Moral and Civic Education - Chapter 1: Understanding Civics and Ethics

Defining Civics and Ethics

• Civic education is referred to by different names across countries, such as Right Education (South Africa), Citizenship Education (USA and Germany), and Civics and Ethical Education (Ethiopia).
• Civic education is defined as the knowledge of citizens' rights and responsibilities, and can be understood as the knowledge, means, and activities designed to encourage students to participate actively in democratic life.
• There are two concepts of civic education: minimal (content-led, teacher-based, whole-class teaching, and examination-based assessment) and maximal (comprised of knowledge, values, and skills, and aims to prepare students for active, responsible participation).

What is Ethics?

• Ethics is a branch of philosophy that attempts to understand people's moral beliefs and actions.
• Ethics considers theories about what human beings are capable of doing, alongside accounts of what they ought to do to live an ethically good life.
• Ethics explores the meaning and ranking of different ethical values, such as honesty, autonomy, equality, and justice, and considers ethical quandaries that humans face in their daily lives.
• Judgments about ethical decisions are generally expressed with words like right and wrong, should and ought, or obligation and duty.
• Ethics is the study of moral conduct or the code that one follows, whereas morals refer to the conduct itself.

Morality vs. Ethics

• Morality refers to the degree to which an action conforms to a standard or norm of human conduct.
• Ethics refers to the philosophical study of values and what constitutes good and bad human conduct.
• Moral problems refer to specific problems, such as "Is lying ever right?" or "Is stealing always wrong?", whereas ethical problems are more general and theoretical, such as "What makes any act right or wrong?".
• Ethics involves the critical examination and evaluation of what is good, evil, right, and wrong in human conduct.

Other Key Points

• The United Nations Development Program (UNDP, 2004) defines civic education as a way of learning for effective participation in a democratic and development process.
• Patrick (1986) defines civic education as the knowledge of the constitutions, principles, values, history, and application to contemporary life.