Teaching Ethics

We have been grappling with the issue related to ethics and corporate governance for quite some time now.  Till now we had the luxury of examining incidences of major corporate frauds from a distance and commenting on them in a relatively dispassionate manner, but the Satyam fiasco has brought the severity and urgency of the issue into forefront in our own home ground.

The question is can ethics be taught to students, especially in a business school. Psychologists are of the opinion that moral development of an individual is more or less through by the time he or she is about twelve year old, then on the environment either reinforces of discourages these tendencies. So basically trying to put these 23 plus year old into a class room a trying to teach them morality or even ethics may not be a very fruitful exercise. 

But then should we sit idle and as teacher absolve ourselves from the responsibility and role we have . Some people who have headed institutions which have been known in the country for their high ethical stand rads felt that these ethical values can only be inculcated in them with the help of setting examples which the young people can see and emulate. Examples being set by people around them. And then maybe including some interaction with the world outside through some community development activities, so that young minds get sensitised to issues beyond business.

The issue of ethics and how can it be taught to students is something which has a issue for which there are no easy solution , but then we need to keep thinking and discussing on the issue with the hope that we would reach to the optimal solution  ....

Students beyond Classes

Many a time I have felt that as a teacher one needs to interact and see students outside the classroom environment. Because as a teacher what happens in the classroom is only one dimension of the personality of the student. And many a time one would find the student who remains silent in the class to be very active in activities outside the class. And that helps us break the impression that the teacher might hold about the student. This is especially true in the case of a business school set-up where apart from class room one also needs to be active in other sphere of activities apart from classroom. Though there would be a large section which would be active in both classroom and extra curricular, but then when one sees those who prefer not to speak much in the class to be active outside....Maybe more important for teacher who are just starting off with their careers than experienced ones