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Ethics education must start early

An endless string of scandals has rocked the medical community recently, from last year's incident involving four-year-old "little sister Chiu" -- who died after being beaten by her father and then moved from one Taipei hospital to another before winding up in a Taichung hospital -- to the case of a doctor leaking the medical records of Taichung's mayor.

Let's not forget the medical controversies surrounding President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) son-in-law, Chao Chien-ming (趙建銘), who, until recently, was a doctor at National Taiwan University Hospital.

Such cases are cracks in our society, and they allude to a larger, fundamental condition. The educational system has neglected to instill in children the proper values and ethics. Proper upbringing has fallen to the wayside as today's educational policies focus exclusively on boosting students' competitiveness, leaving social order dangling by a thread. Such is the failure of education both at home and at school.

Our people blindly chase after short-term profits, and an overemphasis on practical learning has come at the grave cost of a holistic education. Taiwan has sunk so low for lack of well-rounded, ethical people that even publications like Time magazine refer to Taiwan as the "Island of Greed." This bears out Darwin's warning that social mores are the backbone of a society and that without them, the fruits of a prosperous society will not be universally shared.

Many different solutions have been proposed for how to deal with these "cracks," including heavy punishment. I cannot agree with those who believe such punishment will straighten our course. That would be akin to treating only the symptoms of our social illness, without addressing the root cause, and that is not enough when trying to improve society.

To be sure, doling out punishment according to the law comprises the foundation of democratic governance; heavy punishment serves, to a certain degree, to deter would-be criminals from violating the law. Punishment is also an ingredient in any effort to stamp out corruption.

However, it is important to keep in mind that Taiwan is not yet a mature country when it comes to the rule of law. Of course, criminals must be brought to justice, but relying merely on doling out punishment is not enough in trying to change society for the better.

From the "long-stay" incident in Puli (埔里) involving a Japanese couple who cut short their stay because they felt the town was too dirty and other examples, it is easy to see the enormous gap between the Taiwanese and Japanese with regard to their moral values, aesthetic sense and even their environmental and social quality requirements. As for the Puli mishap, was anybody punished?

If we are to improve the backward and corrupt thinking in Taiwan, the institutions of the family and school will be instrumental, with society coming together to collectively lay the foundations for individuals' moral character.

Doctors are considered elite members of society. Not only must doctors ply their trade with consummate skill, but they must be ethical in order to establish the kind of doctor-patient relationship necessary to do their jobs well. Along with such moral grounding, physicians must understand the intricacies of integrity and conflicts of interest. Unfortunately, our education of the nation's elite is sorely lacking, to say nothing of the education of our non-elites. After all, does anyone deny that everyone in society should have a basic understanding of the meaning of integrity and propriety?

For punishment to keep the darkness in our hearts in check, a critical mass of people in society with a pervasive sense of integrity and etiquette is required. Punishment on its own does not enhance the quality of a person's moral fiber; it will only stifle social development, and wrongdoers will continue to proliferate.

The American author Mark Twain seemed to think that properly raising a child meant that pressure needed to be applied on that child -- pressure in the form of education starting right when the child is born. Prior to school, the brunt of all education takes place in the home. This makes parents the first teachers, and their integrity and uprightness will be reflected in a teenager's social conduct.

Parents must keep in mind that their children's education begins from day one. They will be too late if they scramble to impart an ethics education once their children are in high school or older to make up for what wasn't learned earlier. Of course, teaching young doctors the ethics of their profession only after they start practising won't do much good, either.

This is because a person's moral character, for better or worse, is formed at an early age, and efforts to compensate for what was not taught or learned earlier will be mostly futile.

Huang Kun-yen is a professor emeritus of medicine at National Cheng Kung University.

Translated by Max Hirsch
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