Ethics can be described as a branch of philosophy which recommends, defends and systematizes concepts of wrong and right conduct. Ethics aims at solving questions of morality by elaborating on concepts such as evil and good, virtue and vice, crime and justice. As an area of intellectual inquiry, ethics also relates to value, moral psychology and descriptive ethics. López-Rodríguez states that ethics is a set of principles which guide humans in determining the behaviors which harm or help them (López-Rodríguez, 2017). Contakes & Jashinsky (2016) elaborate that the meaning of ethics includes phrases such as the science of moral duty. Often, the term ethics has been interchangeably used in place of morality and most cases it means the ethical principles for an individual, group or tradition.
Copyright Act is one of the hardly understood laws and which potentially affects most of the school instructors. Copyright can be described as the legal right given to a composer, an author, a distributor, or a publisher to independent production, publication, sale, and distribution of any artistic, dramatic, literary or musical work (Rooksby & Hayter, 2017). With the new technology, copying has been made cheaper, and the display of the copyrighted content has also been made more accessible than before. Even so, the ease of reproducing these works is putting school instructors and even students up for prosecution for violation of copyright laws in civil litigation.
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Copyright laws profoundly affect what the instructors use and what they avoid in a classroom (Rooksby & Hayter, 2017). Instructors can no longer use any source ignorantly without accrediting the source. Copyright laws also affect the computer software which the instructors use in the school. When the teachers use materials or contents from outside sources such as the internet, textbooks or even journals, they have to cite the sources from which they find the information. This should include a work cited page for them to avoid plagiarism. Fundamentally, copyright is the right to exclude and not to publish (Rooksby & Hayter, 2017). Instructors may sometimes become hesitant to use specific materials since they do not know if they would violate the copyright laws. Instructors who copy articles are required to account for spontaneity and brevity, that is, how many times the work is copied and how much of the work is copied.
The pressures on instructors to improve students' grades have driven some of them to fudge the numbers so that they can be seen as effective. Even so, cheating for instructor highly affects students as they pass the tests and remain to be incompetent in their respective fields. For example, the effect of a surgeon or a medical doctor who passes through a cheating instructor and passes all the tests because of cheating can be so dangerous for the entire community. The society seems to put pressures on the instructors that they should do what it takes to make their students pass. After all, no one likes losing or failing a test. With this drive, many instructors have been forced to cheat to make their students pass the tests. Schools that do not pay attention to or promote positive values such as integrity, honesty and accountability are affected more by the issue of cheating (Popoola et al., 2017).
The effect of cheating on instructors can be dire depending on the scale and the frequency of cheating. The instructor who is found cheating may end up losing the job and may also face the law as cheating in schools goes against the code of ethics in any public institution (Popoola et al., 2017). Cheating breeds a culture of mistrust in the society. While cheating may not sound serious in a classroom discussion, it is a serious issue in the society. For example, it can be troubling to know that a pilot flying an airplane cheated in a flight school. Cheating lowers the confidence and self-respect of the instructors. Once they are caught cheating, even the students may stop respecting them. Cheating is addictive, and once someone has started cheating, one may find oneself doing it for a long time. Instructors who cheat in classroom setup also cheat in other spheres of life. Teachers who cheat end up wasting their students' time in school since students graduate with good grades but with no content or knowledge. Cheating also ruins any future employment. Once caught cheating, people lose their trusts and believe that one is incompetent (Popoola et al., 2017). No one wants to employ an incompetent person.
Plagiarism affects instructors in many intangible and tangible ways. Lack of knowledge and the desire to use shortcuts in school work are common causes of plagiarism. If instructors were fully aware of the consequences and impact of plagiarism, they would not use other people's work as their own. While a single teacher's plagiarism may not damage the reputation of a whole school, the systematic issues can. If teachers routinely plagiarize and get used to it, then it can devalue the quality of school degrees. This profoundly affects students who seek careers after school. Additionally, when teachers plagiarize instead of developing creative skills, and critical thinking intended their job performance and work skills suffer (Rooksbym& Hayter, 2017). Instructors who plagiarize routinely cannot teach students how to independently do their work and so they tend to pass the habit on to their students. Perhaps the most tangible effect of plagiarism for instructors is the consequences which come with violating school policies. The results may range from suspension to expulsion. In extreme cases, instructors may face civil or criminal penalties if they copy significant parts of well recognized public works. Imprisonment and fines may be possible in such cases.
While the positive student-teacher relationship is essential in fostering engagement between students and teachers, an improper student-teacher relationship can affect the entire learning process and dilute the value of education. There are clear policies which focus on unacceptable, inappropriate and criminal student-teacher relationships. During interviews, prospective teachers should undergo screening for any tendency of improper relationship with students. There are several consequences to inappropriate student teachers relationship in school. For example, if a teacher is involved in a sexual relationship with a minor student, the teacher becomes guilty of a criminal act, generally referred to as statutory rape (Gershenson, Holt & Papageorge, 2016). Such instructors are expelled from their jobs and face criminal charges in a court of law. If the student involved has already reached the age of consent, then the teacher is fired for breach of professional ethics, sexual misconduct, and trust.
The military acknowledges training of the military people to be both competent and ethical. Ethics is an essential topic for the army instructors since the ideal character of the military people include moral attributes such as loyalty, honesty, integrity, and courage (Contakes & Jashinsky, 2016). The military personnel have both the legal and moral obligation to obey the law and uphold high standards of morality and high standards of performance in their duties. The army instructors should deeply understand the topic of ethics to instill the ethical conduct in the new military personnel. If the instructors are not ethical in their conduct, the other juniors will not adopt ethics, and this will affect the whole military and threat the security of an entire country. Security is a delicate sector for every nation (Contakes& Jashinsky, 2016). In a state where the people who are supposed to provide security are not ethical in their conduct, then the country stands to face many threats from the enemies, and this may stagnate development in that particular country.
References
Contakes, S. M., & Jashinsky, T. (2016). Ethical Responsibilities in Military-Related Work: The Case of Napalm. HYLE–International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry , 22 , 31-53.
Gershenson, S., Holt, S. B., & Papageorge, N. W. (2016). Who believes in me? The effect of student–teacher demographic match on teacher expectations. Economics of Education Review , 52 , 209-224.
López-Rodríguez, S. (2017). Ethics and Morality in Consumption: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Deirdre Shaw, Andreas Chatzidakis, and Michal Carrington. New York: Routledge, 2016. 268 pp. ISBN: 978-1138790230. Business Ethics Quarterly , 27 (4), 637-640.
Popoola, I. T., Garner, B., Ammeter, A., Krey, N., Beu Ammeter, D., & Schafer, S. (2017). How does ethics institutionalization reduce academic cheating?. Journal of Education for Business , 92 (1), 29-35.
Rooksby, J. H., & Hayter, C. S. (2017). Copyrights in higher education: motivating a research agenda. The Journal of Technology Transfer , 1-14.
