"I hope you don’t judge me on my life, because I have made some bad decisions. I admit it. And I hope you don’t judge me on my decisions, either, good or bad, because I ain’t always had control over how they turned out. I ask that you judge me on whether I done what I done for the right reasons. " Jackson "Gooseball" Fielder
INTRODUCTION
With the recent shift away from the humanities and the rise of dogmatism has come a reluctance to teach philosophy. This is tragic. To ignore philosophy as a valuable source of wisdom is to ignore the very foundation of our civilization and dooms us to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Attempts to introduce students to philosophy through conventional means has generally involved teaching the basic tenants of the most famous philosophers, out of context, as mere footnotes to an historical era. Lost is the relevance of the fundamental ethical problems with which philosophers continue to struggle.
A comprehensive examination of ethical theory is beyond most undergraduates and certainly beyond the scope of this teaching guide. But it is essential that students learn that the problems with which they struggle have, in one way or another, been addressed by the brightest minds our civilization has produced. Students who learn philosophy are able to apply the collected wisdom of the ages to their problems.
Further, high school students are at the age where the comforting blacks and whites of childhood are beginning to blur into the disorienting greys of adulthood. The inevitable loss of innocence is less traumatic if one knows: (1) the philosophers are on duty trying to figure things out and, (2) even as smart as they are, the philosophers have found that there may not be eternally correct answers to any problem. It is important that students understand that a deeper problem is a richer problem.
The FIELDER’S CHOICE TEACHING GUIDE grew out of the experience of the author, Rick Norman, and others in teaching the novel FIELDER’S CHOICE to high school and college students. The novel is used as course material at numerous high schools and universities, including Michigan State. It is also in the ACCELERATED READER program.
It became evident in teaching the novel that only with an adequate background in the philosophy of ethics could students comprehend the novel’s philosophical theme.
This teaching guide is written to be used in conjunction with the reading of FIELDER’S CHOICE. After the class has read the novel, the class should discuss the issues presented below in the order they are raised in this guide. For instance, issues to be discussed include:
What must be considered in making a decision? How do I know if I made the right decision? Can every decision be correctly made using logic? Are there eternal truths upon which I can base my decision so that I know I am right? Am I a bad person if I make a bad decision? Am I a good person if I do the right thing but for the wrong reasons?
" I’ve had a thousand decisions to make in my time. It took me twenty-three years to figure out that a fellow’s got little control as to whether a choice he makes turns out to be the right one. All he can do is make sure he done it for the right reason and there’s not but one reason. Same one why your mama sat up with you when you had the croup; same one why your pappy rubbed your head when he come home: same one why you let your dog lick you on the mouth. Love is all. " Jackson "Gooseball" Fielder
INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS
The word "philosophy" comes from the Greek words which signify the love of wisdom.
Philosophy, generally, is the pursuit of wisdom. Philosophers search for an understanding of reality and values. Ethics is the study of what is good, what is bad and what moral duties people have.
The following chart illustrates the three branches of philosophy: ethics, logic and aesthetics.
GOAL: GOODNESS TRUTH BEAUTY
BRAIN FUNCTION: WILLING THINKING FEELING
USE: PRACTICAL SCIENCE ART
LIFE
PHILOSOPHICAL
DISCIPLINE: ETHICS LOGIC AESTHETICS
FIELDERS’S CHOICE exposes the student vicariously to ethical dilemmas and serves as a vehicle by which to introduce the formal disciplines of philosophy, generally, and ethics, particularly.
FIELDER’S CHOICES
Whether to enlist.
Jax enlists after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. But are his actions based on patriotism or are they an attempt to escape his embarrassment? If a person makes an honorable decision but for an ulterior motive does that deduct from his accomplishment?
Whether to kill Japanese.
Able young men are expected to fight for their country. Soldiers are expected to kill the enemy. How does society discourage murder but encourage killing in times of war? Can rules supplant conscience?
Why should seeing a baseball diamond make Jax question the rules? He says: "But if they played baseball, didn’t they have to be a little bit human?"(p.105)
Whether to live or die.
Jax’s suffering becomes unbearable and he hopes to die. What level of suffering must there be to justify suicide or euthanasia? Why does Jax change his mind about dying? How long would he have kept his positive outlook if he had not been released? Is it true, as Jax says: " Even a bad life is better than none." ?(p.154)
Whether to teach the admiral’s son how to pitch.
Aiding and abetting the enemy is treason punishable by death. Jax certainly accepts the hospitality, albeit meager, from the admiral and bestows benefit on his enemy. What rules did Jax ignore in doing so? To which rules was he true? On what basis did Jax decide to do so?
Whether to run away to Mexico to avoid a court martial.
