Early Warning Signs of Ethical Disaster

by Shelly London

It seems that every major disaster is followed by almost pro forma revelations of danger signs that should have alerted us to the danger but were ignored. We heard those revelations in the aftermath of 9/11 and we’re hearing them now as the BP oil spill takes its place as the worst environmental disaster in American history.

My research into ethics education gives me the uncomfortable feeling that we might be in danger of a collapse in ethical values, not as dramatic perhaps but in its own way as detrimental to America as a terrorist attack or environmental disaster.

Ethical danger signs usually come from adult business and poltical leaders, whose egregious ethical shortcuts often warrant headlines. But I’m more concerned about ethical danger signs among young people, like the one raised for me by an experience shared by a college ethics professor.

This professor told a class of college freshmen about a long-running scandal on the Long Island Railroad, a commuter line connecting New York City with the Long Island suburbs.

Extensive investigative journalism by the New York Times in 2008 revealed that for years almost every employee retiring from the railroad applied for and received occupational disability payments as well as his or her regular pension and retirement benefits. Those results could only indicate that wholesale fraud was taking place, especially since the railroad had won national awards for improving worker safety.

With the full knowledge of management, retiring employees were essentially gaming a complicated system that made unjustified occupational disability benefits a virtual part of their retirement package. Not only were perfectly healthy retirees drawing disability payments from their former employer, they were also using their disabled classification to claim taxpayer-paid benefits. They qualified for free passes at state parks and free access to publicly owned golf courses, which they used with great frequency despite their “disabled” status.

The professor expected outrage from the class at this epidemic of fraud and ethical failure. But the class reacted quite differently. They concluded that if any problem existed, it lay with “the system” that allowed such institutionalized theft of undeserved benefits. As they saw it, the individual retirees had no ethical responsibility at all. They were just dipping into the trough with everybody else.

These college freshmen found no problem with that and saw no failure in ethical values. In fact, more than one student expressed the hope that he or she could take advantage of a LIRR style “perk” someday.

Talk about a warning sign! The attitude of these young adults indicated they had reached college age without absorbing the concept of individual ethics and collective responsibility to society. Unfortunately, that attitude is not an aberration. I’ll spare you statistics, and I’ll stipulate that not all kids would react the same way.

Still, those students reflect the danger that the most hovered-over generation in history has been raised in an ethical wilderness — in an environment that emphasizes individual entitlement over individual responsibility.

We owe it to our children and to the future of our society to at least give young people the intellectual ammunition to evaluate life’s choices in terms of ethical values. The warning signs are there. We ignore them at our peril.

Five Start Green Hotels

by Howard Gardner

This spring I was fortunate enough to undertake a round-the-world trip, visiting St Petersburg, Helsinki, Beijing, and Singapore. In each city I was the guest of a local host who booked me a room—and sometimes a suite—at a well regarded hotel. I was treated well and enjoyed myself. But at the same time, I was struck and disturbed by the huge waste in each place. To begin with, the rooms were way too large, sometimes ridiculously so. Such large rooms have to be heated or cooled down, and hotels tend to overcompensate in the least responsible direction. Guests are told that towels and sheets will be reused, but this rule is often not followed. And of course, there are all kinds of disposable goods—soaps, vanity sets, etc.—in every room and these are often changed as a matter of course, even when they are only partially used.

The waste of food is particularly painful. The hotels all feature lavish breakfasts, buffet style. There are dozens of different dishes, which are regularly replenished. In one of the hotels, there were buffet lunches and dinners as well, with yet more dishes to choose from. I don’t want even to think about the amount of food that is thrown away each day—this when so many (indeed, at least one billion persons) go hungry each evening.

These luxury hotels are competing on amenities. I’d like to see them compete on the basis of environmental concerns, wise use of space, and a limited menu with portions on the small side. Why doesn’t the widely admired Four Seasons’ hotel chain start a set of hotels, called Four Seasons Green? And why don’t the competitors come up with their own suite of offerings—Hilton Healthy, Sonesta Sustainability, etc? Of course these hotels ought to be immaculate and have good service, but with the amount of money gained by the aforementioned savings, they could probably charge less than their lavish competitors. At the same time, those of us who can afford to stay—or to be put up at—lavish hotels would be sending the message, that we value the viability of the planet more than we value our own creature comforts.

In this regard, a useful concept is ‘the nudge.’ Currently at such hotels, the default assumption is that people want fresh everything and endless food. Why not set up the hotels in reverse? That is, unless you explicitly ask for new towels and new linens, you won’t get them. Unless you explicitly ask for an outsized, overly heated (or over cooled) room, you won’t get it. And why not throw in or feature a green restaurant, so only those who ask for it get overstuffed meals?

To be sure, there are economy hotels, some of which do attempt to be green. A different headline results when Four Star hotels, serving the rich and the celebrated, adopt these recommendations. Often, inadvertently, even those who favor green policies don’t exemplify them in their own practices. I am not just talking about Al Gore travelling in a private plane. In a conference on climate change that I attended a few years ago, the very same individuals who espoused limits on carbon in the atmosphere travelled in limousines from one hotel to another. Only when those with real choices live and act green all the time, will we have taken important steps toward putting our planetary energy and climate needs in order.

Thoughts about the Summer Institute

by Wendy Fischman

We have just wrapped up our Project Zero annual Summer Institute—when hundreds of educators from all over the world come to Cambridge to learn about Project Zero research and practice methods. It is always an energizing experience for us researchers—it is a reminder for many of us that we are fortunate to do work that is engaging and stimulating, and attendees always make us feel as though it is important and helpful to their own work‚ which is rewarding for us to hear.

