[Vision2020] The Virtues Come First

[lfalen]

virtues are important and should be taught. I am not sure how it should be funded. Ethics should be a part of all school's curriculums.To me it seems like most virtues should be intuitive, but sadly this is not the case.  Most people don't want to admit they don't know something or made a mistake. When I was in the Feed Business, I used to tell my sales crew to not blow smoke. If you don't know the answer to a question. say so and that you will try and find an answer. If you blow smoke, they will probably find that out and wont believe anything you tell them. Be straight with them and they should believe what you tell them. There are two sides to every story. When I had a problem with my production crew, I got all sides of the issue before I made a decision. Usually the first sory is not accurate. To many administrators take at face value the first thing that they are told and act on that and then wont admit that they made a mistake. I told my crew that I would not fire anyo!
 ne for
making a mistake. but I would fire them for trying to cover it up. If I know what the problem is I can probably fix it. The Golden Rule should be intuitive. Since it is not, virtues should be taught. lawyers should be taught ethics not just how to win and Administrators should have some training on getting all sides of a story and correcting a bad decision as soon as the realize they were wrong. Vince Lombardi was wrong when he said "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing"' Granville Hicks is a better role model. He said " When the last great game is played, it matters not who won or lost, but how you played the game".
-----Original message-----
From: Nick Gier ngier at uidaho.edu
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 09:07:15 -0700
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] The Virtues Come First

> Greetings Visionaries:
> 
> Rose and Donavan raise legitimate concerns about whether the City of Moscow 
> should be spending its money on the Virtues Project.  They make good 
> arguments that limited city funds should be used for more immediate needs.
> 
> Some years ago I was at a conference in Seattle and I was sharing the 
> podium with a social worker who was working with Seattle drug addicts. Her 
> office had sufficient resources for therapy and money to address living 
> conditions, but still she found that she was making very little headway 
> with her clients.  She discovered that the main problem was that her 
> clients had very few skills to overcome the temptations that led to drug 
> use.  Sending them to counseling and giving them a better place to live did 
> nothing to address this problem.
> 
> My paper "Non-Violence as a Civic Virtue" was next, and initially I did not 
> see how I was going to make any connections to her paper, but now the link 
> was obvious.  Rose and Donavan are focusing on the symptoms of a broken 
> society, which we definitely should address, but we also need to attend to 
> the reasons why so many people lack the basic skills to lead good lives.
> 
> The ancient Greeks, Buddhists, and Confucians realized that the virtues are 
> those requisite skills, and if they are not taught early in life, and if 
> there are no good role models for the virtues, then your society is 
> drifting down that notorious creek without a paddle.
> 
> By the way, I want to commend Dan Weaver for his excellent column on 
> Virtues and Character (Daily News June 5&6).  He even mentioned Aristotle!
> 
> For a draft of my essay "Moscow as a City of Virtues" see 
> www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/moscowvirtue.htm
> 
> Yours for a City of Virtues,
> 
> Nick Gier
> 
>