Attitude
Have you ever done something wrong? Or have you done something that just didn’t feel right? When you do something that just doesn’t feel right, you might be in controversy with your ethics. Ethics are a system of principles that are accepted by an individual or a society. It’s how you are able to discern from right and wrong. But, there is no exact meaning to the word “ethics.” Ethics can be different for each individual. Some say ethics has to deal with religious beliefs, or what the law expects, or even what your intuition tells you. What all these views have in common, is that an ethical issue confronts your morals. An ethical issue can be as small as killing a house fly to being as substantial as abortion. People deal with these issues all the time.
One encounter of an ethical issue that I remember well was during the sixth grade. In science class we had a quiz on the human bones. We were given a diagram of a skeleton and we had to label the major ones. I was able to label most of them, but my friend on the other hand couldn’t even label one. He whispered, “can I see your paper?” Seeing that he was having a really hard time, I slid my paper towards him so that he could see mine. What I didn’t see was that the teacher was staring right at me, I guess sliding my paper to one side of my desk was obvious that I was cheating. He took both of our quizzes and gave us zeros. He didn’t send us to the office, but he did say, “you’ve lost my trust.” To some this might not seem like a big deal, but it was to me.
At the time my dilemma was, should I help a friend in need or let him suffer? I wanted to be a good friend, so I thought that giving him my answers would be the ethical thing to do. What I didn’t consider was the ethical issue between the teacher and I; honesty and trust. He trusted the students to never cheat on a test, but once we break that trust it would be lost forever. I had only taken into account that I’d be helping a friend,...
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