Lynn and I taught the GoodWork Toolkit course twice, and we had two very different, very interesting groups. In the first group we had twenty participants, and in the second course, we had nine. Though sometimes, as a presenter, it is energizing to have a large group of participants, the smaller group can be more intimate and sometimes easier to get to know on a more personal level. We followed the same agenda (of course staying flexible to participants’ needs), which is similar to the one posted on this site…. (link pasted below).

In this course and in other presentations and seminars, we have used the narrative of Meg hundreds of times. Meg is an Asian-American actress who is unsure about accepting a role in play that she feels degrades stereotypes of her own race. Interestingly, last week we heard a comment we had never heard before (if you have not yet read this narrative, see the link below). In each of the two different sessions during last week’s institute, a participant suggested that Meg might be in the wrong profession. If her goal is to undermine racial stereotypes, perhaps she should think about becoming an academic, a writer, or a journalist—not an actress. How can she take a role that compromises this goal? Our participants argued that being an actress is not going to satisfy her goal—and that should not be her mission as an actress. What do you think? Do you agree with these two institute participants?

The other tidbit that we learned from this year’s course related to the Value Sort Activity. A participant suggested that it would be interesting to have her peers sort the values in terms of how they think she would sort them. She was interested in how her peers interpret her own values and what is most important in her work. I thought this would be fascinating.

Lastly, one other important note: in addition to being able to sort your values on this site, we now have new and improved Value Sort cards available (for purchase), as well as two new resources: a narrative volume (with some new narratives) and a guidebook (with suggested structure for educators who want to use the GoodWork materials and need some guidance). We are very excited about these revised resources, and look forward to hearing your thoughts about them.

In Search of Corporate Heroes…

by Howard Gardner

In one of my books, published in 2004, I singled out for praise John Browne and BP for its initiative in going ‘beyond petroleum’ and having a flat, transparent organization. And so I fully deserved it when my irreverent son said to me “So, Dad, what about your heroes now?”

In retrospect, I realized that while I had spoken to some BP executives, and read some of their materials, I had relied way too much on the conventional wisdom, and had not at all used any investigative journalist techniques to probe behind the story that BP wanted to tell.

We live in a time of publicity, public relations spin, and it is extremely difficult to find out which of the leaders in any sector who are singled out for praise (or for castigation) really merit these characterizations.

I don’t think we lack any CEO heroes. But I suspect that the true heroes are largely unsung, and prefer to remain that way. They prefer to give credit to others, to remain behind the scenes, to avoid grandiose statements and predictions and promises, and to perform better than anyone expected them. And the ultimate test of these individuals may be the extent to which they plan for an orderly succession, to individuals who share the desire to remain out of the limelight, rather than to attempt to dominate it, and quietly but responsibly, to do good work.

This blog originally appeared in the Washington Post column on leadership.

Children and Good Work

by Susan Larson

Very young children appear to embrace Good Work with greater enthusiasm than their older classmates.

That was one of the surprising conclusions of my recent Sonoma State University Master’s project, “The Peace Crane Project: How Children Can Be Inspired To Do Good Work.” The project’s mission was to: (1) create an environment and provide guidance for children to do good work, (2) provide stimulus and assistance for children to develop their innate artistic abilities, (3) offer an environment and guidance for children to develop their social consciousness, 4) teach children to express their feelings through art-making and (5) honor the extraordinary contribution to world peace by Sadako Sasaki.

This project first saw light in my kindergarten classroom at the Santa Rosa Charter School for the Arts. As a way to pay tribute to victims of 9/11, kindergartners decorated giant pre-folded origami cranes and wrote reflections responding to the prompt, “My wish for the people of the world is…”

The success of the kindergarten 9/11 peace crane art exhibit inspired me to expand this activity to my fourth-through-eighth grade art specialty classes. By folding and decorating origami peace cranes, these older students added their artistic voices to a Japanese tradition that was over one thousand years old. Completed peace cranes became part of a year-long traveling exhibit that ended in Japantown, San Francisco on International Peace Day, August 6th.

To enhance their understanding of the peace crane symbolism, children studied the activism of Sadako Sasaki, who was two years old when the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. Sadako used traditional crane-folding as a way to heal spiritually. She died from leukemia at age twelve. Her activism and bravery encouraged children globally to work together for world peace and inspired my inquiry: “How can children learn to do good work?”

The kindergartners hurled themselves into this project with triumphant abandon. Moreover, their responses were drawn from the heart: concerns about wellness, safety and personal responsibility. Examples: “My wish for the people of the world is for more fireman to help out.” And “My wish for people of the world is bread for everyone.” But eighth graders played back “pop” media-inspired slogans, such as “Peace out!” and “Have a great day every day!”, short-circuiting their hearts. One could chart a descending line of joyful participation, from the kindergartners’ eagerness, to the eighth graders’ conditioned reflexes.

Seiko Fujimoto, international peace activist and Hiroshima bombing survivor, told me, “Children are the hope for peace because their minds are still clear. When children ask for peace it ís different than when adults ask for peace. Kids care more and have more ideas for peace.”

The Peace Crane Project was finally about fusion. For nine years in elementary and middle school, we teach our students about numbers and dates and places. Then on weekends some of the students go to church, temple or synagogue to address their spiritual selves. The twain rarely meet. The project sought to join the two worlds, to help children get in touch with their better angels, to open their lives to the possibility of wonder.

I emerged from this project with a profound sense that children come to earth with a built-in need to do good things for others. Before grown-ups show them all the things they cannot or should not do, they see things purely. They cherish their connection to others and are happy making others happy.