Ethics and ethics education: professional and curricular best practice

Ethical thinking can be done in a variety of ways and draw quite different conclusions. People of upright intention disagree about the 'moral ought' associated with particular issues, and difference is evident along several lines', .;. including, most importantly, those of culture. Taylor contrasts the values positions of ancient and modern cultures, while King spoke eloquently of the challenge of drawing the various cultures of contemporary USA together in a common push for justice. Charlesworth suggests that, beyond the most primary values related to autonomy and justice, it is impossible for the modern multicultural society to come to a consensus on most of the practical values that guide everyday living. These are important issues for teachers, especially in multicultural settings. While it is beyond the scope of this raper to provide a full analysis of cultural difference in values perspectives, it may be helpful to identify a number of clearly different ethical cultures which, history shows, have managed to survive and thrive even in the same society. Here I will draw deliberately on the most prominent ethical cultures of the most important ancient society for those searching out the roots of Western thought, namely, the society of ancient Greece. In this sense, the analysis is limited to a Western perspective. The exemplar nonetheless underlines the point that different ethical cultures have existed and competed throughout recorded history, and have done so even within apparently homogeneous societies. In other words, multi-ethnicity is only one feature of multi-culture, albeit a particularly defining one in our own time