Trevor is an economist for the Australian Productivity Commission 

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) has taken on the role of King Canute in the vain hope of stemming the tide of cheating on national literacy and numeracy tests. It has just released an edict to principals and teachers that “cheating is not permitted”.

The edict is being presented as ACARA’s new tough approach to cheating. However, it has little prospect of deterring cheating. The only threat of action is that allegations of cheating will be investigated. This is likely to prove as ineffectual as investigations of cheating in the United States over the past 20 years which have utterly failed to quell cheating and rorting of school results. Every year brings a new round of cheating incidents in the US despite innumerable investigations and staff firings.

What is Ethics?

For the YM definition of Ethics please see our top Menu ‘About Us’ page. Ethics is a subject whose texture, form and substance, qua an absolute definition, as yet remain largely hidden among the many irrelevances of our everyday activities.

Its loom is one at which we sit, first as children, then later as adults, perhaps parents, weaving with fragile thread composed simultaneously of Faith, Instinct and Experience a finished cloth, that is ever altered, seams taken in and let out, hems lowered/raised - in the never-ending quest to cover the always nebulous, ever-changing  figure it seeks to clothe ………..(cont.)

 

How does Ethics relate to parenting?

Is parenting, for the average parent, the result of rational choice? Parenting is necessarily an expression of a parent’s feelings, which in turn are the result of his/her own childhood ‘parented’ conditioning experiences. Add to this the increasing tendency of current parenting to be influenced by the opinions of ....... (cont.)

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