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June 27, 2008

Exclusive: Are America’s Core Values Missing in Education?

Colonel Kenneth Allard (US Army, ret.)

Should professors in a tax-supported educational institution be fired for moral failings, like sexual harassment or accessing pornography on school-owned computers?

High above the chambers of the U.S. Supreme Court, punctilious in matters separating church and state, a sculpted frieze honors history's greatest lawgivers. Solon of Athens, codifier of Greek laws, gazes down upon the justices in company with Lycurgus of Sparta, who believed that retreat from battle was the greatest of crimes. Close to them is Solomon, who in Proverbs 14:34 offered this timeless advice, "Godliness makes a nation great. But sin is a reproach to any people."

According to the Pew Forum, more than 90% of Americans believe in God, so most of us would probably find it easy to agree with Solomon. (Spartan ethics were recently eclipsed by the new morality of MoveOn.org which, especially in its newest "Alex" commercial, celebrates our latter-day preference for fighting wars with Other People's Kids.)

Beliefs are one thing but outrage, like politics, tends to be local because our moral compasses are more easily engaged at shorter ranges. So it was especially startling to read recently - in the same newspaper that carries my weekly column - a story describing how the firing of a local professor had been overturned. It seems that a faculty tribunal reviewing the case found that the "sexually explicit" material found on his computer was not the same thing as "obscene" - and kicked the case upstairs for review by the university board of regents.

Because this happened at the same school - the University of Texas at San Antonio - which has employed me as an as an adjunct professor for over two years, I received a flood of outraged comments. Wasn't this "finding" identical to Bill Clinton's pettifoggery over the definition of what the word "is" is? Hadn't that faculty panel made a similar distinction where there was no real difference, moral or otherwise? Other observers noted that this has been a bad year for ethics at UTSA, with a number of faculty cases involving sexual harassment and conflicts of interest. When a student panel tried to hammer out a code of ethics, there were even allegations that they had committed de facto plagiarism -which turned into an instant blogosphere sensation.

Our university is probably little different from many other institutions and businesses across the country, where honorable, hard-working people routinely struggle to balance unprecedented opportunities and challenges. With the economy tanking, those challenges can even involve "bet-your-business" wagers. But are there some potential lessons here?

1. Don't separate authority from responsibility. Having commanded Army units and been a war college dean, I was astounded during HR training to be told that professors couldn't expel students from their classes. My classes have always been warmly collegial but, if a problem ever arose, I could only "recommend" action to a university-level judicial committee. But guess who remained responsible for classroom conduct, discipline - and learning?
   

2. Power down - not up. In most businesses and universities there are rarely any shortages of adult leadership because hierarchies habitually distribute power. But in an increasingly networked age, they only function by keeping accountability at the lowest possible level: professor, dean, provost or president. Any referrals to higher authority - boards of regents or boards of directors - might well be accompanied by resignations from edu-crats who find it difficult to be more decisive.
   

3. Standards are non-negotiable. The constitutional prohibition on a state religion does not mean that society is thereby left powerless to impose its core beliefs on institutions deemed vital for its survival. At West Point, the honor code says that "A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do." Breaching those standards brings instant dismissal. But maintaining effective learning environments there or elsewhere means insisting on absolute standards of individual behavior. And never surrendering leadership to the lawyers.
   

4. Solomon was right. You don't have to be a cadet training for the ultimate responsibilities of combat leadership to appreciate the direct relationship between the standards we impose on our students - and the future of our society. Newt Gingrich summarizes it this way: Easy school, hard life. Hard school, easy life.
   

Although recession is more of a problem elsewhere, exponential growth has become a norm in San Antonio and at our university. But in academe and business, an institutional re-commitment to core values, rather than paying homage to the latest ethical bumper stickers, is never a bad idea.

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