Moral 'decency'

re: "Social science cut from two Onet exams from next year" (BP, June 6)

Dear editor,
Whilst commending the general aim of reducing a student workload that is of dubious value to a sound education, there are some disturbing notions in the article "Social science cut from two Onet exams from next year" that sound too much like business as usual.

 For example, we see, yet again, senior officials who think themselves ever so clever pontificating about moral decency without a shred of supporting reasoning. We should be told, for example, how the speaker and the teachers under his command "know if students have a correct understanding of moral conduct and good conscience." For example, it they support military coups does that count against the assessment of the students moral decency, as it should in a democracy? If a student praises the moral bravery of Thailand's Gwangju Prize for Human Rights award winner Jatupat Boonpattararaksa, do they get the deserved bonus points for moral awareness conducive to truly patriotic citizenship? And then there are more immediately challenging questions: for example, is it morally right to criminalize a less harmful drug such as yaa baa when the more socially harmful drug alcohol is legal? Is abortion on demand morally right or wrong? Premarital sex? None of these questions, along with many others, have simple answers; to pretend that they do have simple answers demonstrates a simple-minded failure to understand the moral issues involved.

 Before being allowed to indulge their fondness for such talk, perhaps senior Ministry of Education officials could be required to sit a series of exams where they write essays analyzing moral concepts and issues, which essays are expected to display both solid awareness of the history of human societies in addition to sound critical thinking skills on the moral questions posed. It should be needless to point out that the officials must actually write their own essays.

 However, it being contrary to the good morals that found democracy, elected politicians, even those appointed ministers, cannot be so required to demonstrate any such competence as public servants, but citizens and journalists can very reasonably press ministers who want to indulge in such pious talk to explain what they mean by "good morals," in particular what it is that determines whether an act, a law, a custom, a tradition, or an idea does in fact comport with good morals. Too many politicians get away with far too much such talk about "good morals" that is in fact bad morals and poor critical thinking on any of the usual standards of moral judgement, whether consequentialist, rights based, or virtue centred.

 Felix Qui

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on June 8, 2017, under the title "Moral 'decency'" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1264723/moral-decency