Ethics in Education

Last Sunday's NYtimes Magazine was the annual 'School Issue'. One of the major articles described an alternative public school in Washington D.C. where inner-city kids in grades 6 -12 not only attend school but live in dormitories Sunday through Thursday night. Students at the SEED School must balance their academic week lives - full of strict rules and a ban on Facebook, TV and MySpace - with their weekend lives back in their urban poor neighborhoods. Students at SEED post remarkable graduation rates and far higher test scores than their D.C. public school counterparts. These students are chosen via yearly lottery, provided their parents have gone through the required paperwork and evaluations.

Critics claim the high costs associated with the school ($35, 000 per student) and the means by which they select students is unfair. The argument is that SEED manages to "skim the cream of the inner-city youth," by selecting only from the pool of students whose parents are functional and educated enough to be able to properly fill out the paperwork. Additionally, some believe that large sum of money per student would be better spent helping to improve ALL D.C. schools across the board, and ideally, to improve the neighborhoods and homes themselves so that students wouldn't have to escape to a boarding school environment in the first place.

So...ethical? If you were to look at Jonathan Haidt's theory of moral "flower pots," it would be easy to see where people would line up politically on this issue. Liberals, viewing ethics strictly from a fairness and caring perspective would, I believe, heavily endorse the school and its vision (President Obama has called it a "true success story"). To them, SEED is protecting these kids from the dangers of their neighborhoods and trying to educate them to a level whereby they could be equal other students who have the privilege of good schools, stable homes and communal support. Conservatives, however, see 5 different areas of ethics that they believe in equally according to Haidt. Not only do they take fairness and care into consideration, they also focus on respect for tradition, purity and loyalty to your group. In that case, the school's completely nontraditional mission would be a turnoff. Perhaps some would argue that sending children away from their family in order to teach them is also against tradition as well as breaking up the pureness of the family.

I think the school has an interesting concept. SEED now has a school in Baltimore and has plans to open in other cities. So far, the statistics have backed up the founders expectations and more and more parents are entering their children in the lottery every year. Maybe Ayn Rand would take the argument that the school is stealing the best and brightest and turn it on its head, saying that these kids are the "superpeople" and they have earned this right and will succeed. Whether it is the greatest good for the greatest number is debatable... the money could be going towards more kids. At the same time, these students that graduate and go on to do well in college could return to their neighborhoods and use their knowledge and experiences to help future kids. Regardless of where your ethics fall, I think the SEED School is worth keeping an eye on to see if the program catches on nationally.