Usually in school when an issue has application to real life, it doesn't come up in class. In biology, the subject of organ transplants and their moral and social implication is rarely discussed. It's not part of the curriculum; everyone is in a hurry to prepare for exams. . . . If this kind of topic is addressed at all, it is left for the homeroom teacher.... The students learn there is a chasm between science and people. They aren't even discussed by the same teacher in the same classroom. I sought a way the biology or literature teachers could discuss values while they are teaching their subjects.
Raphi Amram, the late director of Israel's Society for Excellence Through Education, described a project that he helped found, the Ethics in Science and Humanities program. His school, the Israel Arts and Science Academy, is a leader in the project, involving 10 high schools in six countries—including a Jewish day school and a Methodist girls' school in Melbourne, Australia; a Catholic high school in Calgary, Canada; a Greek Orthodox school in Larnaca, Cyprus; and nondenominational schools in Jordan, Canada, and the United States. Organizers plan to present the ethics curriculum to UNESCO and hope that it will serve as a model for high schools around the world.
Though the program currently operates only in schools serving high-achieving or gifted students, the founders emphasize the universality of its appeal. As Amram said, "The goal is to nurture the character and moral values of our students." The Academy, a high school for gifted students from throughout Israel, devised the ethics program in consultation with visionaries such as William Damon at Brown University and Howard Gardner of Harvard.
Ronny Erez, the Academy headmaster and one of the founders of the program, says each participating school has applied it in a different way. At the Israeli academy, all students are required to participate through reading and discussing common texts, writing papers, and conducting individual research. In addition, teachers participate in interdisciplinary studies, and students study science subjects in depth. Erez explains: "We don't just go through more textbooks—but we try to help a student become a decent human being who is a scientist."
Erez composed a series of dilemmas and distributed it to the participating schools. His students held discussions and wrote papers on questions such as the right of parents not to immunize their children even if it might endanger the community and the conflict of a researcher considering conducting a study that could make her famous but could put others at risk. He says:If one of our students becomes a scientist who says, "I did it because it was interesting, even though it hurt someone," we will have failed. The scientist has to make a decision what to look for. I want these students to choose what can be helpful, not just interesting. We do not expect to give them ethical values—that is impossible in today's world where everything is open to questioning. But we hope in any important situation the ethical question will enter.
International Conference
Last July, at the end of the program's first year, the Academy hosted a conference for delegates from each school. In a two-week workshop that included tours of Israel, students and teachers shared the work they had done during the previous school year and planned for the next.
Many students said debates with peers from other countries opened their eyes to different perspectives and taught them a lesson in tolerance. A student passionately defended her right to abort an unwanted pregnancy, then listened respectfully as a colleague retorted: "As a former fetus myself, I believe my right to life supersedes your right to choice." Another group discussed whether nations that colonized Mars would gain territorial rights to the planet. One participant asked whether it was moral to spend tremendous resources on outer space with so many people in the world suffering hunger and poverty. "We had heated discussions without rudeness, without hate," said Bob, a student from Oklahoma City's School of Science and Mathematics.
Andrew, from the John G. Diefenbaker Senior High School in Calgary, Canada, said: "People took totally different stands on the same issue; they had really good arguments on both sides."
To the conference organizers, developing the youngsters' ability to listen to one another is an important educational goal. "This has implications for society," says Bob Asher, president of the Academy and another of the program's founders. "What is needed is a framework for discussions and mutual respect."
Asher and others designed the conference to take in as many perspectives as possible. Discussion groups included representatives from each school, and students helped create the curriculum. Arati, a student from the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, described the format of the ethics workshop:We have discussions, and we are all equal with the leader. You think something is obvious, but then it turns out everyone has different ideas. We had a two-hour discussion on whether you have an obligation to make a contribution to society. Some said you do, some said you have to do what is good for yourself.
In the pluralistic spirit that pervaded the conference, members of the respective faiths gathered for an ecumenical worship service on a Sunday morning. (The organizers hadn't planned for worship time but canceled a study workshop to accommodate public demand.) All listened as a representative of each faith in turn read a devotional passage from his or her scriptures. Many participants felt that there was more in common than different among the faiths.
A Pluralistic Curriculum
Pluralism is one of the guiding principles of the Academy, which Asher calls "the most integrated school in Israel." Its 183 students are immigrants and native Israelis, religious and secular Jews, Moslems, Christians, and Druze and Bedouin Arabs, from more than 90 communities in Israel. This is truly remarkable in Israel, whose social fabric is becoming alarmingly fragmented. "Here everyone is part of a minority," Asher says.
Amram explained why he developed the curriculum as an international effort, rather than beginning with the much easier task of working locally:I wanted this to be a global effort . . . to show that despite differences of religion, culture, and tradition, we all deal with issues that are basic to the human experience. I thought there was a powerful message saying that certain things cross borders and touch on basic human concerns.
Using broad curricular outlines, the 10 schools chose different ways to explore questions of ethics. They considered the ethical dimensions of topics ranging from technology to the classics: Cloning of humans, colonizing Mars, and cross-species organ transplants, at one extreme, and "the universal values found in Greek tragedies," "how the chemical elements got their names," and "the importance of giving credit to the academic work of others," at the other extreme.
Howard Gardner helped develop the curriculum. In a recent letter to Amram, Gardner wrote:Much of Western civilization has done an effective job of separating out the cognitive and rational from any sense of ethics or personal responsibility. This separation . . . has gone too far, and in many places has resulted in a citizenry that—individually and collectively—sees little relationship between the enhancement of skills, on the one hand, and the sense of responsibility for the consequences of one's actions, on the other. In a post-Cold War world . . . there are few issues of greater importance than the imperative to merge the realms of cognitive achievement and ethical and social responsibility.
The project has three stages. First, the participating schools taught ethics and their application to various subjects in selected 11th grade classes for one school year.
Second, representatives of the schools participated in the Jerusalem conference to share their work and to engage in workshops to assess the curriculum, make changes, and produce a handbook with guidelines for its continued use.
In the third stage, now underway, the participating schools continue the project, and disseminate it to two or three additional schools in their vicinity.
Organizers hope students will learn to think about the consequences of their actions and develop a sense of responsibility toward others. Amram concluded:I tell my students, you can become a doctor and open a private practice and make a lot of money. Or you can become a doctor and apply yourself to the problems of humanity . . . like finding a cure for cancer or AIDS. Both doctors probably have the same skills. So what's the difference between them? The difference is in the soul, in the desire to leave something behind. . . . I don't live on an island. I am not cut off from my environment. As society has given to me, I want to give something back to society.
