Quote:
Originally Posted by Actor
I kind of doubt it.
No shit, Sherlock.
At this point the prof appears to win. No only is he in a position of power but he is also a more skilled debater than the kid. The kid has allowed to prof the steer the debate in the preferred direction. (This is something that boxcar tries to do.)
The "standard" by which the prof should be judged to be unfair is not a moral one but a legal one, namely contract law. A contract exists between the student and the college. Implicit in that contract is the assumption that the student be treated fairly. What constitutes fairness is a matter of law, and the law says fairness is a matter of "prevailing community values." (I think there was a SCOTUS decision to that effect.) What is the prevailing community value in a college. The right to think is close to the top. The prof does not want the kid to think.
Let's say the kid's family is rich enough to take the prof and the school to court. The argument is that the prof was not teaching ethics but religion. The simple fact that the prof "happened to be a Christian" while his student was an atheist supports this. Therefore the prof and the school are in violation of the SCOTUS decision of 1948.
But if the kid's family is not rich enough to sue the school then the kid can bring out the big guns. I'll cover that later.
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And so, the professor obeyed the "contract" by teaching fairness to a student by being unfair. Paradoxical, isn't it? He taught that to be fair, one must have an objective standard outside of oneself, and he proved this by adopting the student's own internal, subjective ethic of moral relativism and giving him a taste of his own medicine. So, actually, he did teach the kid to think outside the box -- his own box of muddle-headed ethics.
A hard lesson? Sure. But it's the hard lessons learned that won't soon be forgotten.
