Andrew Mitton

Seth Godin, one of my favorite blog­gers, has a good arti­cle about edu­ca­tion called Edu­ca­tion at the Cross­roads.  It seems like every­thing is at the cross­roads these days.  He points out that edu­ca­tion is going from scarce (think about the whole admis­sion process) to abun­dant.  In the past you had to be admit­ted to Stan­ford or MIT to attend their classes.  Now the classes are online.  In the past edu­ca­tion was expen­sive.  Now for $25 a month you can go to Lynda.com and watch an unlim­ited amount of soft­ware train­ing courses.  Finally, Seth points out that in the past school­ing was about tests and cred­its.  Now about learning.

How does this apply to ethics train­ing?  The cur­rent state of ethis train­ing seems to involve a few com­pa­nies that cre­ate train­ing mod­ules who then sell access to those mod­ules.  It also involves sem­i­nars and a few good books on the sub­ject.  In Seth’s opin­ion all edu­ca­tion (this would include ethics train­ing) is mov­ing towards abun­dant, free learn­ing.  I think there’s some­thing to this.  I’ve always won­dered why ethics train­ing needs to be canned?  Why does it need to be for­mal and cer­ti­fied?  I see a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ties out there to change the way ethics train­ing is done.

For exam­ple, there is a great YouTube video called The Fifth Down Game about the famous game between Dart­mouth and Cor­nell.  If you get a chance, check it out.  It presents a great sce­nario for a dis­cus­sion about ethics.  I think these sorts of videos are the best ones to teach and inspire eth­i­cal behav­ior.  I’m always on the look­out for these sorts of sto­ries.  They’re free (on YouTube).  They’re abun­dant.  The most impor­tant part is that it’s about learn­ing rather than mark­ing off a check­box stat­ing “trained.”