Tago, Youri A. 12-Charity
REED PERFORMANCE TASK: MORALITY ESSAY
It is in the nature of human beings to have the ability to determine, decide, and ascertain the course of
action. This holds true in both morality and ethics. Morality is not just a distinction between right and wrong but
rather a practice of ethics. While ethics and morals are often used interchangeably, their similarity lies in their
ability to differentiate good from bad. Ethics represents the judgment of right and wrong as it studies behavior
while morality offers practical guidance for the behavior and is the refinement of ethics. One cannot define
morality without understanding ethics. The standard of character conduct that is globally accepted is called ethics.
These are the rules that shape our personality and attitude and are based on what others perceive as right or wrong.
On the other hand, morals are a set of customs commonly referred to as “unsaid rules” that are set by a group of
individuals. These are based on our own perspectives and differ from society to society. Morality is about the
actions that we need to undertake in order to keep the essence and value of ethics alive. Both ethics and morality
help individuals to become better people by promoting qualities desirable for a person. Morality can be
differentiated into descriptive and normative morality. Descriptive morality is concerned with the way people
think things are and what people actually do while normative morality is about upholding morals through actions
that depict how people should actually behave. An example of descriptive morality is “stealing is bad”, while an
example of normative morality would be “do not steal”. Human acts are done with our free will and intellect thus
holding us accountable for our actions as moral or immoral.
Academic dishonesty is immoral however it has unfortunately become a common occurrence in school
settings. I, as a student, have succumbed to this temptation which led me to face the consequences of my actions
and greatly regret it. I thought that showing my answers to a close friend was proof of our good relationship and
that it would be beneficial for the other party as she was too busy working in their family business to answer
assignments and study for tests. The help I thought I offered caused my friend to be overly dependent on my
answers and no longer tried to study. In the end, my friend wasn’t able to pass the exams on her own and had to
take summer classes. Her family was experiencing severe financial difficulties during that time. Her family had
