Why is it difficult to teach ethics to engineering students?
Below are a few of the specific challenges encountered from our previous experience:
"many students also appear to suppose that technology is a morally neutral instrument that can be put to good or bad use. This line of thinking would explain why students often say that ethics is not the business of engineers who design or develop technology, but that it should be studied by people who order certain technical artefacts – like managers or politicians – or by the people who use the artefacts."
"Students often work in an unstructured way when they analyse moral cases, and they tend to jump to conclusions. The treatment of moral cases by students is therefore often superficial. Relevant facts or moral considerations are overlooked, or the reasoning skills of the students are lacking."
"When they undertake exercises or write essays, students do not use – or to a lesser extent than desired – the ethical theories that are offered in class. If they use the theories at all, they do so mainly in an instrumental way: they apply them to the case at hand, in an unreflective way."
