This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: How important is it that kids learn to tell right from wrong? Businessman and former university chancellor David Gonski recently called for ethics classes to be rolled out in all Australian schools to boost social cohesion.
Currently, ethics does not get dedicated time in the school curriculum. Some might argue children don't need school ethics classes if they already learn ethics from their parents and other adults in their lives. But our study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, shows that formal ethics education can make a difference.
In the largest-ever review on the subject, we found teaching ethics can improve students' ability to reason through ethical issues and prioritize doing the right thing. Ethics has been part of the national Australian Curriculum for more than a decade. It sits alongside literacy, numeracy and four other general capabilities as a "general capability." This means it's a cross-curriculum skill every Australian child is supposed to learn in all subjects.
So, in theory, ethics education is the responsibility of all teachers, even when teaching mathematics, art or biology. In practice, no one is responsible for teaching these skills. Australian research has found even teachers who value general capabilities, such as ethics, struggle to teach them explicitly.
This is because the focus is on what gets tested. In turn, this means "the intentions of the Australian Curriculum […] are not being realized." In most Australian states, the only structured ethics offering in schools is during religious instruction. But religious instruction is optional, and families who want a secular alternative are often left without one.
We synthesized 92 randomized controlled trials—the most rigorous form of evidence in education. Together, the studies involved 12,693 students from elementary school through university. The studies covered 20 countries, including Australia, and spanned nearly five decades.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