Do you think running away would have been justified in this situation? List the good things and bad things about running away.
Whether to save Little Jackson from his father.
Was Jax’s decision to save his nephew a snap decision? What prepared him for the decision? Did he draw on any values to make his decision? Would he have made the same decision if he had never met Yoshi? Was his decision correct? Would it have been correct if Little Jackson had been shot? When does a bystander have the right to interfere with a parent disciplining his or her child? When does a bystander have an obligation to interfere? Are there any rules, laws or commandments to give you guidance?
MODERN MORAL DILEMMAS
Are right and wrong matters of opinion or matters of fact?
Why do people misbehave?
What determines if an action is right or wrong?
Is there such thing as an absolutely right or absolutely wrong action?
What is more important, the consequences of our actions or our intentions?
How should we decide between two conflicting desires?
In our moral judgements, should we seek to serve our own purposes and needs, or should we seek to benefit all society?
Can evil done to one man be justified on the ground that it is for the benefit on many more men?
Is the moral adage, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you," the best way to live a moral life?
Can one always act in accordance with the following formula: when faced with two unavoidable evils, always chose the lesser evil.
Is it possible to create general rules by which to live morally, or must we judge each event and person on a case by case basis?
Is it ever wise to let a person make decisions for you?
What is more important, a person’s happiness or their moral duty?
Is lying ever justifiable?
Is cruelty the worst thing we can do?
Does human life have a goal?
Why do people fear death?
Can anything worthwhile be said about death?
Is morality at some level an instinct?
Are there things language cannot say?
Would two equally good persons reach the same moral decision?
Is the life of a good person worth more than the life of a bad person?
TWO MORAL PERSPECTIVES
An Absolutist is a person who believes certain actions, like killing another person, are absolutely wrong and can never be justified. A Utilitarian decides moral questions based on what would be better for the most people or, alternatively, what would be bad for the fewest people.
Absolutism gives primary concern to what a person is doing. Utilitarianism is primarily concerned with what will happen.
An Absolutist believes that a person should do good acts and not do bad acts. He also believes one should maximize good and minimize evil, but only if it can be done without committing a forbidden act.
A Utilitarian believes that a person should always try to maximize good and minimize evil. Any act is permissible as long as the benefit sufficiently outweighs the bad.
A man’s actions usually affect more people than he actually deals with directly, and those extended effects must also be considered in his decisions.
WELL KNOWN MORAL HYPOTHETICALS
One way of conducting this discussion is to divide the room in two, one side for Absolutists, the other for Utilitarians. Students are encouraged to keep an open mind and follow their consciences. If they, at any time during the discussion, feel as though they identify more with the position argued by the other side of the room, they are to switch sides. Arguments should be consistent with the position espoused by that side of the room. A student who is on the Absolutist side but argues a Utilitarian position should be directed to the other side of the room. Students with novel or unorthodox positions should be sent to a separate corner.
Although the situations are improbable, the students should be encouraged to play along, taking the given facts as the boundaries for the discussions.
1. The case of the human plug.
A fat guide is leading ten tourists through the narrow caves on the Mediterranean coast. As the tide starts filling the cave, he attempts to lead the party out of the only exit but becomes wedged in the cave entrance. The water is quickly filling the cave and unless he is extricated in the next few minutes, all ten tourists will drown (although the guide’s head is above the tide level and he will live). There is no possible way to remove the fat guide except to use the dynamite that was left in the cave.
Do you kill the fat man?
An Absolutist would take the position that it is always wrong to kill an innocent man, even if to save the lives of others. A Utilitarian would argue that the good of saving ten lives outweighs the bad of killing one man.
Would your answer be the same if you knew that the fat guide was the sole supporter of eleven children, some of whom would certainly die without their "pappa "?.
2. The life raft.
Five people are adrift in a life raft in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic. Four are healthy but the fifth is an old bum, dying of an irreversible liver disease, with no family. The seas are getting rough and unless one person gets out into the freezing water (which means a slow painful death), all five will die.
Do you throw the dying man overboard?
Again, the Absolutist would argue that murder is never justified while the Utilitarian would decide in favor of the majority good.
The dying man is feeble of mind and as he gets colder he becomes more disoriented. Do you encourage the dying man to sacrifice himself?
The fifth man is not dying but is merely retarded. Do you toss him out? Talk him into jumping out?
The fifth man is healthy but a foreigner.
The fifth man is from the country of South Welsley. You and the rest of the passengers are from the U.S. . The two countries are presently locked in a bloody war. The fifth man is a general in the army of South Welsley.
3. The torturer
Your family happens to be in Latin America at the time an evil dictator takes control. He captures your family and tells you that unless you slowly torture and kill his chief political rival, he will torture and kill you and your entire family.
