About 2,100 years ago, the Roman philosopher Publilius Syrus asked a question that we are still struggling to answer today, across the U.S. and on the campus of Jacksonville University. “What is left,” Syrus asked, “when honor is lost?”
Many Americans – including a majority of American college students – are answering that question in ways Syrus may not have expected. What’s left? Higher GPA’s and attendant grad school admissions. Better jobs. Higher profits. Career advancements. Research makes it clear that the vast majority of today’s college students are pragmatic, not idealistic, when it comes to honor. Be honorable and lose? Most college kids today consider that option just plain dumb. And that’s a fact. You could look it up.
But how did we reach this point? Wasn’t there a time when most Americans, even most American college students, believed honesty really was the best policy, when most college kids really did believe honor was more important than GPA, when it really was more honorable to lose fairly than to win by cheating?
Honor is not an intuitive human trait. It must be learned. To be learned, it must be taught. That teaching may be indirect, through example, or direct, as in formal lessons at home, at school, in places of worship. A combination is best, for few people become honorable by accident.
And so if we have an honor crisis in America, including on America’s campuses – and the facts say we do – there are plenty of people and institutions to blame. But one we have control of on this campus is our curriculum. Perhaps the most important required course for all entering JU students should be one in ethics. And perhaps as a culminating act in that course students would be asked, but not required, to sign an honor pledge. Perhaps then JU would be more reflective of the truth embodied in Teddy Roosevelt’s observation: “To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.” If most JU students arrive on campus without having learned the value of honor, then it would seem incumbent on JU to fill that educational chasm with both example and instruction. It would seem incumbent on JU to do all it can to avoid educating people in a moral and ethical vacuum that unwittingly creates menaces to society. And it would seem the honorable thing to do. After all, if we didn’t know it before, we know now what’s left when honor is lost. -- Mike Kielkopf
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