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Do professors/teachers have any ethical obligations to their students? Take, for example, the case in "21" the movie, in which a professor of mathematics at MIT is recruiting his brightest students into an illegal blackjack ring that he is heading. The action might be immoral, but my question is whether there is anything about the teacher-student relationship that makes it especially (or specially) immoral. Thx
Accepted:
July 21, 2009

Comments

Allen Stairs
July 23, 2009 (changed July 23, 2009) Permalink

One obvious problem here is that teachers have a sort of power over students. They can give them bad grades, refuse to write letters of recommendation... If the students "consent" to the arrangement, it will be that much less clear that the "consent" was strictly voluntary. So in addition to the inherent wrongness of the scheme, the extra problem is that the teacher is quite likely taking unfair advantage of the students.

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