Posts by Hilary Stace
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: Belief Media, in reply to Sacha,
I find the concept of walking backwards into an unknown future (which I borrowed from my Maori colleagues) very useful in explaining my interest in ethics or disability research. It justifies the need to look at historical context. It means that you acknowledge all those who have been harmed through unethical practices or bad policy in the past, and remember them when looking at the issue in a current context. So when looking at ethics processes today you never forget the 'silent holocaust' when hundreds of thousands of disabled children and adults were euthanised by clinician-led policy in the Nazi era, or in looking at disability service provision you need to acknowledge those who ensured the dehumanising policy of institutionalisation.
-
You just need to look at the sort of projects coming out on the GETS website. A lot of stuff that could be done much more cheaply and efficiently in-house. But there are no staff left with the expertise or institutional memory, so everything is tendered and it is a very slow complex process. Also very inefficient in that several groups may spend a lot of time - weeks - putting the tender together but there is only one winner, which is very bad for relationships all round. There is a lot more pressure on the contract relationship managers to negotiate the whole process and come up with an outcome which is acceptable to various groups, including those in the departmental hierarchies and those who missed out on the tender in the first place (and who are watching very carefully). During this slow cumbersome process the original problem may have morphed into something else, but there is no flexibility to adapt.
-
Hard News: Belief Media, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
Doesn't stop families from having discussions about various paths of faith, and having books of bible stories for children sitting around or sending kids to Sunday school, for instance. I think it is important that people know about things such as Noah's flood and Jesus as part of basic general knowledge, as there are so many references to such things daily (and how would one ever understand the Life of Brian?) Teenagers interested in vegetarianism will sometimes find their way to Buddhist or Hindu philosophical tenets for these.
But don't think it is the role of our state schools, which have been secular since the 1870s, to do this.
I have noticed that there is a trend for secularly-raised students to take Religious Studies at university so those who are interested will find out.
What schools should be encouraging, in my view, is a love of learning, acceptance and welcoming of diversity, and inclusion.
-
I had a huge battle with the local school when a local religious group offered to run religious instruction (ie Christianity) in school time, and most of the decile 10 parent community had no problem with it. It's not that I objected to those intending to run it (they were nice community-minded Christians, if a tad evangelical - but they were not trained educationalists). It's just that the school curriculum was already crowded, and it would mean those who opted out would have to be accommodated in the school library or somewhere, and part of the curriculum would have to be chopped to accommodate the Christian studies.
Much easier to offer something like that as an optional extra before or after school when there is not that opt in/opt out issue - or as part of a group of options that members of the community come in and take once a month or so (such as introduction to various languages or activities) which happens quite often in primary and intermediate schools.
-
Hard News: Belief Media, in reply to Sacha,
I'm still on one for a couple of months so can't comment publicly much. But here are some details from the Health Research Council's Ethics Notes.
-
The local Presbyterian church had a very inclusive youth group to which they invited Oscar when he was a teenager. The young men taking it even came and collected him the first time as he was reluctant to try something new. After that he was happy to go along every week. Over the years he went to youth camp and to some YFC type events in the Town Hall. They were good Christians - ie their behaviour was probably inspired by the actions of the historical Jesus.
-
Talking of Peter Sellers, this gave me nightmares when I was young. Can’t believe it was played on the public radio request session in the 1950s and 60s but it must have been.
-
I like this current trend of talking about ethics etc. Don’t think we do enough reflecting on what it means to be human, and how we relate to each others as members of the community of humans. There was a Bioethics conference at the University of Otago in January, organised by the Bioethics Centre at the university, with many interesting papers and perspectives, and the Bioethics Centre has a lively twitter feed. There’s another conference on legal ethics coming up soon in Auckland. The Nathaniel Centre is a group which encourages discussion on ethics (from within the umbrella of the Catholic Church). The Health Research Council overseas research ethics. Even Closeup had a little go at medical ethics yesterday.
I have a personal and professional interest in research ethics.There are some major changes coming up in the Ministry of Health ethical review processes, which are causing some angst and active discussions within the sector, and which are likely to impact on humans as research participants.
-
Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to JacksonP,
My internet connection is on a go-slow for Good Friday, so can't download any of the clips today, but can supply a piece of trivia re Gloss. The main character (played by Miranda Harcourt) was called Gemma Stace. The scriptwriter had been a friend of my older sister (not called Gemma) and there was a rumour at the time that she was inspiration for the character. Not that much similarity really, although my sister still works 'in television'.
-
Hard News: Belief Media, in reply to Islander,
I disagree that there aren't some sort of 'general' ethics. There are multiple strands in the development of ethics and various ways of looking at it all. Since there have been humans there have probably been people discussing and thinking about what it means to be human. The are disciplines of legal ethics and medical ethics and philosophy and moral approaches. You could go back to Aristotle and his belief that we need to think about ourselves as ethical beings, or look at historical development in various cultures. But I think you would come to some common aspiration of treating others as you would like to be treated (whether or not people actually do it in their real lives).
I personally prefer the concept of 'right' relationships (originally from Buddhism) which starts from a premise that everyone is fully and equally human, and respecting that equality you work on building an ethical, respectful and appropriate relationship with other humans whatever the task - so there is on ongoing process of negotiating an ethical relationship in any particular situation. So you wouldn't have one person imposing their beliefs on another and conversely you would speak up if you saw injustice to another. Michael Kendrick has developed this concept in the concept of provision of disability services - an area very vulnerable to abuses of power or of treating dsabled people as not fully human.
You could take that idea further and apply it to the environment and everything on earth on the assumption that we are all part of one ecosytem whereby we are all interrelated and what we do affects others and thereby ourselves. So why would you allow pollution? It is not an ethical 'right' relationship.