We used to have a framework for handling situations where we deemed we were being messed with. It was called Good Manners. Good Manners have fallen by the wayside as we become richer, busier, more frazzled, and more self important. Maybe if we look upon good manners not as an option but as our job as members of a tribe, it won’t seem so difficult. Nevada Barr Seeking Enlightenment One Hat at a Time: A Skeptic’s Path to Religion.
Since the explosion of the Me Too Movement, business schools at colleges and universities across the country, from Georgetown University in Washington D. C. to Stanford, in California, have been scrambling to address this issue in the workplace. From conducting a series of workshops to adding ethics courses, each school is attempting to help the next generation of business executives address sexual harassment in the workplace.
“People are waking up in business schools and realizing we’ve had a blind spot,” says Daena Giardella who conducted the workshops at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. She adds, “Teaching students how to respond to sexual harassment is not just a nice little soft skill to add on. I think it is actually now an imperative. We can’t have leadership without this being taught.”
According to a report by Katie Johnston in The Boston Globe, business schools are taking a “two-pronged approach: teaching would-be leaders how to deal with sexual harassment while training future workers how to conduct themselves in the workplace.”
I am reminded of Dr. Harvey Cox’s book When Jesus Came to Harvard. In the 1980s, the university administrators were embarrassed by the number of graduates from their esteemed institute going to prison for white collar crimes. Cox, a Baptist minister and a professor of theology at Harvard, was hesitant to tackle the course for which he was being recruited. Administrators wanted to establish several classes on moral reasoning. Some would focus on the works of philosophers. They wanted Cox to teach a course entitled “Jesus and the Moral Life.”
Enrollment during the first year was large. After a couple of years, Cox had to move the course from his lecture hall to a concert hall. Cox acknowledges that before the ethics classes were added, Harvard was not teaching immorality, but it had taken an amoral stance in teaching only facts of a course. That changed.
Now, some 30 years later, the need for ethical studies has once again arisen. But this need is far greater than how to avoid sexual harassment in the workplace. Of course, that specific issue finally has to be addressed.
But, we the people also need to examine how we view, treat, talk with, talk to by technology, pass in the streets, sit next to in theaters, dine by in restaurants all people we encounter. This list is endless. We need to stop our focus on us for the moment and consider those around us. Their needs are as great as ours.
When did society decide to accept pushing and shoving to the head of the line, both literally and metaphorically, as okay? When did we stop seeing the faces of people around us and consider them mere objects to move out of the way? When did we cease to hear the words of Jesus about the way we treat one another not only at work, but also on the streets, and even at home?
Common courtesy far surpasses the magic words we used to teach children - thank you and please. However, those two phrases, when expressed with sincerity, go a long way. Real courtesy acknowledges the existence of others and treats each one of them with respect. No more “me first, get out of my way.”
And we return to Harvard’s “Jesus and the Moral Life.” In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us all how to act at all times. “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” We call it the Golden Rule.
While many religions promote a similar philosophy. Most write the command in the negative. “Do not unto others what you would not want do unto you.” Christianity is one of the few that expresses the command in positive words. Do - act - care for - be concerned about - treat one another as we want to be treated.
2018
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