As a part of my collegiate career, I took the mandated Ethics & Value class last spring. I wasn’t looking forward to it before I took it, and I look back on it as being a generally useless class. Studying lines of philosophical thoughts boiled human ethics and values down to this: justification. It wasn’t about whether something was good or bad, right or wrong, but what made you classify it as such. It was Law School for the appeals court of Life: I wasn’t anymore ethical after taking the class than before, because it didn’t tell me what was right or wrong.
Why aren’t we teaching students what is right and wrong? If one more person tells me “Do what works for you” I’m going to lose it. My generation: a third of us are on antidepressants, half come from broken homes, and all of us just want to feel wanted. Why aren’t we being taught really useful ethics and values, and not just “here is what a minimalist would do”, “a hedonist would think this”?
We’ll be running this earth in the next 15 years. Give us some clear demarcations between right and wrong! We’re taught not to be afraid, but to stand up for things.
Why won’t any of our teachers or professors take a stance on something? Why won’t
the university pick something to defend? What my generation is really being taught is
to straddle the fence of life, and teach our children too as well. We’re being told not to condemn any train of thought, so how can we admire any? If there is no wrong, there can be no right. If there is no right, then one way of living is no better than any other. Laws become pointless; you can’t condemn a lawless life just because it’s different than how you choose to live.
In my experience, no professor at UVU has ever gotten in front of a class and made a definitive stance on a moral issue. If people in authority, and universities—which are supposed to be teaching us—don’t want to stand up for their beliefs and teach them to us, why should I have any?
Nathan Evans / HEX Writer
