W.B. Yates said, "Education is not filling a bucket, it is lighting a fire." It is hard to get a mental handle on graduation: one week we are studying our posteriors off for finals and the next week we finish Tufts. Thinking back, I have been trying to get some understanding of what I have and have not learned - not just specific factual stuff, though that has been substantial - but more of the big picture.
There is critical thinking: knowing the difference between an assumption and argument, realizing that perfect objectivity is impossible, a wariness of verisimilitude, knowing the arcane but essential rules of logic and understanding the difference between a correlation and causal relation. Although these may never have been explicitly spelled out by any one professor, they have been emphasized consistently from the beginning.
There is communication: how to make an argument, how to be concise, how to footnote, how to network, how to organize using e-mail lists, how to advertise, how to write a memo and how to use a Xerox. OK, so some of these are really specific, technical skills, but they will be really useful later on.
There is research: how to sift through huge piles of information, how to divide up work, how to allocate time, how to work in study groups, the importance of detail, being comfortable with multiple correct answers and being at home with ambiguity. That, again, has been drilled into me from the beginning.
But all of this stuff is functional - it is the engine, not the driver. None of these skills really tell you how to find your way from point A to point B.
That brings me to what I did not learn.
Beyond occasional discussions of plagiarism, there is very little ethical training at Tufts. Take for example, our infamous alumnus who became CFO of Enron. He certainly had the brains to get him where he wanted to go, but felt little compunction about cheating the government, the shareholders, or even his own employees. What was missing?
It is impossible - and pointless - to devise a complete set of ethical rules. There are simply too many temptations in life to account for, and too many ways of bending the rules for personal gain. What needs to happen is training for ethical thinking - how to constantly question the rightness or wrongness of actions - rather than mindlessly telling people what they should and should not do.
Ethical thinking largely comes down to the old "Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you." This mental discipline could be taught through discussion and case studies. The aim would not be to formulate guidelines for ethical action, but rather to help people think in an ethics-promoting way. Thinking is like athletics: in order to perform when called upon, you have to train.
Our ethics are tested at numerous points throughout our lives - it seems strange not to help students prepare for these tests in the same way Tufts helps students prepare for the GRE, LSAT or MCAT.
Why not have a class that all Tufts students take - call it Applied Ethics. Instead of dealing with this subject philosophically (a class for this already exists), the emphasis would be on training students how to think ethically; to cultivate a mental discipline of constantly questioning actions. The course would be discussion based - students would talk about ethical dilemmas in their own lives and analyze realistic case studies. The goal would not be to arrive at consensus about what is and is not right, but to develop individual responsibility for thinking ethically.
Perhaps the reason we do not have such a subject is the dominant view that ethics cannot be taught, or must be taught by parents. Although students should indeed know by now that they are not supposed to cheat, steal or deceive, they rarely think about why they have been taught these rules. By developing ethical inquisitiveness and a habit of ethical thinking, Tufts can indeed help students develop these skills.
In the balance, Tufts really does an outstanding job helping its students develop critical thinking, communication and research skills, beyond the academic education we get in our particular majors. Yet it seems strange for a school that prepares its prepares us so well to not offer any assistance in developing ethical thinking. Medical schools and law schools teach applied ethics, but why must students wait so long for such an important subject?
