As summer ends and kids head back to class, what do parents most want from schools? Reading, writing, and arithmetic, of course, along with sports, the arts, civic engagement, and interpersonal skills. But increasingly I hear a plaintive refrain: “Help us teach ethics and character.” If, along with social skills and academic literacies, there’s no focus on ethical literacy — if their kids come out smart, well rounded, and immoral — where’s the value in that?

How can you tell a school that earnestly promotes ethical development from one that merely talks a good game? Here are nine things — five values and four processes — to look for:

1. Honesty. Truthfulness, accuracy, and candor aren’t impossible ideals. Despite increasing levels of student cheating and plagiarism, it’s not hard for schools to define standards of honesty in writing, research, and relationships. Look for programs that specifically teach students to detect and resist deception, duplicity, and fraud — and that explain clearly to them why they must do so.

2. Responsibility. Being accountable for one’s own impulses, thoughts, and behaviors is central to good character. Showing up on time, repaying one’s debts, remembering to feed the cat — all of these are aspects of promise-keeping. But keeping one’s word isn’t always easy. Look for programs that teach the tougher aspects of responsibility — like knowing when to keep secrets that need protection and when to divulge information that needs telling.

3. Respect. Honoring others is simple when they look and sound like you or when they’re doing what you want. Sound character education reminds students of the world’s amazing diversity of races, tastes, species, aptitudes, and competencies that deserve our attention. It promotes listening even when you’re not being heard, appreciation even when you don’t fully understand, and obedience even when you didn’t craft the rules. Look for programs that put principle above personality, emphasize service before self, and encourage giving as a precondition of getting.

4. Fairness. Whatever teaches students to share equally, supply those less fortunate, and let others shine will help them understand the fair distribution of benefits. Whatever helps them play by the rules, judge by evidence rather than prejudice, and assume innocence until guilt is proven will help them grasp the fair procedures of justice. Look for programs that use everything from athletics and theater to student council and school trips to bring home these lessons.

5. Compassion. Whether it’s called empathy, love, tenderness, or kindness, this value goes to the core of motives and feelings. More intuitional than the others, it’s taught more readily by example than by discourse. When it’s missing, the other values turn brittle, and hypocrisy isn’t far away. Look for programs rooted in affectionate teaching, engaged learning, and a caring purpose.

Look, too, for four processes that bring these five values alive:

6. Expanding the moral perimeter. If these values operate only within the boundaries of family, clan, or clique, they won’t amount to much. Mafia hit-men and tin-pot dictators also honor these values among their confidants, though they deny them to everyone else. By contrast, those with the highest character see no perimeter at all: Everyone is worthy of their moral concern. Look for programs that diligently expand this perimeter — not by lowering standards and adopting a wooly relativism, but by extending these five values uniformly, even when they aren’t reflected back.

7. Imparting decision skills. The mere avoidance of wrongdoing isn’t sufficient for a life of integrity. Needed are ways to choose wisely between competing values. Children taught in primary school always to obey all five values find, as they grow up, that their toughest choices arise when one value (like responsible promise-keeping) conflicts with another (like truth-telling) — and where they can’t fully obey both at once. Look for programs that teach them right-versus-right decision skills lest they abandon the entire ethics enterprise as something they’ve outgrown.

8. Teaching moral courage. It is observable, sadly, that some people with fine values and solid moral reasoning skills can leave their decisions sitting unimplemented on the shelf. Absent the guts to put values into action, ethics is impotent. Character education without courage is like software without hardware — great stuff, if we could make it run. Too many schools coddle and cocoon their students, so that few opportunities remain for taking tough stands, testing one’s mettle, and facing down danger. Look for programs that help students express moral courage by enduring risk for the sake of principle.

9. Building cultures of integrity. Individuals live in and learn from cultures larger than themselves. They’re influenced not only by the school’s faculty, staff, and other students, but by its traditions, histories, and campfire stories, as well as by its parents, location, and standing among its peers. Look for programs that recognize this web of moral relationships, that see character and leadership as one, and that take responsibility for educating students to become builders of cultures of integrity throughout their careers.

And a tenth point: Even the best schools can’t do this work by themselves. Building character isn’t like building houses: You can’t contract it out. It’s a team sport, where parents, educators, and kids are on the field together. Look for a great program. Then get behind it every way you can.

©2006 Institute for Global Ethics

“The soaring cost of health care in America cannot be sustained over the long term by any business that offers health benefits to its employees. And every day that we do not work together to solve this challenge is a day that our country becomes less competitive in the global economy.”

