At the Cinema: Aspiring to a Higher Ethical Standard

The film scenes focus the student viewers on ethical behavior, unethical behavior, or an ethical dilemma. Ethical behavior is behavior judged as good, right, just, honorable, and praiseworthy. Unethical behavior is behavior judged as wrong, dishonorable, or failing to meet an obligation. The judgment of behavior as ethical or unethical is based on principles, rules, or guides that come from an ethics theory, character traits, or social values (Brandt, 1996; Buchholz & Rosenthal, 1997; Rosenthal & Buchholz, 2000). Three ethics theories that can act as guides to ethical behavior are utilitarianism, rights, and justice. Utilitarianism asks a person to examine the effects of the person's actions to decide whether these actions are morally correct under utilitarian guidelines. An action is morally right if its total net benefit exceeds the total net benefit of any other action. A right is a person's just claim or entitlement. The right can focus on what that person does or on the action of other people toward the person. Justice-based ethics theories use a comparative process, which looks at the balance of benefits and burdens among members of a group or resulting from the application of laws, rules, and policies. When people face an ethical dilemma, they can apply one or more ethics theories to resolve it. Students will apply the ethics theories to various moral dilemmas shown in the film scenes. The proposed classroom experiences have three