Do you torture and kill his rival in order to save your family?
The Absolutist and Utilitarian arguments are the same as for hypotheticals 1 and 2, above.
Do you reluctantly torture and kill to prevent worse evil?
As a Utilitarian, how do you factor in the possibility that the new dictator may be lying and may kill you and your family anyway?
What if you only had to torture the rival, not kill him?
What if the rival you were ordered to kill was an even more evil dictator than the new dictator and, before escaping from a U.S. prison, had been tried in the U.S. for genocide and condemned to die?
What if the rival you would be killing were the most respected researcher in this hemisphere and, if allowed to continue work for one more month, would discover the cure for a disease that kills one million children each year?
If you do what the evil dictator asks are you not encouraging him to continue his sadistic practices?
As you are about to start torturing the rival with a white-hot poker, the evil dictator’s three year old grandson runs into the room unexpectedly and you instinctively grab him. It is obvious that you now have the upper hand and you order the evil dictator to free your family. He, however, senses you are a good person and calls your bluff. The only way you can convince him that you are serious is to burn the innocent child with the hot poker. Do you do so?
WAR AND MASSACRE
A pacifist is an Absolutist who believes that killing another person is wrong, regardless of the alternative. Pacifists oppose war and refuse to weigh the consequences of their refusal to fight. Remember, an Absolutist looks only at the act, not the consequences of the act.
The alternative to war, at least in the case of the Second World War, is often death or subjugation. A Utilitarian may decide that war is the lesser of two evils when the alternative is life under Nazi and Japanese domination.
But a closer call for the Utilitarian is often how the war should be waged. Let us examine the case of U.S. bombing of Japan at the end of the Second World War. Most reasonable people would agree that killing innocent children, even during wartime, is an evil that should be avoided. However, suppose a sniper had your company pinned down and was killing your men at the rate of one per hour. He is so well fortified you cannot kill him, but if you bring his children into the street and start killing them, you are certain he will stop. What are the Absolutist and Utilitarian arguments? Bear in mind that your children are also in the combat zone, and killing the sniper’s children could lead to reprisals.
Now suppose your decision is whether or to bomb Kyoto. It is a city of 80,000 inhabitants, 10,000 of which are soldiers and 20,000 of which are children. Most of the inhabitants would be burned to death in the raid. Not only would the bombing kill 10,000 combatants but the horrible death of the children would certainly break the morale of the entire country and thereby shorten the war. If the war is shortened only one week, it is estimated that 200,000 lives will be saved, 40,000 of which will be children. Do you order the bombing, knowing 10,000 innocent children will die a horrible death?
DEATH
As death is the inevitable end of our physical existence, the question arises whether it is a bad thing to die. Some people believe death is dreadful: others have no objection to death itself, they just hope their own death is neither painful or premature.
The philosopher Lucretius pointed out that although everyone finds it disturbing to contemplate the eternity that follows their death, no one finds tragic the eternity that preceded their birth. Lucretius concluded that since your death is nothing more than the mirror image of what came before your birth, death is neither good nor bad.
The natural view is that death is bad because it brings to an end all good things associated with life. But doesn’t it also end all bad things, too? So is death bad? A philosopher might attack the question this way: If all the good things and all the bad things are subtracted from life, is what is left neutral? One argument is that what is left is not neutral but good. The good is the potential life holds. Since death ends your potential, it is bad.
Besides the potential, what is good about life are certain states and conditions. It is being alive, doing certain things, having certain experiences that makes life worthwhile. Death is evil because it is the absence of life, not because of the mere state of being dead.
Suppose a brilliant scientist suffered a brain injury and was permanently reduced to the mental capacity of a four year old child. Would this be seen as tragic? Do you think the life of a four year old is tragic? Some may argue that this period of life is the happiest of all. Don’t we pity the injured scientist because of the loss of potential for the good things in life? Isn’t that why we grieve more at the death of a ten year old rather than a ninety year old?
DISCUSSION / TEST QUESTIONS
Early in the novel (p.22) Jax is humiliated when his brother tells him to run to second base on a fly ball. His brother was in a position of authority at the time. When must you defer to authority and when must you make your own decisions? If your commanding officer orders you to shoot a child must you do so? What if he orders you to bomb a city and you know children will be killed?
Jax has difficulty making snap decisions. Two examples are his bad call in the exhibition game in Mexico (p.63) and assaulting the subway rider (p.80). What decisions do you make everyday without the benefit of reflection. Are these important decisions. Have you made snap decisions that you wish you could make again with benefit of hindsight? Is there any way to prepare for snap decisions so that your chances of making the correct decision are improved ?
