Meditating on ethics can bring peace to the world.

The recipe is to add positive energy to the negativity you find.

In Australia, there is a quiet revolution taking place in education. Quiet because I suspect that the government doesn’t want to have to explain its position on the fact that they are limiting information and the ability of free thinking. I am talking about the governments, I said ethics classes. So immoral and degenerate that they have raised the hackles of government officials. Australian newspapers are reporting on the sad state of affairs.
Ethics and free thinking seem to be something the government does not want its people to be doing. Yet this is, I believe, the basis of the corruption, hatred and spite in our world.

The government is informing parents of religious classes and only when parents decline having their child participate in religious education are they informed of the availability of ethics classes. In 2010, the right of school districts to offer ethics as well as religious class was made into law. I really don’t see why this is an issue which needed the government to pass a law.

In our world, morals and ethics have become something to be circumvented in many situations in life. Big business, Wall Street and officials of almost every country are demonstrating their aversion to ethical behavior. During my career, I have seen a lack of ethics even in the non-profit world. I also believe that we need to teach ethics to the young. They need an ethical compass because humans beings have demonstrated over and over how unethical we can be. How much devastation and pain we are capable of inflicting upon each other demonstrates our ability to act without scruples or ethics. I think we could add ethics classes in elementary schools. Children need to know how to make the right and ethical decision and parents have been shirking ethical training in many cases. To know how to decide how to make an ethical choice is an important part of growing up. There is a difference between doing what you have been told is the thing to do and making ethical decisions. I hope this trend in Australia does not spread to other countries in the world.

” Real education should educate us out of self  into something far finer; into a selflessness which links us with all humanity.”
——-Nancy Astor

Blue Ridge Mountain sunset. Photo and copyright by Barbara Mattio 2013