The Teaching Ethics by Fiction Method
Narrative Treaching Strategies To Teach Moral and Ethical Reasoning
Feb 20, 2009
Teachers should consider having students use fiction writing concepts to analyze newspaper stories to draw out discussions of moral and ethical concerns.
In a 2008 Journal of Academic Ethics article entitled "Using Creative Writing Techniques to Enhance the Case Study Method in Research and Ethics Courses" Tim Atkinson explains that setting, plot, character and conflict are good tools for looking at ethical dilemmas from a number of dimensions.
Setting as a Teaching Strategy
Fictional settings are the same as real settings. Settings are where the action takes place. Settings can be schools, businesses, governments or communities.
Students should be encouraged to read a newspaper article on a current event involving ethics or law, such as R. Allen Stanford or Bernard L. Madoff. They should then describe the setting and whether the setting itself created a condition of ethical or non-ethical behavior.
Then ask questions: Were the people encouraged by the environment to act in a damaging way? Could the environment be modified to keep people from breaking the laws?
Plots as Instructional Teaching
Plots are the same as real plots. Plots can be, "to get rich", "to win", or "to end a bad relationship". Students should take the newspaper article and determine the plot.
A perfect example is an article in the January 24, 2009, New York Times entitled, "The Telented Mr. Madoff. The article describes not only the setting, but the plot and the character.
This exercise can spark students to ask: How many factors were involved in causing this person to act as they did?
Characters for Ethical Questions
Characters are the same as real people. Using the newspaper article, students could ask each other, "What is it about this person that caused them to fail?" People make decisions based on the circumstances and sometimes for reasons of power or control.
Teachers can begin to tie the previous factors together and consider, "Did the person fail because his environment was not well controlled, and did this environment encourage his plot?" Were other characters hurt? Did other characters act in an unethical way?
Conflict as a Teaching Strategy
Conflicts in fiction are often the same as they are in real life. They are a combination of character motive, or plot, the character's setting or environment, and finally the character's own internal and moral development.
The character acting against a set of rules or behaviors causes a conflict that has repercussions within the setting and outside of the setting.
Using their newspaper articles, students should be able to describe the conflict and express it in terms of character, environment and plot.
Conclusion
In the end the teacher should have a discussion about how all the factors were involved in creating the ethical dilemmas in the story.
The teacher may ask, "Now that you know about the factors involved, what can be done to prevent people from acting this way? Is it society's fault for allowing it to happen or is it simply a breakdown in the psyche of the main character, who, through his or her own selfish plotting, brought themselves down.
The answers may be surprising, then again, maybe not.
References
Atkinson, TN. "Using Creative Writing Techniques to Enhance the Case Study Method in Research and Ethics Courses". Journal of Academic Ethics, 6(33), 33-50. (2008)
