As the scandals of Enron et al unwound, it was clear that a move was beginning to inject a greater consideration of ethics into business courses. Indeed, the State Board of Public Accountancy has now adopted a required 3 hour ethics class for those seeking to take the CPA exam. I have designed, submitted, and received approval for such a course. In the process I studied other approved syllabi. I have 'taught' the course twice. The first time with partial success, the second with a sold feeling of accomplishment all round. Indeed, the second time half the class was located by television over one hundred miles away. Yet when we finished, the each sent me e mails reporting that they were all sitting there a bit peeved and let down that the discussions were all over. Now that makes a successful seminar.
I tell you all this not to brag. The point I think of a successful seminar is INVOLVEMENT. Why do you admire your favorite author or movie star, why is there a show named Entertainment Tonite that broadcasts five nights a week? Because these are people whose company we enjoy and we want to know more about them, at least that's what their agents would have us believe. Hold on I am going somewhere with this.
And so, in considering how to involved students in ethics, I hit on the idea of movie reviews. Generations Xers, Yers, millenials, wherever we are now, are more used to electronic experience than text experiences. Great, so let them review movies and explain the social and ethical relevance of them. I have concluded since that we are not all Roger Ebert or Joel Morgensterns and that reviewing a movie for a crowd is considerably more difficult than one might think. Having said all that, here are a few thoughts about preparing your movie or book review for class.
I honestly believe the most important education experience in my life was high school debate and extemp speaking. The ability to stand and speak in a manner that gathers the attention of your audience and communicates a complete thought in four minutes is a feat extraordinaire. Many try, few succeed. The idea here is to relate the plot of the movie to the conflict that confronts the characters and how they resolve it, then relate that to the class, and conclude with your thoughts on the subject, in less than four minutes, whew. To do this you will need to
Summarize the plot and characters in about one minute. You Will have to avoid rambling or getting into plot specifics. Get to the point. Most plots are not THAT different. Good and bad guys, romance, intrigue, whatever, what was the plot twist or circumstance that made this special.
Example-Gone with the Wind
Not so good-southerners grapple with whether to go to war and lose
Better-the Genteel life of southern culture contrasted with the brutality of slavery collides with the modern industrialization of the north. Clever strategy falls victim to mass manufacturing of war as the South loses both the war, its cities and plantations, and perhaps its very culture. Powerful figures of strong plantation women, Scarlett, and strong men, Rhett, have to resolve their own civil wars against the backdrop of a society falling apart.
Well maybe Roger Evbert could do better but you get the idea. Lots of guys have portrayed prisoners, what was it about Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke that made him different? Or Tim Robbins in Shawshank or Morgan Freeman?
Okay now that you have the plot and characters down for us, what is the ethical conflict. How did it come about? What are the misgivings of the characters? Do they know right from wrong or are they choosing to ignore it? (What did Ken Lay really think, we'll never know, that story he took to the grave).
So what is the resolution? What larger story or question does this raise? What lesson does this teach us or ask us to consider in our daily lives?
Now what did all this mean or say to you? Why did you pick the movie? Why should we want to see it and what can we learn from it?
Now all you have to do is just that-in four minutes.
My experience is that students tend to assume we have seen the movie. Above, Cool Hand Luke came out while I was in college, it was enormously popular and EVERYBODY saw it. The Student paper even had a story on someone attempting to duplicate the egg devouring incident portrayed in the movie. But realizing many of you have probably not seen it, I inserted the reference to the much newer and frequently on cable, Shawshank, ie, relate to your audience.
Now, as one of my students said at the outset of our second ethics class, this is all pretty much black and white. By the end of the class, we agreed it wasn't. What made the second class was that I required the students to do multiple presentations about ethical conflicts in different situations. Historical figures, personal conflicts, contemporary business, and then we would discuss the issues after a survey of current ethical thought on how to analyze such questions.
Here is an example. One student stopped and sought some help on a review, great, I am always here.
The movie involves gun running, and her conclusion was, don't sell guns. Well is it that simple? What if your people are being suppressed by those that have guns? Wouldn't you sell some to the underdogs? But wait, can we trust the underdogs to not act like bad guys if they win (think the US arming Usama bin Laden in Afghanistan, yesterday's friend, today's enemy. Should we have left the Russians alone in Afghanistan, knowing now how it ended?)
Good luck over the break getting your review ready, it may be your most important project of the semester. In a perfect world I would whisk all of you back to the university experience I enjoyed, yep like every other gray hair you meet, I think it was better then. I would magically transport all of you to a residential campus where we lived in apartments and dorms and campus was accessible 24/7. Yes you would have a part time job but expenses would be such that the job was ancillary to the university experience, not an all encompassing task. There would be morning classes and afternoons on the mall tossing Frisbees and debating the forthcoming presidential election. There would be ferocious debates over the student senate while someone ran Mickey Mouse for the Student Body President (this actually happened when I was an undergrad, Mouse ran a close second....) There would be movies and poetry readings and stories about life in 'foreign' lands abound all over campus. And on Thursday evening we would gather for the ethics movie of the week. All would watch and then a lively discussion would ensue. We might repair to a nearby pub or coffee shop afterward, just to make sure we got it right. Discussion, debate, camaraderie, yep, where is that Back to the Future Machine when I need it.....
Stay safe, see you after Spring Break
DLE
