The Ethics of the Five Pillars in Schools

This week, I’ve decided to discuss a scenario that I first stumbled upon a few months ago. The reason for the delay? In school I’ve been learning a lot about Islam lately, and this article discussed an ethical dilemma that is very much at the core of Islamic and Muslim influences and how they are treated in schools.

The article is about a school in Kansas that happened to have an interesting decoration hanging on its walls on the first day of school. In the main hallway, the school had displayed a  paper cut out graphic of the five pillars of Islam, the foundational rules of the Muslim faith. Displaying the Five Pillars is unusual in a school setting, let alone in Kansas which is hardly home to a large Muslim population. Soon enough, pictures of the Pillars made it to the internet, and parents and conservatives stirred up a huge controversy about the display. The school eventually chose to take down the decoration, which presents us with this week’s ethical dilemma.

Of course, the ethical issues with this situation are whether or not the school should have put the Five Pillars display up in the first place as well as whether or not they should have removed it. Those who claim that the display should never have been up in the first place may claim that this is strictly an issue of secularism in schools, but I see this as a particularly Islam-based controversy. The Kansas school has several other religious displays up around the school, including a large painting of the Last Supper, which have never been disputed. This is beyond a religion-in-schools ethical scenario, it is a specifically Islamic based one.

Proponents of the display claim that learning about world religions is a part of the overall school curriculum, and that the Pillars display was not meant to endorse Islam to its students. They also cite the Last Supper painting and point out that a display of the Five Pillars should be no more controversial. The school claims that it is not trying to convert any students to Islam, ad the students stand to greatly benefit from an exposure to multiple religions and the cultures surrounding them.

Those who oppose the display argue that it is unethical to expose students to the display because it may make students uncomfortable. Religions is a uniquely controversial subject for good reason; it is at the core of many people's values and beliefs. There may be students who walk into school on the first day and feel that the Five Pillars display threatens their beliefs. Furthermore, the student's parents may feel that the display conflicts with everything they have tried to teach their children, and may not appreciate a school exposing their children to these influences.

The Kansas school took down the Five Pillars display after to internet controversy, but claims that it intends to re-post the display when the school covers the Islam unit of its world religions curriculum later in the year. Do you guys think this is the right decision?

Ethics of the Canned Food Drive

Recently, I've encountered an ethical dilemma in my own life regarding one of the most indisputably positive events hosted by my high school: a canned food drive. The  drive was a competition between classes to determine which class could collect the most canned food to donate to the local food pantry. The food collected would be graded on a point system, with cans under 5 oz being worth 1 point, canned vegetables and such being worth 2 points, and canned meats and such being worth 3 points. The winner would receive a victory breakfast and the food pantry would receive enough cans to be well-stocked for the holiday season. It was a very clever and important annual event.

With one day left to contribute cans, my class was neck and neck with another class for the first place position. We had one last night to gather cans and rally to beat the other class, so we all pitched in money and a few of us went on a shopping trip to try to get enough points to come out on top. However, after we arrived at the grocery store and crunched some numbers, we were surprised to find out what the highest point-to-dollar ratio item actually was: soda pop.

At 2 points per canned drink and only $10 per 24 cans, soda was undoubtedly the most valuable item in terms of points. This is where the ethical dilemma arose: would it be ethically wrong to spend all of our money on soda to maximize our points in the competition?

The major ethical obstacle we encountered was simple: although it may be valuable in terms of points, soda is among the least nutritionally valuable items we could possibly donate. Although it was listed as a valid item in the food drive competition, in reality soda was of limited value to any hungry person, and it seemed morally wrong to buy soda when the money could be spent buying more nutritionally-dense foods such as canned vegetables.

However, as a class we had already spent a huge amount buying other foods for the drive, including a variety of canned vegetables, meats, pastas, soups, and other nutritionally valuable items. In light of this, spending a fraction of the money on soda seemed much less egregious, and since nothing else came close to soda in terms of point value, we would be giving our class the best chance at winning if we maximized our soda purchase.

Plus, who were we to decide that the people that utilized the food pantries wouldn't be interested in soda over canned green beans?  In donating to the food pantry we were indirectly deciding what these families should eat. Personally, I know that I enjoy having a soda every once and a while, and my quality of life would be decreased without such an indulgence. From this perspective, problems arise via the conscious decision to not donate any soda and therefore indirectly claim that families using the food pantry should not get to drink soda, even though we ourselves may choose to do so.

