A634.9.5.RB_LarsonKurt, A Reflection of Our Learning

Reflect on the three key lessons you take away from the course. Reflect on your perceived value of this course. Include both positive and negative aspects of your experience. What might you have done to improve your learning experience? How might the University or your instructor provide additional support for your learning? Were their topics covered that seem particularly relevant or irrelevant to your experiences and to what you expect to come in future courses?

The three key lessons from this course would be: an improved awareness of critical thinking skills, although not specific to the syllabus of the course. Critical thinking is an important cognitive skill, which requires constant maintenance, upkeep and mental agility.

The second would be that religion, morality and ethical behavior might not be seminomas with each other. Their individual and collective contributions toward each other enhance the characteristics and virtues that each have to offer an individual who has the critical thinking skills to understand the value they have individually, and in conjunction with one another. The last take away would be that one must decide for oneself based upon many sources of information, inspiration and influence that is available to persuade one to accept or reject what might be considered as moral or ethical.

In my opinion, for a course of this magnitude to be truly effective, the university might consider a more involved approach to ethics and morality. In other words, more involvement from student to student and student to instructor perspectives, with more team involvement and less discussion questions, team involvement although tricky in the academic world can and does relate to the business world and team dynamics including the amount of contribution team members display.

The topics covered thorough out the course were for the most part spot-on except one, Gun Control.  I thought it in poor taste for a university to consider gun control as a moralistic or ethical issue from the standpoint of a Constitutional right. There are more individuals killed per year due to vehicular manslaughter and drunk drivers combined than from firearms for defense or in-commission of a crime. One is an unalienable God given right, and the other is a privilege, which we all know a special right or advantage available only to a particular person or group of people, such as the privilege of driving.

Privileges and their moral and ethical quandaries are the items that should up for debate in academia and not Constitutional rights. The Constitution doesn't grant or create rights; it recognizes and protects rights that inherently exist. The late Senator Byrd and I may have disagreed on a number of things. One for which we were both in total agreement with is that ALL schools, universities and learning institutions should be required to teach Constitutional law. The same law that most politician’s use against the mindless sheep of society, in a manner to heard the unsuspecting masses. Should we educate a contingency of academic scholars in Constitutional law, there would be less rhetoric and more precision in the manner by which our elected officials approach their constituents.