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Teaching Ethics
is a website
dedicated to promoting a free exchange of ideas among secondary school
educators. It was set up and is maintained by Anthony Tiatorio.
Mr. Tiatorio served for over 30 years as the Social Studies Department Head
in the Mansfield, Massachusetts public schools where he wrote and
implemented many successful ethics education lesson plans for social studies
classes in grades 6 to 12.
Mr. Tiatorio questions the wisdom of pursuing a virtues or character
education model for teaching ethics and calls for a history based, critical
thinking, approach. Through Teaching
Ethics he offers to share his work and hopes to create a
clearinghouse where teachers can contribute their own concerns, experiences
and creativity in this area.
The basic postings on Teaching Ethics
are two ETHICS WORKBOOKS* for
students in grades 7 through 12. These workbooks present ways to embed
ethics education into standard world and American history programs. They are
offered as a modest first step toward building a database in this area. The
workbooks, and the accompanying teacher’s guides, may be printed and
duplicated by individual teachers for use with their classes. Supplementary
active student involvement strategies developed by teachers to implement
ideas in the Ethics Workbooks are also posted and are free to schools.
Duplication
for sale or for any other commercial purpose is prohibited.
The Ethics Workbook I: World
History was written
for younger students in typical secondary world history classes in grades 7
– 10 as a first introduction to ethical issues. It treats a wide array of
topics and simplifies the thinking of the most common ethicists and
philosophers across the span of civilization. It is a primer and pursues no
thesis.
The Ethics Workbook II: American
History was written
for older students in typical secondary American history classes in grades
11 – 12. It examines the major conflicts and turning points in American
History from an evolutionary ethics perspective. It pursues the thesis that
human beings are driven by an innate ethical sense that results in
predictable patterns of behavior and that until this is understood, reason
cannot function as a reliable guide to ethical decision making.
"I hope that teachers will try
the ideas included in the ETHICS WORKBOOKS, and will share their
experiences through the Teaching Ethics
website. The ETHICS WORKBOOKS are only a start toward building a
collection of cognitive lesson plans in this discipline."
*All
manuscript files on the Teaching Ethics website are in
PDF format.
For optimum viewing, download the most recent edition of
Adobe Acrobat Reader.
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