In the end, we decided to compromise. We ended up spending a small fraction of our money on soda (which still managed to buy a lot of cans) and spent a vast majority of the money on more nutritional food like canned vegetables. We didn't achieve as many points as we could have had we only purchased soda, but we still managed to get a lot of points and also contributed more nutritional value to our food donation.

The Ethics of Affirmative Action

Source: psmag.com

As a high school senior currently dealing with the stress of college application season, I thought it would be fitting this week to take a look at an issue that have caused controversy in the college admissions field for decades: affirmative action policies.

Affirmative action, a policy designed to account for the inequality that minorities deal with in a competitive admissions environment, was first installed by President John F. Kennedy In 1961 via Executive Order 10925. The exact wording of the document instructed federal contractors to take “affirmative action to ensure that applicants are treated equally without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” The policy itself was a huge step forward for the Civil Rights movement and one of the first major policies designed to fight inequality in the competitive job market, but many fear that in the college admissions environment, the policy has simply become about filling quotas.

While there are many angles and perspectives to address about this issue, I, of course, would like to examine it from an ethical one.

Those supportive affirmative action policies argue ardently that the policies are necessary in order to help correct the effects of decades of inequality that has existed in the country. They assert that although racism has lessened in this country and laws have become more equal, minorities are still suffering the aftereffects of past inequalities especially in terms of educational disadvantages. They assert it would be unethical to ignore the disadvantages that these minorities are still confronting, and that not taking action via a policy the promotes minorities to be educated would be an unequal approach that would fuel the disadvantaged trend that minorities are trying to shake off even today.

However, there are many who argue that affirmative action’s policies are not effective in helping disadvantaged minorities, and in fact, are highly unfair to non-minorities. Opponents assert that the ones being helped by these policies are not the minorities that come from truly disadvantaged backgrounds, but privileged individuals who just happen to be of a certain race. Therefore, they argue, affirmative action is not making the college admissions process a more equal playing ground. Further, they are that it is unethical to force non-minority students (namely white males) to bear the burden of decades of inequality by being purposely disadvantaged themselves.

In the end, no one is arguing that affirmative action is a perfect policy. Even supporters admit that it does a flawed job of helping to bring inequality to the truly disadvantaged groups of students. However, the foundation of the argument comes down to whether or not affirmative action does more good than harm--the core of any good ethical dilemma.

GSA and the Coffee Shop Scenario

           A few weeks ago, on the Monday before the Homecoming dance, my high school sponsored an event that led to a lot of controversy. The event, called Paint the Town, involved various clubs affiliated with the high school painting the unique murals on the windows of local businesses based on the homecoming theme (America) in a sort of art contest. On the Thursday before the dance, all the windows were judged by a committee, and winners were chosen for various categories. The controversy arose because one of one club’s window  was erased before it even got the chance to be judged.

The club was the Gay Straight Alliance, who had created a rainbow flag to symbolize their club’s mission as well as go with the patriotic theme. GSA had been assigned a window at a certain nationally franchised coffee shop, which decided to wash away the GSA’s rainbow flag mural after receiving a complaint from a customer. This caused a huge up rise in our town, with a majority of residents speaking up in defense of the GSA and shaming the coffee shop for its actions.

There are a lot of ways to discuss this event, but obviously, my favorite is the ethical approach.

From the GSA’s perspective, this action was entirely unethical. Their club was making a harmless, non-invasive statement promoting peace and equality as part of a school-sponsored event that this coffee shop had agreed to participate in. From their perspective, the shop had no right to erase their window after already agreeing to participate, and by doing so, insulted and alienated a large demographic of equality-advocating people. If GSA had known that the store may take this action, they may well have requested to paint their mural at some other business.

However, in every interesting ethical scenario, there are multiple sides, and it is important to examine the options the coffee shop had in this situation.

On one hand, the shop had the option of erasing the GSA’s window. Ethically, this would mean taking unfair action (backing out of their agreement to participate in PTT and therefore disqualifying the GSA from the contest) against the GSA and potentially alienating the larger LGBT community. However, the other option of not erasing the window, had consequences as well. Only one customer spoke out against the window, but there are potentially many more customers who were made uncomfortable by the window who simply never spoke up. Even though the rainbow mural was a peaceful statement, it was still carrying the strong implications of a very politically charged issue, and it is very possible that it managed to offend some people. For all this shop knew, these same people could have caused a controversy of their own by speaking out against the shop for keeping up the window. Do the opinions of the people who were made uncomfortable matter less than those of the GSA? This was the ethical dilemma the coffee shop struggled with, and in the end it chose former option.

