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“Education at Home” Program Unit summary Note

Subject: Civics and Ethics Education
Grade: 9th
CHAPTER 12: MORALITY AND RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE
• Ethics is simply the principles used by people that control their conduct. .Ethics’’ as “the study of
standards of conduct and moral judgment:
• Religion and ethical values are both concerns of human morality, conduct and behavior. Both
presuppose that human freedom, choice and responsibility are subject to action. Both religion and
ethical values serve a common purpose in a society.
• Ethics, morality and religion are part of every human life and society.
• Religion shapes our views of what is ethical or unethical.
Typical ethical values:
Trustworthiness: concerns a variety of behavioral qualities such as honesty, integrity, reliability
and loyalty.
Respect: is about honoring the essential worth and dignity of all people.
Responsibility: life is full of choices. Being responsible means being in charge of our choices and
therefore our lives.
Fairness: means being open-minded, willing to admit error and not taking advantage of others.
Caring: is the heart of ethics. It is scarcely possible to be truly ethical and not genuinely
concerned with the welfare of others.
Citizenship: the concept of citizenship includes how we ought to behave as part of a community.
• Values are the types of beliefs a person has in distinguishing between right and wrong and good
and bad.
• Ethical values serve as standards of right and wrong for people, guiding their decisions and
actions. It is materialist social disciplines, while religion is an idealist system of faith according
to a supreme being.
• Religious values, on the other hand, are ethical principles based on religious texts and traditions.
• Ethics, morality and religion are part of every human life and society. Religion plays a large role in
guiding moral behavior of people.
• Ethics studies human actions from the moral point of view as good or bad or right or wrong.
The major elements of humanity:
• Sympathy: The ability to feel sympathy for others is a great part of what makes us human, and
it is what compels us to reach out and offer help.
• Helping the Needy: Life is full of joys and sorrows. At one time or another, everyone
experiences their share of joyous times and difficult times.
• Love and Care for Others: The word 'love' should be taken in the very wide sense of 'care' or
'concern for'.
• Secularism is the principle of separation of government institutions, and the persons mandated to
represent the State, from religious institutions and religious dignitaries.
• Tolerance that does not respect moral and religious conscience is not tolerance at all and there can
be no authentic diversity unless we honor the integrity of personal conscience.
Religious fundamentalism is one of the bottlenecks in building democracy and enhancing
1 | When character is lost, All is Lost.
development in any country, including Ethiopia.
 Fundamentalists are a particular group of people gathered together in the name of religion,
ethnicity, social group, etc.
Religious fundamentalism is an ideology of political commitment to a religious community.
WHYWESTUDYETHICS?
• Ethics do not make a person wealthy, beautiful or handsome, Strong or brave
The main significance of the study of ethics is
• To moral uprightness
• To promote the reward of self-respect
• To make a person is a good member of society
• To make some moral difficult decision
• To form a just and orderly society
• To inculcate among men a true value of living good life
1. Hedonism: emphasis on the only pleasure is the only good that should be pursued as an end
2. Utilitarianism: it is the best known example its goodness or badness emphasis on the greatest
happiness for the greatest number of people / social/.
3. Self-realization: consider on the only with self and life for other (its ultimate end is self-full
development).
4. Ethicalegoism: emphasis on the action brings me better than bad, and then it is good.
5. Psychologicalegoisms: emphasis on human motivation. It is not ethical doctrine but theories
concerning on motive /the process of an action/.
6. Kantianism: emphasis on motive, intention, duties of an action for moral goodness by satisfying
requirement, It must be willed to be universal law and the act itself must be morally right.
7. Socialhedonism: is a doctrine that states that an action is right in so far as it tends to produce the
greatest happiness for the greatest number of people / social/
8. Situationalethics: it is the other side of deontological ethics but it depends entirely up on love,
good relationship.
9. Ethical Relativism is the notion that there are no universally valid moral principles, but that all
moral principles are valid relative to cultural or individual choice.
10. Relativism Subjectivism: views morality as a personal decision i.e. morality is in the eyes of the
beholder.
11. Conventionalism: views moral validity in terms of social acceptance.
12. Ethical relativism: states that nothing is good or bad, moral or immoral in itself but in relation to
something.
13. Meta ethics, on the other hand, analyses and studies the meaning of ethical terms and judgments in
normative ethics.
• All religion Emphasis on love, Generosity, Sympathy, compassion, patience, tolerance,
peace, Honesty, Loyalty, Trust and forgiveness can and do promote inner values.
• Heritage is a property that is or may be inherited; an inheritance, valued things such as historic
buildings that have been passed down from previous generations, and relating to things of historic or
cultural value that are worthy of preservation.
• Peace and security is an essential ingredient in maintaining economic development, social order
and political stability.
• Conflict is a disagreement (absence of consensus) In between individual and group actors. (It is a
result of contradiction, attitude and behavior). Conflict is a part of our nature.
2 | When character is lost, All is Lost.
 The three crucial steps to manage conflict peacefully and constructively are
1. Understanding the patter and appearance of conflict (addressing the root cause of conflict)
2. Assessing and understanding the nature of the typical approach to deal conflict.
3. Developing the skill and knowledge to apply approach effectively.
The various proper means of conflict resolution
1. Litigation: Due process of law on the bases of rule of law. It is most often used type of method.
2. Alternative: Has different type. It is less cost and takes less process (speeder)
A) Negotiation: is a process of submission and consideration of offers until acceptable offer is made
it is deliberation
B) Mediation: is a process of resolving conflict with a neutral third party /person or mediator
it is an informal conflict resolution mechanism
the mediator has no power to impose a binging decisions
it is also used at international level b/n countries in a friendly interference
the decision of the third party (neutral) is not binding
used for wife and husband disputes resolution
C) Arbitration: is a process of dispute resolution with in a neutral third party
conflicting parties can select arbitrator or third party
in this process the third party can have a power to pass binding decision
used for border disputes resolution
D)Conciliation: less formal process to reach agreement by gathering and exchanging information
and council ling them (mechanism of preventing conflict). It is early state of mediator.
E) Reconciliation: a process happened at the end of conflict (reconciling between victim and
perpetrators). Creating agreement that happened in the past.
• Religious pluralism is an attitude or a policy regarding the recognition of diversity of religious belief
systems co-existing in a society. Pluralism is not just tolerance, but an active seeking of
understanding across lines of difference.
• Appreciating religious diversity means the right to practice equally every religion regardless of its
having majority or minority followers.
• Tolerance is a necessary public virtue, but it does not require Christians and Muslims, Hindus, Jews,
and ardent secularists to know everything about one another.
• Intolerance does nothing to remove our ignorance of one another, and leaves in place the stereotype,
the half-truth, the fears that underlie old patterns of division and violence.
• Religious tolerance is accepting others’ religions on the basis of equality principle and also as per
the constitutional principles of the FDRE.
• Religious tolerance is important because it helps us to honor and appreciate the differences between
our religious practices.
• Religious discrimination is manifested in the form of individuals, groups and legal sanctions in the
denial of religious freedom, marginalization, persecution, denying recognition and acts of
intimidation.
• Ignorance is one of the chronic problems affecting human lives in many ways. When it comes to
religious affairs, ignorance is becoming a mortal enemy of human life, liberty, dignity, peace and
development.
3 | When character is lost, All is Lost.