– Wal-Mart chief executive H. Lee Scott, Jr., speaking in February to the National Governors Association, as reported by the New York Times

DETROIT
A U.S. federal judge last week ruled that the administration’s warrantless surveillance program — the touchstone in a heated ethical and legal debate over the balance of collective security versus individual rights — was an unconstitutional infringement on freedom of speech.

The International Herald Tribune reported that the ruling, the first judicial decision on the program, is probably only an opening round in what is expected to be protracted legal sparring over the issue.

The Justice Department filed an immediate appeal and the program will continue until at least September 7, when a follow-up hearing is scheduled.

President Bush was sharply critical of last week’s ruling, saying the court and those who agree with the decision “do not understand the nature of the world in which we live.”

The Associated Press quoted Bush as saying, “This country of ours is at war, and we must give those whose responsibility it is to protect the United States the tools necessary to protect this country in a time of war.”

He also expressed optimism that future rulings would side with the administration.

As expected, the debate over the ruling immediately took on political overtones, with the Republican National Committee (RNC) putting out an Internet video headlined “Democrat Judge Weakens National Security,” according to a report from the Reuters news agency.

RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, attempting to relate the ruling to the coming midterm elections, claimed that the judge, Anna Diggs Taylor of the Eastern District of Michigan, had sided with the American Civil Liberties Union and that her action was “a reminder of what is at stake in 2006,” Reuters reported.

In ruling that warrantless interception of overseas telephone calls and emails violated the Constitution and a 1978 law requiring the government to seek court permission before wiretapping people in the United States, Diggs argued that the president had overstepped his authority in approving the program.

“It was never the intent of the Framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights,” Taylor wrote, adding in a following section, “There are no hereditary kings in America,” according to a report from the Boston Globe.

While providing few details about the workings of the program, the administration has said that the surveillance is designed to intercept calls and emails between Americans and any other person overseas if either party to the communication is suspected of terrorist activity. The Globe reported that shift supervisors of the National Security Agency, instead of judges, approve requests to institute surveillance.

WASHINGTON
Wal-Mart’s effort to deflect a variety of ethical controversies that have dogged the nation’s largest retailer for years took a wrong turn last week when Andrew Young, the former pro-business mayor of Atlanta and the first African-American U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who had been hired by Wal-Mart to do public relations, resigned after making racially charged characterizations of competing merchants.

The Financial Times reported that Young will step down as chairman of the Working Families for Wal-Mart lobbying group, which had been set up to mobilize support among black and Latino leaders.

Part of Young’s job was to show that the retailer was a benefit to inner-city communities and to counter claims that the chain drives “mom-and-pop” stores out of business, according to a report from the New York Times.

In an attempt to make that case, ABC News reported, Young told a black community newspaper that small shops “are the people who have been overcharging us, selling us stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables…. They’ve ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it’s Arabs. Very few black folks own these stores.”

The U.K. Independent’s Washington bureau reported that after the remarks were publicized in the press and by anti-Wal-Mart groups, Young issued a resignation and an apology, saying, “Those comments run contrary to everything I have dedicated my life to. I apologize for those comments. I retract those comments. And I ask for the forgiveness of those I have offended.”

BOULDER, Colo.
In an eerie echo of events a decade ago, the U.S. media revved into overdrive with coverage of a dubious confession in the death of JonBenet Ramsey — the case that became known among journalists as the “Ramsey Virus” for its destructive effect on journalistic standards and the lives of those touched by the story.

The arrest of 41-year-old Mark Karr in Thailand immediately raised speculation that he may be seeking morbid publicity with his confession to the December 26, 1996, killing of the 6-year-old from Boulder, Colorado.

Karr, a former teacher arrested last Wednesday at a Bangkok apartment, claimed he killed JonBenet but has given odd and conflicting statements to reporters, and his ex-wife volunteered an unrequested alibi for him during the time when JonBenet was murdered, according to a report from the Agence France-Presse.

The Bangkok Post reported that police there are unsure if Karr is a legitimate suspect or is obsessed with the case and is making a deranged confession.

Karr was expected to be deported to Colorado for further investigation and possible charges.

Few cases in memory have evoked such controversy over the ethics of the press, which routinely sensationalized the Ramsey case in stories larded with exaggeration, speculation, and innuendo.

Adding to the bizarre nature of the current coverage is the fact that Karr apparently was traced through emails to a Boulder journalism professor who had produced a documentary about the case, AFP reported.

Reporters last week busied themselves not only in stories recounting the latest events but also the journalistic déjà vu they experienced. Colorado journalist Jim Moscou, writing in the newspaper trade journal Editor & Publisher, said he hoped journalists were “ten years wiser” and would be cautious of the “Ramsey Virus,” the bizarre strain of disaster that somehow infected many who touched the story.

