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During these crazy times, teaching and learning continue. Thus, I present a situation we can ponder while we’re waiting for our next teleconference to start:
A CNN article, entitled “Student asks teacher to give bonus points to ‘whoever scores the lowest,’” tells the story of a Kentucky high school teacher, Winston Lee, who received this note at the bottom of a test he was grading: “If you could, can you give my bonus points to whoever scores the lowest?” The student earned an A, plus 5 bonus points. Lee gave the five points to his lowest-scoring student, who wound up moving from a failing to a passing grade.
Would you have given the points to the lowest-scoring student or not? What’s your gut reaction?
Once we know our gut reaction, we can add some ethical considerations. The article begins our deliberation for us: Lee gave the points to the failing student happily, rejoicing in the kindness of the student: “I took it as a really compassionate, loving and kind act from a young person that most people would consider rare.” Clearly, awarding the points provided some benefit to the failing student, which would be consistent with the principle of beneficence. It would also be respectful of the A student’s request.
However, the article also quotes a Facebook commentator who disagreed with the teacher’s decision: “The grades reflect that they learned something when they didn’t.” According to this person, the teacher’s behavior would violate the principles veracity, or telling the truth, and fidelity, or trust.
Was giving the points to the failing student upholding principles like beneficence and virtues like compassion, or did it violate principles like justice (fairness) and virtues like honesty? From a consequentialist perspective (meaning that behaviors can be judged right or wrong by their consequences rather than by the principles they uphold or violate), might the failing student have been inspired by the random act of kindness from their classmate to improve their subsequent performance? Alternatively, did giving the points away convey the wrong idea about what it takes to pass, thus making students less motivated to study? What other principles and consequences might relevant?
The teacher thought his behavior was ethically justifiable, and that his commentators were overthinking the issue. I believe that thinking is good—even a little overthinking is better than not thinking at all! Had Lee thought more about the ethics of his decision (I’m sure he thought some), he might have come to exactly the same decision. In fact, that’s what Jonathan Haidt would predict. He writes that people do not use ethical concepts to develop their position by way of a rational process. Rather, people will form a decision based on intuition and emotion, and then use ethical concepts to justify (rationalize) their decision.
What was it like for you as you deliberated the situation? Did your ultimate decision, after (over)thinking about the ethical issues, match your initial gut reaction? Alternatively, did your reasoning override your gut and make you change your mind? Here’s a third option: After thinking about the ethics of the situation, you would stick with your original decision but would have more misgivings about it. That is, you would experience what philosophers call moral traces, which refer to an awareness that a decision may not be 100% right or ethical (it has wrong-making features) even though it’s the best available option.
What’s the “right” thing to do in this situation? I don’t know. This is a true dilemma; good reasons exist for and against awarding the points. As in many dilemmas, though, there are more than just two alternative actions—in this case, giving the points vs. not. For example, a teacher could spread the points around to more students, give a few points to all students, give an extra bonus to students who show improvement on the next test, give everyone a million points, etc. Some of these alternatives might have fewer wrong-making features than the others. One Facebook commentator has a suggestion for the student: “An offer to help the struggling student(s) to learn the material would be better.” Perhaps the teacher could use the inspiration of his A student to institute some peer mentoring.
One reason that we cannot know the perfect answer is that we cannot predict with certainty how the parties involved—the teacher, the A student, the failing student, other students in the class, future students—will react and behave in the short or long term. The one thing I know for sure: I agree with Mr. Lee that the offer the student made to share his points was a kind, compassionate gesture—it makes me want to get back into the classroom (live, virtual, whatever) as soon as I can.
