The View From Here:
Lynne Fukuda
(stay tuned to next issue)

In the Beginning

Dan Lukiv, M.Ed.
English and Creative Writing
McNaughton Centre, Quesnel, BC, Canada
E-mail: lukivdan@shaw.ca

1.
O luminaries of
Night and day
And seeds of dry land,
Awake to the breath
Of lungs and love.

2.
O gold and gum
And stone, and spray
So rainless, so warm
For bone and flesh.

3.
O image—
Is it really true
That you felt naked,
That you won’t die,
That cherubs block
Your way with
Blades of fire?

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Standardized Achievement Within Florida Title I Schools:
Longitudinal Analysis of Third-Grade Performance

Wendy B. Dickinson, Ph.D.
Liberal Arts Program
Ringling School of Art and Design
E-mail: wdickins@rsad.edu

Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie, Ph.D., P.G.C.E., F.S.S.
Professor
College of Education
Sam Houston State University
E-mail: tonyonwuegbuzie@aol.com

The majority of states in the United States currently are using what are termed “high stakes tests,” which students must pass in order to graduate from high school (Bishop, 2002). This is particularly the case in the state of Florida, in which the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) is used. According to the Florida Department of Education (2004a), the FCAT arose from an attempt by educators in Florida to improve the educational achievement of students. The primary objective of the FCAT is to assess students’ high-order cognitive skills represented in the Sunshine State Standards (SSS) in Reading, Writing, Mathematics, and Science. As such, the SSS portion of FCAT is a criterion-referenced test. The secondary objective is to compare the reading and mathematics performance levels of students in Florida to levels of students across the nation using a norm-referenced test.

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What Can We Teach When We Teach Ethics?

Carla R. Payne, PhD
Professor of Graduate Studies
Union Institute & University (retired)
Community College of Vermont
E-mail: paynec@fairpoint.net

Introduction

What can philosophers teach when they teach ethics? The greatly increased recent popularity of ethics courses seems to carry the implication that more instruction in that subject can make a moral difference, at a time when instances of corruption in high places have probably contributed to a general sense that we are ethically deficient. These courses usually fall within the philosophy department, but what can philosophers actually offer in this area? There is an essential equivocation in the stated purposes for which some ethics courses are included in college curricula, as well as problems with their content and the methods by which progress toward their objectives are to be evaluated.

Many students take ethics courses as required parts of pre-professional curricula, and others take them merely to satisfy humanities requirements, but some students clearly look to learn how to “be good,” or fear to discover that they are not. Most descriptions for basic courses restrict themselves to offering an introduction to critical analysis of ethical theories and their application to situational cases, but there are others which suggest that moral improvement or growth is a course objective. Here they are inconsistent with recent philosophical practice; in the long shadow of the “Meno,” and in the age of meta- studies, philosophers generally eschew the notion that “virtue” is a kind of knowledge that they can teach. It is true that even in examining the implications of ethical theory for decision-making, one acknowledges that ethics is not simply another branch of philosophy, because decisions belong to the practical realm, but this would not justify the return to a didactic of values in a philosophy course. There are problems with both the content and methodologies of courses which aim at ethical improvement or are normative in intent; there are also other questions associated with the assumption that developing “critical thinking” ability will influence behavior, or at least “decision-making,” in an ethically positive way. What outcomes, then, can reasonably be expected from an introductory philosophy course in ethics? The stated objectives of several such courses are examined in this paper, as well as some of the ambiguities and issues that are inherent in them. An attempt is made to establish the reasonable expectations we may have in teaching ethics as philosophers.

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