing more than $4 billion as of late last week, according to CNN.
• After 10 years on the job, Juan Marcelino last week announced his resignation as head of the New England regional office of the U.S. Security Exchange Commission (SEC), following criticism that his office failed to investigate whistle-blower claims against Putnam last March.
• Richard Strong, founder of the Strong Mutual Funds, stepped down as chairman of the company’s board after being accused of using a series of personal accounts to make improper trades on his own behalf. Strong said he would remain chairman and chief executive at parent firm Strong Capital Management, sparking sharp criticism, reported the Times.
• At a congressional hearing on the unfolding allegations of wrongdoing among mutual fund firms, SEC enforcement head Stephen Cutler said that improper activity may have taken place at more than 25 percent of the nation’s brokerage firms that sell mutual funds.

“The ‘unholy trinity’ of illegal late trading, abusive market timing, and related self-dealing practices that have recently come to light are matters that affect us all,” Cutler told a Senate Governmental Affairs subcommittee. “And they go right to the heart of the trust … between mutual fund and other securities professionals and the individual investor. As my colleagues and I have gathered evidence of one betrayal after another, the feeling I’m left with is one of outrage.”

A wave of charges, lawsuits, and investigations are expected in the coming weeks and months, noted the Times.

WASHINGTON
Former HealthSouth head Richard Scrushy surrendered last week to the FBI, pleading not guilty to an 85-count indictment that could carry penalties of up to 650 years in prison and more than $36 million in fines.

Scrushy, who founded the Alabama-based firm that operates rehabilitation and outpatient surgery centers, is the first chief executive to be charged under provisions of last year’s corruption crackdown law known as Sarbanes-Oxley, reported the Reuters news agency.

Scrushy was ousted from his chief executive role in March, after HealthSouth’s board was forced to admit that none of the company’s past financial statements could be trusted due to suspicions of a $2.5 billion accounting fraud.

Federal prosecutors have accused Scrushy of masterminding the fraud through a cultural “code of silence” that included incentives for underlings who played along and intimidation for those who did not, reported the Washington Post.

Fifteen former HealthSouth executives have pleaded guilty to fraud-related charges, agreeing to help prosecutors with their cases. Scrushy last week refused to join their ranks, pleading not guilty.

BRUSSELS
The European Union last gave an initial green light to banning gender discrimination in matters of insurance and banking, putting the financial sector on notice that longstanding practices may soon change.

For years, insurance firms have set premiums based on a person’s gender, such as higher auto insurance fees for young male drivers.

Banks often set tougher terms, require more collateral, or deny services altogether for female applicants seeking loans or mortgages, according to the BBC.

Such practices, though widely accepted and statistically justifiable in the eyes of the industries, are nothing short of gender discrimination, EU social affairs commissioner Anna Diamantopoulou charged last week.

“Replace the word ’sex’ with the word ‘race’ and the discrimination suddenly becomes much clearer,” Diamantopoulou told a news conference, reported the Reuters news agency.

Under Diamantopoulou’s urging, the European Commission last week approved a draft law that would make such practices illegal.

The vote prompted an outcry from the financial services sector, which said the measure would raise premiums and cause chaos in the industry.

The proposal, which will be debated next year by EU ministers, is expected to pass in 2005, according to Reuters. If approved, it would outlaw sex discrimination in banking by 2007 and in the insurance sector by 2011.

LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. last week received a “target letter” from the U.S. Attorney’s office, which is accusing the nation’s largest retailer of complicity in hiring illegal immigrants to work in its stores.

The letter, indicating that the firm is formally under investigation, follows a nighttime raid on cleaning crews at Wal-Marts in 21 states last month, leading to the arrest of roughly 250 allegedly illegal workers from 18 countries, reported the Associated Press.

Federal investigators have accused Wal-Mart of turning a blind eye to the use of illegal workers in order to keep labor prices low.

Wal-Mart has denied the charges.

In interviews with the Times, federal law enforcement officials said that position is disingenuous, noting that 13 Wal-Mart subcontractors pleaded guilty to hiring illegal workers in 1998 and 2001, suggesting a long and obvious pattern of abuse.

Those law enforcement officials said that while Wal-Mart may not hire the illegal workers itself, it is likely aware that its subcontractors do so via an elaborate shell game of opening, hiring, shutting down, and reopening with a new company name.

Critics claim that the practice of hiring illegals has hidden costs, both to the illegal workers who face harsh conditions, long hours, and lack of healthcare, and to competitors that play by the rules.

“When you don’t pay taxes, don’t pay Social Security, and don’t pay workers’ comp, you have a 40 percent cost advantage,” Lilia Garcia, executive director of the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund, which fights the use of illegal aliens, told the Times. “It makes it hard for companies that follow the rules.”

