Organizations in various domains ranging from global business spheres up to public administration have always been faced with extenuating challenges with regards to the critical matter of ethics. From the contentious contributions in the definitions of ethics and morality, the pervading point of confluence is that these relate to that which governs the widely accepted and widely expected good human conduct and behavior. It is in this conceptual and theoretical precinct that the paper explores the behaviors and conduct of sex education institutions in the US to illuminate the organizations’ perceived unethical conduct. The study has taken a thrust at the sex education curricula articulated by the state-funded institutions and presents areas in which the entities have functioned unethically. The paper culminates in providing recommendations of recourse drawing from contributions of various scholars and theorists who have offered feasible insights for organizational ethical reform and orientation.
Moral choice is deemed to be crucial for honorable administrators. It normally consists of three equally important criterions such as being 1) disciplined people, 2) active participants in their organizations and 3) independent judges. Given the benefits incurred to both individuals and organizations, administrators in every single organization should employ—besides technical skills—”moral choice” to effectually lead the organization, as well as resolve any problem in such an organization. Upon the basis of the declared outline, the paper will present arguments over the public administrative policies regards the prevention of unwanted pregnancies and the contraction of sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
Organizations particularly in public administration are bound to lead people in morally acceptable ways by charting and adhering to ethical manners of getting core goals and objectives accomplished. Such organizations have to place their key policy and ideology on the succor of values and morals governing normal human conduct and behavior. Values in this conceptual precinct are perceived as those ideas regarded as worthy, estimable, and important.
By extension, values can be viewed as those concepts that govern human behaviors like freedom, equality, education, etc. Ethics are thus held as objective since these set the basis for a pattern of universality in the manner in which human conduct can be classified as either ethical or unethical, moral or immoral. The advocation for the principles of abstinence from sexual activity for the youth and the adolescents has been hailed by most Americans. Nonetheless, the thrust constitutes various elements that are arguable unethical.
The teaching of abstinence is a commendable approach to the aims of curtailing contemporary predicaments of STIs and HIV/AIDS and unwanted teenage and youth pregnancies. The sticking point arises at the abstinence-only-until-marriage teaching that is being fed into the mentalities of the youths and the teenagers by various sex education institutions in the US.
The abstinence-only-until-marriage is bereft of the ethical regard for the articulation of a holistic sex education prospectus which will emphasize the value of abstinence as the best of ways in efforts to avert unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections while also articulating holistic and medically sound information on sex and contraception.
It must be noted in this argument that most of the sex education institutions are funded by the taxpayers’ money through the federal government yet they have drifted awfully from the mandate of delivering authentic sex education and sticking to ethics of functioning in integrity. The Federal Government has thrown over $1.5 billion from 1997 into these abstinence-only-until-marriage programs which are ineffective and glaringly misleading to the society’s most gullible and vulnerable, the youths and the teenagers.
These state-funded organizations have made a despicable shift from focus by neglecting the delivery of well defined eight-point outline of education. The programs have also sidelined the essences of delivering the known and perceived social, psychological as well as health merits of abstinence. The teaching of these is undeniably mandatory for these state-funded entities and the neglect of this is accurately perceivable as unethical. Abelard, P. (1995) presents that ethics and morals always come together introducing a possible way of thinking ethically. More importantly in tandem with the arguments of this paper, the author cites that ethics and morals are different but both of them have to come together. Thus, ethics and morals are very important for every workplace in our society. These are the considerations and values that must be driving the sex education entities in the US tasked with the crucial and all-important task of delivering real education and empowering the youths to weather the odds and ills of ungoverned sexual activity.
The current sex education programs run by the state-funded organizations have also left out the essence of emphasizing the negative effects of sexual activity without the precincts of the marriage institution. The programs have not stressed the reality of the psychological and physical harms of sexual activity outside marriage. The entities seem to be tacitly paying into the marginalization and trivialization of the fact that a mutually defined and monogamous relationship in the precinct of the sacred tie of marriage is the best standard of social life which is indeed expected of all the youths. The downplaying of this fact is unethical and treacherous.