“No one was immune,” Moscou wrote. “Neighbors, police, reporters themselves — there is frankly not enough time or space to list the victims and how their lives forever changed.”

“The truth is,” Moscou continued, “any journalist who has spent any time reporting the JonBenet murder would eventually stumble upon and recognize the virus. That’s why many left the beat, even the profession, hoping to keep some sense of self intact.”

WASHINGTON
A U.S. federal judge ruled last week that tobacco companies were complicit in a conspiracy to lie about the dangers of smoking and ordered some changes in marketing practices.

But judge Gladys Kessler of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia said that legal precedent prevented her from further punishing tobacco firms financially, according to the Washington Post. Among other penalties, the government had asked that the tobacco industry be forced to spend $14 billion to help smokers kick the habit and to educate young people about the dangers of smoking.

The most onerous provision for cigarette makers, according to UPI, is a provision of Kessler’s ruling prohibiting them from labeling cigarettes as “low tar” or “light.” She said such descriptors are deceptive and ordered the defendants to issue corrective statements in various media.

In a 1,742-page ruling, Kessler documented what she said was a nearly 50-year history of tobacco company efforts to deceive and confuse the public about the dangers of smoking. She concluded that tobacco companies “marketed and sold their lethal product with zeal, with deception, with a single-minded focus on their financial success and without regard for the human tragedy or social costs that success exacted,” the New York Times reported.

Despite the scolding, tobacco companies generally viewed the ruling as a victory, according to coverage from the Times Dispatch of Richmond, Virginia, which noted that most tobacco stocks closed higher after the ruling. The decision not only spared them financial damage but cleared the last of three lawsuits that had prevented one firm, Altria, from moving ahead with a plan to sell its Kraft Foods subsidiary.

INDIANAPOLIS
In yet another highly visible sports-ethics scandal, Olympic superstar sprinter Marion Jones reportedly has failed a test for a performance-enhancing drug.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, sources close to the case say Jones, who won five medals in the 2000 Olympic Games, failed a drug test after the U.S. Track and Field Championships in Indianapolis in June.

Jones’s lawyer denied that she had been caught using the endurance-building drug called EPO, according to the BBC, which also reported that she suddenly withdrew from a European meet last week, citing only “personal reasons.”

The Associated Press reported that Jones’s first test, called an “A” sample, tested positive. A backup sample has not been returned yet, according to the AP, but if it also shows a positive result she would be banned from competition for a minimum of two years.

The AP noted that Jones is the third top-level U.S. athlete to fail a doping test this year: Cyclist Floyd Landis tested positive for elevated testosterone during the Tour de France, and sprinter Justin Gatlin, who shares the world record in the 100 meters, failed a drug test in April.

Jones has never failed a previous drug test, the Agence France-Presse reported. She has, over many years, consistently and unequivocally denied any use of banned performance-enhancing drugs.

CUPERTINO, Calif.
Apple Computer, a favorite of socially responsible investment firms and a company frequently cited as a good corporate citizen, last week defended itself against reports that it used sweatshop labor overseas, producing a study showing that while some of its corporate procedures were violated in Chinese factories, there was no wholesale exploitation of laborers.

The San Jose Mercury News reported that Apple’s investigation came in the wake of a British tabloid’s claim that iPod music players were produced in factories where workers were mistreated and poorly paid — allegedly working 15-hour days in a factory outside Hong Kong and being charged exorbitant rates for company-supplied food and housing at a plant near Shanghai.

The Agence France-Presse reported that Apple dispatched a team to check up on the claims, and said it found some violations of standard company policy but no evidence of child labor, compulsory overtime, or abusive housing conditions.

According to a report from CNET and Reuters, Apple did admit that its main supplier of iPods let employees work more hours than allowed by Apple’s code of conduct, but that Apple had acted to remediate the problem.

BusinessWeek reported that Apple also found problems with company housing at the Shanghai plant, noting that some dormitory areas housed hundreds of workers in large single rooms. Two of the buildings in question were reconverted factories, according to Apple’s report.

TRENTON
New Jersey’s attorney general resigned last week after a special prosecutor found that she violated state ethics laws by intervening when her boyfriend was stopped by police.

Radio news station WINS in New York reported that Zulima Farber said she is voluntarily leaving the state’s top law enforcement job “out of respect for the governor.” During a press conference held alongside Gov. Jon Corzine, she admitting “to being human and making that error.”

According to the Courier-Post of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, Farber insisted that she did nothing wrong but was resigning to uphold the governor’s pledge of having cabinet members meet the highest possible ethical standards.

The Associated Press reported that Farber’s live-in companion, Hamlet Goore, was pulled over by police and found to have improper registration papers on the car and what appeared to be a suspended license. But after Farber showed up in her state car, Goore was allowed to drive home, the AP reported.