The Times report says that Wal-Mart rivals Kmart and Target, as well as three California supermarket chains, have been targeted for similar violations.

Wal-Mart, which faces grand jury hearings in mid-December, said it “was not surprised” by last week’s developments, saying it had anticipated the charges from “comments made by federal officials after the raids.”

Over the weekend, nine of the immigrants captured during the raids sued Wal-Mart for $200,000 in overtime pay, accusing the company of discriminating against them because of their illegal status. The plaintiffs, all from Mexico, charged Wal-Mart with “knowingly and with the intention to defraud the United States government” allowed the hiring of illegal workers “in order to save money on cleaning service” contracts, reported the New York Times.

LOS ANGELES
Prompted by school shootings and corporate scandals, schools across the country have begun implementing programs aimed at integrating ethics and academics to produce not just smart graduates but good people.

The movement, broadly known as character education, was chronicled last week by the Los Angeles Times, which focused much of its attention on St. Genevieve High School, a local 420-student Catholic school.

From teaching sports teams to respect their opponents to having seniors welcome freshman with hospitality instead of hazing, St. Genevieve has been hailed as a leader in the field.

It recently was given one of 10 “National Schools of Character” awards by the Character Education Partnership, a group based in Washington, DC, that says the push for such programs has accelerated since the 1999 Columbine High shootings.

St. Genevieve principal Daniel Horn agrees, saying the Columbine killings pushed him to focus on kids’ characters as much as their grades.

“You don’t pick on the very youngest or the newest or the most vulnerable,” Horn told the Times.

“Character is our spirit. It’s who we are. It’s the very core of our being. Now, the current mood of the country is too much about test scores,” Horn added. Society is “not concerned enough about, ‘Are we graduating good people?’”

The Times report notes that while 14 states, including California, now mandate some form of character education, only a few fund the initiatives. The federal government now funds character education programs in 47 state school systems.

LONDON
The biggest U.K. teachers’ union last week said it may defy the government and boycott several rounds of required student testing, claiming the tests undermine their professional judgment and role in the classroom.

The threat from the National Union of Teachers (NUT) follows heightened tensions between the union and the government, which so far has refused to negotiate over the contentious issue of testing young students.

Teachers say the required tests, especially those administered to students aged 7 and aged 11, do more harm than good by adopting a unilateral approach to young students still finding their academic stride.

A survey of NUT members indicated that 82 percent would support a boycott of required tests for seven-year-olds, and 71 percent would refuse to administer the tests for 11 year olds, reported the BBC.

Instead of such one-size-fits-all exams, teachers should “be able to use their professional judgment to their pupils’ benefit and in support of their primary purpose of educating children,” NUT general secretary Doug McAvoy said.

The government says it, too, has the best interest of students in mind, insisting that the tests ferret out underperforming classrooms and help underserved students get noticed and get help.

“National testing has a very clear moral purpose. It means we have high expectations for every single child,” U.K. Education secretary Charles Clarke said last week. “It enables schools to tailor their teaching to each child’s needs. And we can compare each child’s progress with that of other children.”

NUT members will receive ballots on the boycotts over the next several weeks, with a final decision expected in December.

If a boycott is approved, it will be the second such industrial action. In 1994, another teachers union — the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers — staged a similar protest, noted the BBC.

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, California
A religious-rights group has launched legal action against a California high school that refused to allow a handful of seniors to wear T-shirts spelling out pro-Christian messages in their class’s yearbook photo, the Los Angeles Times reported last week.

On October 21, Fountain Valley High School said the 13 students, whose T-shirts lined up to make messages including “Jesus is the way,” could not stand together during the photo shoot. Eleven left in protest.

The Pacific Justice Institute, a legal group focused on religious freedom issues, accused the Huntington Beach Union High School District of violating the students’ constitutional rights to free speech.

At the heart of the conflict is whether the speech of individuals, especially when voicing an organized message, becomes school speech when printed in an official publication such as the school yearbook.

Mix in the public school’s status as a government entity, and the situation becomes more complicated given the constitutional separation of church and state, noted the Times.

Assistant superintendent Carol Osbrink said that co-opting a group event to espouse a collective message crossed the line — regardless of the nature of the message.

While an individual may permissibly wear a message T-shirt, a coordinated action “says to the public that the school endorses that message, as opposed to being the beliefs of an individual student,” Osbrink told the Times.

“The message could have been anything, and the district still would not have wanted to be a party to endorsing it,” she added.

The Huntington Beach Union High School District, which sits just south of Los Angeles, is expected to reply soon to the Pacific Justice Institute’s complaint, according to the Times.