The prospectus thrust of the current sex education programs is largely and pedantically conservative. This has resulted in the further exclusion of crucial elements of the sex curriculum leading to frustrations on the part of the sexually experienced youths expecting comprehensive guidelines on subjects like contraception, etc. This has meant that sex education organizations have abdicated their responsibility to accurately and effectively educate the youths and teenagers on critical aspects of sexuality. Talking on public administration responsibility and ethical administration, Spaemann, R. (1989) dwells extensively on how regard for ethics and morals must come together in the public admin. He reinforces the aspects of the thinking “in an ethical way”. More importantly, the scholar underscores the aspect of responsibility on the part of public organizations and administrations. The author takes a deeper thrust stating certain ethical letups in the contexts of justice frameworks in a manner leading to a more serious categorization of certain organizational decisions and operations as either just or unjust.
Various reasons can be cited to substantiate this line of argument. Most sex education curriculum constitutes misleading information. A survey conducted in 2004 by the minority staff of the House Government Reform Committee assessed 13 widely used abstinence sex education models delivered to millions of teenagers and youths. The outcomes of the survey held that only two of the syllabus are accurate and that 11 others were not, The curricula which were reportedly used by 69 institutions in 25 states distorted religion, science and held unattested claims and conjectural positions or in some cases sheer falsehoods on the effectiveness of various contraceptive methods, gender roles and the aspect of when life begins.
Among multiple noted misleading thrusts, the curricula teach that HIV can be spread via sweat and tears. It also has falsehoods as that pregnancy can result from the touching of the other person’s genitals. The curricula also hold that condoms fail to avert HIV transmission at the rate of 31 percent of times in heterosexual sexual activity. Sex education organizations have an unavoidable obligation to fulfill the mandate; that of delivering authentic information and education on sex for the benefit and salvage of society’s teenagers and youths and everyone who may benefit from the sex education programs. The misinforming of the sex education curricula targets coupled with the corresponding withholding of crucial information on sexuality and contraception for sex learners is devious and unethical conduct coming to form the sex entities running on taxpayers’ funds. This is tantamount to a violation of the youths and teenagers’ basic human rights. Health care services providers face an ethical obligation to give authentic information to the recipients who have the right to accurate information for their welfare.
From another perspective, there has been no evidence to substantiate the notions that abstinence-only-until-marriage programs have meaningful yields in the long term timeframes on the aspects of behavioral outcomes. There has been no evidence to support the claims for these arguably skewed sex education curricula that success has been recorded in as far delaying the youths’ engaging into sexual activities to heighten the risk of contracting STIs and also leading top unwanted pregnancies is concerned.
Aims towards public admin transformation in line with the theoretical and conceptual frameworks relating to the aspect of ethics for public organizations will draw much from the deontology perspective propounded by Kant (1989). Kant emphasized the rationality of human beings as the foundation of ethics. His thrust stresses the superiority of principles of character above consequence. Perhaps the central component of Kant’s contributions with clear illuminations of the concept of ethics draws from his initial formulation which declares that human beings must conduct themselves in the axioms whereby they will envisage that the axiom becomes universal law. In other terms, Kant suggests that ethical conduct is so fulfilling and so necessary such that its essence can be thought to be confinable to one enclose.
Needless to say, the sex-education must step in defying public preferences of holistic exe education curriculum. Polls conducted to establish the effectiveness and popularity of the abstinence-until-marriage curricula have shown that many people prefer comprehensive curricula that the one currently delivered. The second component in Kant’s model of ethics and public admin is what is termed the teleology elements which conceptually relates to the categorization of action as either bad or good depending on these consequences. The scholar states that the common form of teleology which is utilitarianism is encapsulated in the idea that an action is good if it brings about the good for the greatest majority. It is glaringly immoral for the sex education institutions in the US to keep peddling sex education designs that do not fulfill the needs and exceptions of the learners and the society at large. In this light, it can be argued that sex education in the US has failed the majority that has for long condemned the monistic sex education curricula. The entities must recommit themselves to the moral and ethical obligations of serving the needs of the populace instead of pursuing their myopically conceived designs too pedantic to accommodate the known need of the populace.
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