The special prosecutor’s report concluded that Farber’s appearance at the traffic stop violated ethics codes by influencing police at the scene.

While some contend that Farber has been punished enough by the loss of her job and the resulting public humiliation, one state senator is claiming that the governor needs a more immediate mechanism to remove an attorney general or secretary of state. Noting that if Farber had not resigned, the only way to remove her from office would have been a lengthy impeachment hearing, state senator Paul Sarlo, a Democrat, plans to introduce a measure that would eliminate the constitutional job protection currently afforded incumbents in those positions.

SANTA BARBARA, Calif.
Reversing a long-standing policy not to intervene in labor-management disputes, the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) has decided to give an ethics award to nine journalists who resigned from a paper because they claimed the owner was meddling with newsroom operations in violation of the paper’s ethics policies.

According to a report from the Associated Press, the reporters resigned from the 41,000-circulation daily Santa Barbara News-Press because they said the publisher, the paper’s chief business executive, interfered with news operations and punished reporters who supported unionization.

“We pay tribute to the courage and principled sacrifice of these nine journalists, who opted to risk their livelihoods rather than remain in a position where they felt their journalistic ethics and professional credibility were being violated,” SPJ president David Carlson said, according to the AP report.

The journalists claimed that publisher Wendy McCaw meddled in newsroom decisions and unfairly reprimanded employees. A rival publication, the Santa Barbara Independent, claimed that McCaw had taken away beat assignments as punishment to reporters who backed unionization of the newsroom.

The newspaper trade journal Editor & Publisher reported that McCaw protested the ethics award, writing to the Society of Professional Journalists and claiming that the actions of the journalists who resigned were a “smokescreen to hide their personal agenda.”

She also said that the society, one of the oldest and largest journalism organizations in the country, had not made a reasonable effort to get her side of the story.

SPJ countered that it had written her twice and she did not respond in a timely manner, according to the Editor & Publisher report.

MONTREAL
The on-again, off-again resolution to a bitter 30-year-old trade dispute between the United States and Canada appeared to be back in the “on” column again late last week, as some major players indicated that they could live with the latest version of the deal to govern trade in softwood forest products.

Major foresting companies in Quebec agreed to support the agreement after an escape clause, which was viewed as favorable to the United States, was modified, according to the CBC.

“There is a wide-ranging consensus in favor [of the agreement],” Guy Chevrette, head of the Quebec Forest Industry Council, told the Toronto-based Globe & Mail.

British Columbia premier Gordon Campbell, whose province is the nation’s largest lumber producer, also endorsed the agreement, according to reports from Bloomberg and the CTV television network.

Resolution of the dispute, which was an important issue in Canada’s most recent federal election, and had appeared to founder several times during protracted negotiations, centers on U.S.-imposed duties on Canadian softwood lumber instituted in retaliation for the Canadian government’s alleged subsidization of lumber companies, and U.S. claims that Canada “dumped” lumber in U.S. markets at artificially low prices.

Canada had denied those charges and appealed to the World Trade Organization, which ruled that imposition of the duties was in violation of international trade rules.

From Kelly Services:

“Think the American workplace is stressful? Be glad you’re not in Europe, a comparison of recent survey data by Kelly Services suggests.

“Among thousands of respondents in the first-ever Kelly Services World@Work Survey, 11.7 percent described their work as ‘extremely stressful.’

“However, when the issue of stress was addressed in a Kelly Services Europe@Work Survey, a total of 27.1 percent of European respondents reported that their work was ‘far too stressful’ or ‘too stressful’ — more than double the percentage of U.S. respondents.

“‘Workplace stress can be viewed in both a positive and negative light,’ said Carl Camden, President and CEO of Kelly Services, one of the world’s leading staffing solutions organizations. ‘Many workers seek challenge in their jobs, and stress can be seen as a positive factor indicating important and responsible tasks. However, workplace stress can also be associated with a demanding boss, lack of personal control, fatigue and poor relationships with workplace colleagues. What we can hope for is a balance, so that our work can be stimulating and challenging without leading to worry and overwhelming pressure.’

“Despite the feelings of the group who are extremely stressed, American workers generally seem to be able to keep stress from getting out of hand. Altogether, 25.6 percent of respondents — 30.6 percent of the men and 23.7 percent of the women — described their work as ’somewhat stressful but manageable,’ while 34.3 percent said theirs was ’stressful at times but not always.”…

“It is always safe to learn, even from our enemies; seldom safe to venture to instruct, even our friends.”

– Charles Caleb Colton (English cleric, writer, and collector, 1780-1832)