Education History
1995-2007
The Ethics in Education Program advances the mission of the Institute through its curricular materials and onsite consultations and trainings with schools and specialized populations. IGE Education, since its establishment in 1995, has worked to discover ways for school communities to adopt ethics concepts and related skills as their own and to integrate ethics into the whole school climate, demonstrated in teaching practices and school-wide decision making. We work in schools, districts, states, and worldwide, serving kindergarten to college students. IGE Education has many notable good works:
1. Train-the-Trainer: Ashoka Fellows from across Latin America came together to train in Bolivia in the winter of 2007. These Fellows spent one week learning about Ethical Fitness® and focused much of their time discussing how to infuse their shared values into a much-anticipated Latin American Leadership Academy. The Train-the-Trainer program allows these Fellows to now teach IGE’s ethical decision-making model to youth across Latin America.
2. Ethics & Choices: In 1997, a character education program was implemented in the North Carolina Division of Prisons. By 1999, nearly half of the state’s total prisons were offering the program, and more than 3,000 inmates had participated. In 2007, North Carolina’s now Department of Corrections still uses this character education program, titled Ethics & Choices, to continue developing the decision-making skills of inmate populations.
3. Leadership and Core Values Initiative: Starting in 1998, across the Illinois Community College system, IGE staff members began a new research project surveying members of the public in Illinois to determine their views on values and the role of community colleges in teaching values.
4. Curriculums: Although IGE Education strongly encourages on-site consulting or training to those schools needing assistance getting school-wide involvement, curriculums were developed to act as stand-alone ethics education programs. Prior trainings are not required for teachers to use lessons plans. Currently IGE provides five separate curriculums, two of which include supplemental workbooks: Ethics & Service, Ethics & Choices, Building Decision Skills: Middle & High School, Building Decision Skills: K-5, and Building Ethical Fitness®.
5. Tenet Community Ethics Initiative: At the public school level, we have equipped community members as trainers in San Luis Obispo, California; New Orleans, Louisiana; and El Paso, Texas. These trainers, all volunteers working with the Tenet Healthcare Corporation, will prepare teachers in local middle schools to deliver the Institute’s Ethical Fitness® framework to over 2,000 middle school students.
