My first class of ethics for the year takes place this week. Reading the rules before this first lesson reminded me of some thoughts I had last year when I was visiting Parliament in Canberra.

By Shane Arthurson

I’m a volunteer ethics teacher at a school on Sydney’s northern beaches. My daughter is in Year 1 and I teach her class.

I am very proud and very happy to teach ethics. It’s a beautiful program tackling ethical dilemmas and teaching the children to stay curious and respectful as we debate, reason and talk to others about complex issues. It is right that we teach our young children ethics and with discussion rules such as these.

As a sad observation though, I was in Canberra last year with my wife who was part of a group petitioning for increased parental leave. Inside the Parliament, I couldn’t help but notice that question time violated all our ethics rules in the first few seconds. It was a horrific display of heckling, put downs, talking over one another… There was no orderly debate and no intelligent discussion about the matter, nor any progress or resolve.

Furthermore, I looked up and saw school children observing the leaders of our country behaving in such a manner. It didn’t shock me but it did disappoint me.

The leaders of our country are role models for our children, amongst other things, we need them to do better and to demonstrate behaviour we would be proud to see in our children. If we want a better society we have to act better. These children are tomorrow’s leaders and decision makers.

This behaviour does not add to social progress and actually takes us backwards.

All the more motivation for me to keep teaching ethics!