Abstract:

New findings in the Czech military leadership studies, in particular studies of charismatic leaders, show that good military leadership should stem from moral values. Therefore military leadership education faces the following question: How to approach ethics education? The whole concept of ethics education in the Czech Republic is focused on the primary and secondary level of education. There is no ethics education system at the higher/adult education level. The creation of a functional model of ethics education and its implementation into educational practice is still an open and discussed issue. The paper aims at helping to create such a model by comparing approaches to ethics education in the armed and defence forces of 10 selected democratic countries. The basic method for collecting information was the content analysis of open source military documents dealing with ethics education. The analysis focused on identification of common approaches to ethics education while respective national military traditions, the structure and content of educational programs, and the perception of the role of military ethics in the given military context were ignored. The findings show two basic trends in ethics education: functional and aspirational approaches. The paper proves that using only unilateral approach results in omitting important parts of ethics education and provides arguments for the choice of a mixed approach which reflects military professional moral development and respects the moral autonomy of the individual in more accurate ways. The mixed approach was then used by the authors to create a model of ethics education suitable for the needs of the Czech Armed Forces. The research activity originated in connection with the solution of a specific research project on Moral Integrity and the Personality of a Member of the Army of the Czech Republic SV15-FVL-K104-06-MIK and is now continuing within the long-term project for the organization development entitled "Development of Social Competencies of the soldier- leader".

Keywords:

Ethics education, approaches in ethics education-functional, aspirational and mixed approaches, model of ethics education.