Obedience to the Unenforceable

The laws governing the school system are vast and rather tedious. Working your way through the School Act can be mind-boggling, with each section subject to the conditions of one or more other sections, which are themselves subject to other sections! Not something to be undertaken lightly. Those laws, however, are imperative for those working in the system to understand, particularly if one is in a position of leadership. The rights and responsibilities of the school, parents, students, employees, and the Board of Education are outlined in detail. Want to know about budget parameters, setting up a PAC, or how to create the school calendar? It's all there, ready for your enthusiastic perusal!

The School Act is only one of the many "acts" governing all that happens within the school system. One of the other key acts that governs much of what we do is the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIPPA). I honestly had no idea just how much of our educational world is touched by this, from the conversations we're legally allowed to have with colleagues, parents, or kids; the servers we use to house student information (Outlook 365 is housed in Canada so is okay to use; Google is housed in the US, so is verboten); and the ways we share student pictures through social media.

All of these legal acts fall under the category of what Rushmore Kidder would call "obedience to the enforceable" - the laws that govern our behaviour, and for which there are penalties if we fail to obey. But what about the areas in life that are not bound by legalities? What about the decisions we make that are values laden and infinitely more tricky to navigate? This becomes the area of ethics, and forces us to closely examine what we truly believe and hold dear.

What do we do when no one is watching? If there is no direct penalty for our actions, do we have some moral compass that steers us toward the helpful, unselfish, or honest way? In contrast to what we do because we have to, this is the area that Kidder calls our "obedience to the unenforceable." In his book entitled How Good People Make Tough Choices, Kidder discusses that while right versus wrong decisions can give us moral temptations, it is the right versus right decisions that are the most difficult to reconcile. These are the times - and they happen with great regularity! - when we have to juggle two of our values to see which should prevail. In his book, Kidder explains that there are four main areas where this happens: truth versus loyalty; justice versus mercy; short-term versus long-term; and individual versus community. When pitting these values against one another, we can often see that both are right!

From an education perspective, we see these scenarios all the time. It is right for a student with a history of trauma and abuse to be in a classroom with her peers, even though that history has affected her ability to regulate her emotions. But it is also right for the other children in the class to be able to come to school and feel safe, emotionally and physically. Both are right, but as Kidder explains repeatedly, we can't do both...so which do we choose? It is right for a teacher to want to explain to her classroom parents why a student in her class behaves the way he does, so that they may understand and respond with empathy instead of anger. But it is also right that she is bound by the restrictions of FOIPPA, and should not reveal any personal information about a child to other parents. Both are right, but she can't choose both.

The answer is not simple, but just as we must regularly exercise to keep our bodies fit, so too we must regularly practice making ethical decisions that we can defend to ourselves. That's the nature of obedience to the unenforceable - oftentimes the only one who knows, who can judge and convict the rightness of my actions and decisions, is myself. As long as that matters to me, as long as I keep wrestling with scenarios every day to find the most right course of action, then I know that my ethics are in good shape.