Values and Ethics Activity

The following activities will help you identify your own personal values. By reflecting on these values alone and in a group with other student interpreters you will be able to recognize potential conflicts with your values that may occur in your professional work. By working with others you will begin to appreciate the diversity of values that are held by other individuals. (Gish adapted from Simon, 1972, pp. 44-7)

Personal Testament: Values Clarification
Some of the most important questions which will result from values clarification activities are: “What am I doing with my life? Am I just reacting to others, or am I in control of the direction of my life. Have I done all that I want, or am I settling for less. Is my life making any difference?” This activity will help you think about just those questions.

1. What do you regard as your greatest personal achievement to date?

2. What do you regard as your own greatest personal failure to date?

3. What is the one thing that other people can do to make you happy?

4. What is the one thing that you do to make other people happy?

5. What would you do if you had one year to live and were guaranteed success in whatever you attempted?

6. If you had unlimited time and money, what societal problem would you work to improve?

7. What three things would you most like to be said about you if you died today? 

Forced Choices:
Because our values are so important to us, we sometimes make the mistake of believing that other people’s value systems are the same as ours. The first part of this activity forces you to choose among your own values and assign priorities to them. In the second part, you compare your choices with those of the other student interpreters with whom you choose to work..

Part 1

For each set of two circumstances described below, check the situation which most strongly conflicts with your own value system. Briefly describe the reasons for your choice.

1.                  A. The much admired girls’ basketball coach at a well-known high school privately gives birth control information to students at the students’ request.

B. A much admired boys’ football coach, known for his outstanding win-loss record, teaches boys how to cheat in order to win games.

Reasons for your choice:

2.                  A. A business person habitually drives recklessly during rush hour traffic in order to have more time with his/her family.

B. Divorced parents fight an extended custody battle for their children, each thinking the other parent is unfit.

Reasons for your choice:

3.                  A. A religious leader is charged with sexually abusing children enrolled in religious education.

B. A teenage father is charged with murder for smothering    
             his infant when the baby won’t stop crying.

 Reasons for your choice:

4.                  A. A college is found to give passing grades to athletes, despite their poor classroom performance, in order to build its athletic program.

B. A prestigious employment firm consistently turns down job applications from minority applicants. 

Reasons for your choice:

5.                  A. An interpreter calls a family in which a loved one has died and volunteers to interpret the funeral. The family thinks this service is a gift, but later the interpreter bills the family for her full fee.

B. A beginner interpreter charges the same hourly freelance rate as more experienced interpreters because she needs the money and feels that interpreters should be paid more.

Reasons for your choice:

6.                  A. An interpreter refuses to interpret for an emergency medical abortion because of personal feelings regarding abortion.

B. An interpreter refuses to interpret for a last-minute court appearance of an alleged sexual abuser because he is known to make sexually-explicit remarks to previous interpreters.

Reasons for your choice:

Part II
Compare your decisions with those of the other student interpreters in your group.

1. What are the different values-based reasons for those interpreters’ choices?

2. What are similarities in value systems among you and your colleagues?

3. What are the differences in value systems among you and your colleagues?

4. With what other interpreter’s decision did you most strongly disagree? Why?

5. With what other interpreter’s decision did you most strongly agree? Why?

6. Were you surprised by any of your decisions?

7. Were you surprised by any of the decisions of your colleagues?

8. Did the discussion cause you to change any of your decisions? Why or why not?