ABSTRACT
Th is essay attempts to provide a framework of ethical leadership that is closely tied to the ethical integrity of educating. While this chapter would be in agreement with much of the thinking expressed in other chapters of this handbook, it attempts to focus primarily on the ethics of the educating process and the simultaneous leading of that process on any given day by a variety of members of the school community intent on cultivating the ethical integrity of educating. 1
First, this essay omits the obvious attention all schools give to the minimum requirements that adults and students in the school observe the laws of the nation, state, and locality; many of those laws encompass clear ethical requirements. Thus schools expressly prohibit theft; violence against anyone’s person; sexual harassment; bullying of any kind; racial, ethnic, and religious discrimination; destruction of property; and the like. Schools also have their particular rules against, for example, cheating, truancy, tardiness, disrespect toward teachers, misuse of library and other learning resource materials, and the like. Classrooms have particular rules that have to do with maintaining good order. Some of those rules that students and teachers are called upon to observe are not involved with ethical violations; rather they pertain to good manners, ways of dressing, procedures that ensure efficiency and good order, and the like. Often, however, they are lumped together in students’ minds as rules against “bad” behavior. In some adults’ thinking, they are lumped together as promoting “character education.”
