Should public schools teach students ethics and personal values?
This is a tricky subject.
On one hand, students spend a good amount of time at school throughout their life, starting since being tiny little munchkins, making school an ideal place to teach things such as ethics. However, ethics and personal values are just that--personal. What one might think is ethical, another may not. What one may take to be a personal value, another may not. Furthermore, this could end up encroaching on religious rights as well because certain personal values and ethics are focused on according to one's religious beliefs.
In a way, certain ethics and personal values are being taught to students already. For example, don't cheat, treat others with respect, hold yourself to certain standards, and thinking ahead for the future can all be considered ethics and personal values, and I think this is enough for public schools to be teaching.
Do I think public schools should specifically educate students on ethics? No. There are already enough things students must be taught throughout the day, and it is not the school's place to educate students on things that do not pertain to academics by taking time out of the day to do so. By awaring students that cheating is not okay, and other lessons such as that, it should suffice.
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