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Teaching Ethics in a Not-So-Ivory Tower of Babel

Using Health Politics as a Text

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 May 2020

William P. Brandon  and
William T. Bluhm
William P. Brandon
Affiliation:
Seton Hall University
William T. Bluhm
Affiliation:
University of Rochester
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Extract

Our course differs from most comparable courses in ethics and public policy because we attract students from widely disparate programs. at the university of rochester, we put into the same small seminar master's students in a very quantitative public policy program dominated by microeconomics, community medicine students from the preventive medicine department's master's program in the medical school, selected undergraduate upperclassmen, and nursing students in nurse-clinician master's programs.

The faculty also have different backgrounds. One has taught politica philosophy in the Political Science Department for many years; the other (who had a primary appointment in the Preventive Medicine Department and a joint appointment in Political Science) taught health politics and policy, but had previously completed considerable training in philosophy and political theory.

Type
A Course in Ethics and Public Policy
Information
News for Teachers of Political Science , Volume 43 , Fall 1984 , pp. 8 - 11
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1984

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Footnotes

Ed. Note: Course Plans and Bibliographies are welcome as submissions to the NEWS.

References

1. One Ph.D. candidate in Political Science and one in Nursing also enrolled. The course carried numbers in the Public Policy Program, Political Science, and Preventive Medicine (in the Medical School). Although the course requirements did not vary, the academic bureaucracy gave undergraduates 8 credits (the equivalent of two normal one-semester courses); political scientists and policy analysts, 4 credits; and those enrolled in the Preventive Medicine course, 3.

2. Often students seem to flounder about looking for fruitful essay subjects. This wastes time and creates needless anxiety.

3. Callahan, Daniel and Bok, Sisela, The Teaching of Ethics in Higher Education: A Report by the Hastings Center, “The Teaching of Ethics I” (Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Hastings Center, 1980), pp. 26-7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Although medicalization seems to be especially important for students who will work in the health care system, this sort of material is also relevant for policy analysts who will never again work on health issues. Such questions were raised at a level of generality that makes narrow professional interests recede and the nature of the society and its public debates come into focus. Although the work of Ivan lllich probably appears only rarely on reading lists in public policy, requiring Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health is also justified by the fact that in a number of other books lllich applies the same analytical tools to other facts of modern life. Thus, the kind of thinking that we hoped to promote is highly relevant for the thoughtful policy analyst even if the specifics of the issue change.

5. Daniel Callahan and Sisela Bok, Teaching of Ethics, pp. 62-5. The quotation is found on p. 64; see also Fleishman, Joel L. and Payne, Bruce L., Ethical Dilemmas, and the Education of Policymakers, “Teaching of Ethics, VII,” (Hastings-on-Hudson, NY: Hastings Center, 1980), p. 13.Google Scholar The Hastings Center's studies of ethics teaching in higher education are published in two general monographs and some 11 volumes devoted to the problems of teaching ethics in specific kinds of educational programs. The meetings on this subject are continuing with groups currently studying ethics teaching in nursing and in journalism.

6. Daniel Callahan and Sisela Bok, Teaching of Ethics, pp. 7 1 , 73, 52-3, 62-3.

7. Ibid., pp. 26, 34-5.

8. Although we question the wisdom of teaching ethics on a profession-by-profession basis, we believe that each profession should encourage professional faculty to do research on relevant ethical questions and professional journals should be eager to publish articles on applied ethics.

9. Hastings Center Report, 10, No. 3 (June 1980): 32-40.

10. Beauchamp, Tom L. and Childress, James F., Principles of Biomedical Ethics(N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1978).Google Scholar

11. Daniel Callahan and Sisela Bok, Ethics Teaching, pp. 67, 68.

12. Roelofs, H. Mark, Ideology and Myth in American Politics(Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1976).Google Scholar

13. Hastings Center Report, 11, No. 6 (December 1981): 31-39.

14. Ibid., p. 31.

15. Ibid., p. 37

16. “The Right to Health and the Right to Health Care“; The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 1979, Vol. 4, No. 2.

17. See Maclntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, Ind.: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1981).Google Scholar