What, if it exists, is a uniform standard of right and wrong? In the classroom, what is said about right and wrong? Objective moral standards are relative, dependent upon subjective values and cultural diversity.

An open forum with members of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers will discuss “The Pedagogy of Values: Moral Debate & Moral Relativism” at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Hughes-Trigg Commons.

Students can share experiences at SMU and how, if it should, the university might foster moral debate.

The faculty panel is composed of William Babcock, Perkins Theology; Ellen Pryor, Dedman School of Law, Bill Barnard, religious studies, and moderated by John Maguire, chemistry.

Professors Babcock and Pryor have resonded to a few questions as a primer.

Q: Can you briefly define value in this context?

Babcock: Values are what we take to be (morally) good – e.g., love, justice, truth-telling, compassion, making money, living well, accumulating wealth, having friends, beating out the competition, etc.

And the key question is: do we have good grounds for taking some or any of these to be, in fact, (morally) good?

Pryor: Recently (and periodically), a survey or study of undergraduates reported that many (maybe a majority) of college students felt that their professors did not talk about, or create a space for discussing, values.

Periodically, many contend that the modern university is dominated by faculty who largely have a morally relativistic stance towards the “values” that one would hope are the stars by which individuals steer themselves when making choices and taking action in life: truth, justice, mercy, compassion, fairness, etc.

Q: Can value be taught? Why discuss value?

Babcock: A long (and often unrecognized) history lies behind this question.

My own idea is that values can be taught, but not in the same way that mathematics or history or sociology can be taught – at least not if what we have in mind in teaching values is not teaching people to recognize what various groups and eras have taken to be valuable, but rather initiating them into the complex business of incorporating (true) values into the way they shape their own lives.

There’s no alternative to discussing values. We do it all the time, at every level of seriousness from what’s the best pizza to what’s the best way to order my life. And we live out our values at every moment, simply in making the decisions that we make and scheduling our time the way we schedule it and engaging in the activities we engage in.

The question is not why discuss values. It is rather: how do we discuss values well? That is, seriously, appropriately, sensibly, etc. That is what we need to learn how to do, especially in a time when one of the great temptations is to say that all values are culture-relative and that therefore there are no true standards of value, but only power groups seeking to impose their self-interest (which they dress up in the language of “value”) on other groups.

Of course, this very analysis depends on the supposition that there are true standards of value (for instance, that imposing a group’s self-interest on others is in fact morally bad, and that this judgment is not itself culture-relative). So even the view that all values are culture-relative turns out to depend on the tacit supposition that not all values are culture-relative.

Pryor: As professor Babcock indicates, we are always discussing values, and teachers are always “teaching” values, whether we realize it or not.

Let me give you an example from the law school environment. For years, studies of present or past law students from across the country suggest that law students perceive the first year of law school, and to some degree the second and third years, as being hostile to, or unwelcoming of, consideration of moral values.

The classic example is the image of a law student who, replying to a professor’s question about why A should have to pay B, says something such as “because it seems fair” – to which the professor roars that the student needs to give a “legal” argument, not a mushy or sentimental argument.

The example is overstated, but the underlying point is that students feel that the law school classroom eventually conveys: right does not matter, only argumentative skill; justice is in the eye of the beholder, and can (maybe usually does) turn on the whim of a judge or a single juror; legal doctrines reflect the preferences of those in power at a certain time in history; etc.

Does this happen? Perhaps to some extent. Part of the reason for this perception, I think, is that law professors are occupied with teaching a set of skills-writing, legal analysis, breaking caselaw down into pieces and building up new arguments.

In our preoccupation with this, we sometimes fail to realize that we are conveying the message that the deeper or higher aims of law – justice and mercy and fairness and mutual respect in a chaotic world – DO matter to the teachers and have mattered in the evolution of the law.

In short: if we fail to acknowledge in some way the moral, ethical, or religious implications of what we are studying, we convey – though not intentionally – a message that these considerations do not matter to “the law” or to “being a lawyer.”

On the “teachability” of values: yes, I think that values can be, and always are being, taught.

What is educable and to whom and at what stages varies. I do not expect to have to teach, in law school, the “value” of telling the truth. But I do need to understand that this value will be implicated in much of what the students study, including whether and when it is permissible to lie during negotiations, etc.

So the notion of “teaching” values does not really mean “infusing” the students with the character value in question. Rather, it means creating a space in which they (and we) can continue to grow in our understanding and application of the moral and spiritual characteristics we do value and should value.

Q: Outside of pedagogy, how else are values acquired?

Babcock: Values are obviously acquired – and lived out – in all sorts of ways: wanting to do – or to have – what “everybody” is doing or what “everybody” has; simply taking over whatever “society” says is good or bad; modeling oneself on a mentor or an ideal (whether good or bad); etc.

The question is whether the values acquired in this way are genuinely good and whether they are well grounded (i.e., whether there is in fact good reason for taking them as [morally] good).