Ethics questions challenge students Program at Bapst fosters decision skills

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BANGOR – Jason knows Bob’s secret.

He just doesn’t know what, if anything, he should do about it.

Bob is spending way too much time drinking and hanging out with a new group of friends. He has even confided to Jason that he may be drinking too much but has sworn his friend to secrecy.

So, when Bob’s mother asks Jason, “Do you know what’s going on?” Jason is torn.

Should he betray his friend’s trust and tell the truth or remain silent and loyal? How can he help Bob without risking their friendship? Is it worth losing the friendship in the short run to save Bob’s life in the long run?

Those are some of the ethical dilemmas students from John Bapst Memorial High School grappled with Saturday in a training program designed by the Camden-based Institute for Global Ethics.

The program, Ethical Literacy through Ethical Fitness, is designed to help students learn to recognize and think through conflicts when core values such as truth and loyalty collide.

Over the past two weeks, 50 students at the independent college-preparatory high school in Bangor took part in a program that prepared them to teach the school’s other 450 students how to make ethical decisions.

Chosen by teachers for their abilities as facilitators, the students were divided into two groups of 25. Each group spent a day and a half identifying the core values of the Bapst community and applying them to different ethical dilemmas.

Colleen Grover, dean of students at Bapst, previously used the program at Foxcroft Academy in Dover-Foxcroft.

“As a college prep high school, we’re very focused on academics at Bapst,” she said Saturday during a break in the training session held at All Souls Congregational Church in Bangor. “We don’t often have the opportunity to talk about values.”

First the youngsters identified the core values or attributes they perceive as already being practiced at John Bapst Memorial High School but that may benefit from reinforcement: integrity, compassion, equality, enthusiasm and individuality.

The students then determined how the morals that are espoused in their school and the larger society collide in different situations. Most often the values in conflict are truth and loyalty; justice and mercy; short-term and long-term goals; the needs of the individual and the needs of the community.

Participants then applied four resolution philosophies to each scenario to help them reach decisions. Those included solutions that were ends based, rule based, care based and a creatively based mixture of the other three.

“This is a great opportunity for our school to step back from traditional learning,” Nathaniel Hewett, 17, of Holden said Saturday.

The Bapst junior also said that the program would help a lot of high school students by reinforcing and giving more structure to their decision-making skills.

“It teaches you how to apply your values and morals to making good decisions,” he said during the lunch break.

Through the program, students quickly discover that most choices in an ethical conflict can not be boiled down to right vs. wrong, according to Grover.

In most situations, the solutions to the dilemma include more than one right answer, she said.

Justin Bergeron, 17, of Veazie is a member of the Civil Rights Team at Bapst. The junior said that he is always very concerned about the atmosphere at the school and believes the goals of the ethics program are closely related to those of the rights team.

“The ethics program shows us ways to help students realize what they are doing,” he said, “and, in my experience, they often don’t have a clear understanding of why they do what they do.

“I’m hoping that by helping others in school learn about ethics, it will have a ripple effect,” he added. “We help them, they help others.”

Katie Wetherbee, 17, of Veazie also expressed concern about Bapst’s future.

“My younger brother will be at Bapst next year,” she said. “I’ve been talking to him about this program because I want it to be carried on.”

She added that learning about ethics and how to apply them had given her and her fellow students “a universal tool” for their futures in college and beyond.

“It crosses cultures,” the junior said. “Anybody can have a code of ethics and be an ethical person.”

Grover said the program gives students “a strong foundation” for thinking ethical questions through fully and “an orderly way to do it.”

“They need this as a life skill as much as they need mathematics,” she said.