Product Review: E is for Ethics

The following post is sponsored by the good people at Simon and Schuster Publishing. That’s another way of saying they bribed me. Well, maybe they didn’t bribe me. I agreed to write a review about this book if they gave me the book for free. So it’s more like they are paying me to write the review, only instead of money I got homework. 

E is for Ethics: How to Talk to Kids About Morals, Values, and What Matters Most is a delightfully engaging book that serves as a perfect tool for parents to teach their children right from wrong.

Now just because ole Simon and Schuster gave me this book for free doesn’t mean I’m not going to apply some hard nosed journalistic methods to this review. I was a Mass Comm major damn it! I took Journalism 101 AND 102. So the first thing I did was a little investigative research on the author Ian James Corlett. I set out to uncover the truth about this so called writer. And believe me, I found all the dirt. Where did I find it? On the back flap of the book. Sitting right there was a neatly typed up bio of the author. That really made my job easy. Thanks Simon! Or was that your idea Schuster? 

I immediately decided I like Ian James Corlett. He and I have a lot in common. He played the voice of Baby Taz in Baby Looney Tunes and my son is a baby tazmanian devil. But if that credit right there doesn’t swing your vote then you should know Ian James Corlett wrote and developed The Adventures of Paddington Bear. PADDINGTON EFFING BEAR. That is legit, son! 

So yeah, he’s had some big hits in his day. But can Mr. Corlett teach children about ethics? What does he really know about ethics? Were there a lot of scandals surrounding the making of Paddington Bear? 

Corlett, a father of two, has used the stories he put in this book to teach his own children a sense of values. Every week his wife and his kids would get together for “family fun time” and Corlett would tell one of these stories. The children were always entertained but completely unaware that they were learning. 

The first of 26 stories tells of a little boy named Elliot who finds a crisp new five dollar bill on his way in to the video store with his mother. Elliot wrestles with the decision to turn it in or keep it for himself when he over hears a lady claim she is missing her five dollar bill. Right when you think Elliot is going to do the right thing, the story cuts away to a question.

“What would be the HONEST thing for Elliot to do?”

After a brief description of how good it feels to be honest, some more thought invoking questions are offered. But what did Elliot do!? Did he give the lady her five bucks back? Or did he take those five bucks for a glorious Dollar Store shopping spree?

At first I was a little put off by the fact that none of the stories actually come to a conclusion. Every one of them ends in a cliff hanger and leads you to ask your child a thoughtful question. I figured if the kids are really getting into the story and relating with these characters, then if they see that the characters are doing the right thing they’ll want to be good too.

But the more I thought about it, this is actually a brilliant tactic. To have the stories conclude with the protagonists displaying their wonderful sense of ethics would essentially be force feeding the morals to your kids. Instead Mr. Corlett, the crafty man that he is, wants the kids to come up with the answers on their own. And if they come up with the wrong answer you hit them with the book!

In the job I have had for the last 3 years I train a lot of new employees and mentor them as they develop their skills. One of the most useful training techniques is to do exactly what Corlett does in his book. We call it asking “open ended questions.” Questions like, “What would be the honest thing for Elliot to do?” force the student to give a full answer because they can’t simply say yes or no. The result is they think through the problem on their own and even if they come up with an answer that isn’t quite on target you can guide them to the right answer through more open ended questions. 

This is the kind of training Corlett provides for your child as you read E is for Ethics to them. So will I use this book to teach Chandler about the difference between right and wrong? I think I will. Of course I’ll also be using all the Batman movies.

Have you read this book to your kids? What did you think?