What are some of the things Jax uses in an attempt to improve his decisions ? How do we use rules, laws and commandments ? When do you defer to rules and when do you make an independent decision? How does a soldier reconcile his rules of engagement and the Golden Rule?
Do we sometimes use rules as a way of avoiding decisions or as a basis to justify a decision that we know is wrong? Jax says he liked the army because it makes all the decisions for you: "The Army took care of it all-- they told me when to wake up, when to eat, what to do, when to hit the sack. Just what I wanted."(p.103)
To what extent is growing up a function of making your own decisions? Where did you learn how to make decisions? What rules do you follow? When do you defer to someone else?
Have you ever made the conscious decision to live or to die? Why does Jax want to die? Why does he change his mind and decide to live? What is easier, living or dying? Which is more painful? The Eskimos, who are subject to the pain, then numbness of lethal cold temperatures, have a saying :"You know you are alive because you feel the pain."
After Jax loses the big game, his coach tells him : "Indecision will kill us all, son." (p.88). Later Jax has nightmares about being unable to save any baby because he is unable to decide which baby to save. Can a person live his or her life without making decisions?
At the end of FIELDER’S CHOICE, when Jax says that he will base all his moral decisions on "love", is he taking the position of an Absolutist or Utilitarian?
PRE-SCREENING INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES
FIELDER’S CHOICE is set in the Depression and World War II. It relies heavily upon baseball as a setting. Experience indicates that students find the novel more engaging if they understand the historical and sports context of the novel.
Vocabulary:
aiding and abetting the enemy
American League
B-29 Superfortress
balk
choke
court martial
curve ball
DiMaggio, Joe
ethics
fly ball
kamikaze
morality
nun
oil patch
pacifist
P.O.W. camp
pennant
world series
zero
Geography:
Arkansas
Monterrey, Mexico
Pacific Theater of Operations
New York, N.Y.
Smackover, ARK.
St. Louis, MO.
Tinian
Chronology:
Great Depression
War in Europe beginning with the invasion of Poland in 1939
Bombing of Pearl Harbor
Declaration of war by U.S.
Bataan death march
Gen. McArthur’s island hopping campaign
V.E. Day
Dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
V.J. Day
Mylai massacre
POST-SCREENING INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES
Student-
Recognizes moral dilemma.
Realizes that simple answers may be simplistic or naive answers.
Recognizes that philosophers have pondered and written about moral conundrums for three millennia.
Can differentiate between an Absolutist position and a Utilitarian position.
Understands that there may be no right or wrong answer to a particular moral issue, but that thinking like a philosopher will help you find a better answer.
Understands the role of the philosopher in helping define and resolve moral issues
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anscombe, Elizabeth. "Modern Moral Philosophy" Philosophy (1957)
Copleston, Frederick, S.J., A History of Philosophy (Doubleday,1985)
Mill, J.S., On Liberty (Hacket, 1978)
Nagel, Thomas. Mortal Questions (Cambridge 1979)
Russell, Bertrand. Introduction to the Problems of Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1959).
Singer, Peter. A Companion to Ethics (Blackwell, 1991)
ABOUT RICK NORMAN AND HIS NOVELS
Rick Norman is an attorney practicing in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He has been a regular contributor to National Public Radio. He is the chairman of an ethics committee for the State Bar Association and regularly lectures on legal and
biomedical ethics.
Mr. Norman has written two novels with sports settings dealing with philosophical and moral issues. Teaching Giudes are available for both. Both novels are in the ACCELERATED READER program. They may be ordered through the publishers. School discounts are available.
FIELDER’S CHOICE
August House Publishing
P.O. Box 3223
Little Rock, AK 72203
1-800-284-8784
1-501-372-5450
ISBN 0-87483-172-5 (hard back $17.95)
ISBN 0-87483-204-7 (soft cover $9.95)
CROSS BODY BLOCK
Colonial Press, Inc.
3325 Burning Tree Drive
Birmingham, AL 35226
1-800-624-7541
ISBN 1-56883-060-2 (soft cover $9.95)
About Cross Body Block
"A sequel to Fielder’s Choice, this novel stands on its own merits. Fielder seems at first an unlikely hero for a young adult novel, but the reader comes to care for him and his family. Compelling messages about grief, violence, and personal redemption will recommend this novel to a wide audience of young adult readers, and perhaps some thoughtful high-school coaches." VOYA/ August 1996
Mr. Norman is available for teacher workshops and classroom presentations, schedule permitting.
Rick J. Norman
907 Treasure Lane
Lake Charles, LA 70605
e-mail rnorman@woodleywilliams.com
(318)433-6328
(318)433-6329 fax
For more information about the ACCELERATED READER program write:
Advantage Learning Systems, Inc
P.O. Box 36
Wisconsin Rapids, WI. 54495-0036
