How Effective is Theory-Based Learning of Ethics in India?

Abstract

The absence or inculcation of ethics among the people is a matter of serious concern. We investigated through an experiment the role of religion-teaching schools in incorporating ethics and found that the attitude towards cheating in examinations is no different for students in a religion-teaching school than in a regular school. We analysed this situation with different perspectives and concluded that it indicates the failure of religion-teaching schools in inculcating ethics among students. Using the method of randomised response, we found that about 30 per cent of the students were found to be cheating in examinations. When we ask the students about the intention for cheating, they would answer hypothetically if they did not know any cheater. However, the presence of such a significant proportion of cheaters indicates that when they answer about cheating they understand it as a real issue and would answer with the understanding of the real cheaters in mind. The implications of our result are, however, much wider than this observation. Balagangadhara (1994) divided human cultures into ‘religious’ (theory-driven) and ‘non-religious’ (empirics-driven) classes. Accordingly, the teaching of ethics must also be different for these two classes of culture. Although a theoretical way of teaching ethics may help a theory-driven culture, it would not help an empirics-driven culture. Balagangadhara places India as a non-religious culture, and our results illustrates the validity of his theory in explaining the failure of a theory-driven ethics education in India.