College of
Business
Administration
College of
Business
Administration
1) Robert Bellah et al. writes about the growing individualism and the breakdown of institutions in the United States. What is wrong with being individualistic? Why do the authors place such an important value on institutions?
2) “A genuine 'education society' means something more than a society with good schools. It means a society with a healthy sense of the common good…Schools can contribute to that, but they cannot create it out of whole cloth… Only a further democratic transformation of all our institutions will make possible a genuine 'education society.'” How does one go about enacting this transformation?
3) “… while we in concert with others create institutions, they also create us: they educate us and form us…” How has this symbiotic relationship played out in your life? For those of you who are from the United States, what institutions have made you “American”? For those of you who are from other countries, what institutions have shaped your national character? How do these institutions stand in contrast to those that shape the United States?
4) “We think what is required here is only a high level of competence, of expertise, of 'professionalism,' not the moral wisdom that should be at the basis of a good institution. And when things go wrong, we tend to blame individuals, we decry their lack of 'ethics,' but we don’t question the morality of the institutions themselves.” Is it a few “bad apples” behind the recent accounting scandals of Enron etc., or is it something bigger such as the current institution of capitalism in the United States?
5) It is argued in this book that religion and ethics have lost their efficacy because they have been relegated to the “private realm.” In contrast “real knowledge” is public, objective, and rests on scientific facts, not feelings. Should ethics be relegated to secondary status? If so, why? If not, what steps can be taken to have it regain its role in shaping our public policy and lives?
6) According to Bellah, the problem is not what the government can do, but how it can do it in a way that strengthens initiatives and participation of citizens instead of reducing them to the status of clients. How might the government accomplish this goal?
7) One of the major problems with democracy is that electors as well as politics only worry about the short term. What institutional modifications could change that?
8) “Some people insist that it is unpatriotic to say that America is no longer Number One; the whole idea smacks of defeatism and breeds a lack of confidence unworthy of a great nation. Others say that we need to face the facts about our slippage of economic and political predominance in order to construct a new grand strategy for regaining our position of Number One. But few people ask, what does it mean to be Number One in an interdependent world? And what would be the moral purpose of being Number One?”
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