Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

This philosophy student thinks that the solution to the problem of student cheating is to require them to take . . . an ethics course. Now that I've stopped laughing, let me say a couple of things. First, students will cheat on their ethics exams. Second, what does he think goes on in an ethics course? I don't teach my students right from wrong, good from bad, just from unjust. I introduce them to the main normative ethical theories: act utilitarianism, rule utilitarianism, egoism, Kantianism, contractarianism, conventionalism, Rossian pluralism, relativism. A student who is determined to cheat will come out of the course with five justifications for cheating, whereas previously he or she had none. The point I'm making is that you can't teach right and wrong. All you can do is get students to think about the basis for judgments of right and wrong.