The coffee shop itself has no homophobic leanings, and in fact they have two openly gay employees working there. In response to the controversy they caused by erasing the window, they have had several corporate representatives come to town to explain that this action was not in accordance with national policy that the shop itself did not mean to offend the LGBT community. In the end, this event is a great example of how there is not always a consequence free action in ethical scenarios, and that choices can always be messy, but then again, that’s what makes ethics such an interesting topic in the first place.

Sources:
http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/Northbrook-Caribou-washes-off-GSA-display-/44554.html
http://northbrook.suntimes.com/news/cariboufolo-NBS-10102013:article

Westgate Mall Collapse Scenario

This week, the ethical crises that caught my attention is something that happened in Nairobi, Kenya. If you weren't aware, a few weeks ago there was a terrorist attack on the Westgate mall in Nairobi by Somali terrorist group al-Shabab. The group, intending to send a political message to the Kenyan government, held hostages in the mall during a four day stand-off that ended with dozens of deaths. This event was tragic and very discussion-worthy, but the topic of this post will not be of the attack itself, but an action that was taken by the Kenyan military responders-the "good guys".

Several days into the stand-off, the Kenyan military began to fired rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) into the mall in an attempt to stop the terrorists and bring an end to the stand-off. The RPGs created huge holes in the walls of the mall. On the third day of the stand off, three floors of the Westage collapse entirely. Although an official investigation of the collapse has not yet been conducted, it is highly likely that the RPGs weakened the mall structure and caused the collapse.

My favorite ethical dilemmas to examine are not the theoretical scenarios used in ethics classrooms and universities; they are the real-life, ethical struggles that people are forced into because of difficult situations such as this attack. This decision was the Kenyan military's to make, and the options they were presented with were difficult: use the RPGs to attempt to subdue the terrorists and free the hostages while risking a collapse that may kill hostages anyway, or hold off on the RPGS and risk a longer stand-off that may put more hostages in peril.

The Kenyan responders decided that the RPGs were necessary even facing the potential collapse and loss of life it could be responsible for. As of now, it is not confirmed how many, if any, lives were lost as a direct result of the collapse, but what is for certain is that the attack has ended and many lives have been saved as a result of the overall actions of these responders. Exactly how may of those lives can be attributed to the RPGs and the collapse will never been known for sure.

Finding a $50 Bill and Welcoming You to my Blog

Imagine this: you have just finished grocery shopping and are in the parking lot trying to find your car, when you see a $50 bill lying on the ground by your feet. You bend down to pick up the bill, and turn in it your hands making sure it’s real. It’s real. What do you do? Do you walk back into the store and turn it in to the lost and found? Do you keep it and walk to your car? Do you wait there hoping its owner will return looking for it?

Most people like to say that they would immediately head back into the store and turn the money in, but there are also many people who wouldn’t be so quick to give the money back in real life. The only ways to approach this dilemma are considering the options and weighing the consequences.

As a high school student, these kinds of ethical dilemmas are especially interesting to me. As someone who currently spends most of my waking hours in a controlled environment like a school, I am bombarded with ethical decisions every day of my life, whether it be the opportunity to copy a homework assignment from a friend or the option to take a shortcut on a cross country practice run. The consequences of these actions may not be severe, but the actions themselves present opportunities for me to analyze important aspects of my own character. How strong are my principles? How badly do I want to succeed? What do I place importance on?

That’s really what this blog is about. The value to considering ethical dilemmas likes these is not finding the “right answer” or even figuring out what you would actually do when placed in an similar situation; it’s about evaluating options and discovering what you and the society around you places value on.  For someone who places a lot of value in having strong principles, it would make sense to turn the money into the lost and found. However, someone who values practicality may decide to take the money believing that anyone who would be careless enough to drop $50 without noticing it must not really need it and will definitely not be returning to the lost and found to find it.

Neither of these responses is necessarily the wrong answer, and both situations can be made more complicated by adding context. What if when the first person turns the money into the lost and found, it is claimed by someone who it does not belong to anyway? What if the second person who took the money donates it all to charity on the way home? Now which choice is the “right” answer? It is still unclear, but the context has accomplished two things: 1) has established even more about the two people’s character and 2) made this dilemma a much more interesting scenario to analyze.

This blog will be a place to examine the relevant ethical dilemmas of the time as well as their contexts. I of course, have no real authority in the ethics field, but hope that I will be able to provide a unique perspective on these issues and hopefully inform and interest you with as many ethical dilemmas as I can assemble here.