President

The training of teachers is a problem which, as we have seen, is
concentrated on in the documents dedicated to education in bioethics: this
formation is particularly complex given the interdisciplinary nature of the
subject. In order to ensure the dignity and sense of education in bioethics as
citizenship education, this formation can not be left entirely to good will and
chance, but must take place through institutional channels or be guaranteed by
institutions. It is important in this regard to include:
- that interdisciplinary bioethics modules are to be assigned to
teaching staff that has been adequately trained either by means of university
courses or via acquisition through in itinere formation;
- that the MIUR should promote bioethical formation of the teaching
staff chosen for bioethics education, through the provision of in itinere training
programmes;
- that in itinere formation (master, advanced courses, refresher
courses) should be entrusted to Universities or Research Centres and/or
Training Centres, that have been accredited by the MIUR.
The other question, brought about from the interdisciplinary nature of
bioethics, but which moves from the structural level to that of content, concerns
the method by which to educate in bioethics and the teaching materials to use.
Briefly, it can be reduced to: how to educate in bioethics?
This question does not only derive from the interdisciplinary nature of
bioethics, but it also leads us to its other aspect, pluralism: it is a question of
means, in which these two characteristics, that make the task of education in
bioethics complex and particularly difficult, are convergent.
9.2.b. Pluralism and its questions
If we go back to the accepted definition of bioethics in the introduction we
see that bioethics is said in the plural form in many ways: due to the different
ethical references and also due to the different paradigms by which bioethical
questions can be rethought. The question which has now become customary is
which ethics for bioethics? 379 contains within it another question, which
anthropology for bioethics? Alongside these we can place the methodological
question that has perturbed bioethical literature since the 80’s: which paradigm
for bioethics?
The same questions recur in education in bioethics, they can not be
evaded: they are the questions that drive the transition from the teaching of
bioethics, which should give clear information on its history, the different ways
in which it is articulated through diverse ethics, anthropologies and
paradigms, to education in bioethics, which should provide the learner with the
means to orient himself within the wide interdisciplinary and pluralistic context
delineated in front of him, elaborating an independent critical opinion on major
issues, and gaining the ability to argue and discuss with others, accepting the
challenge of comparison with different and sometimes conflicting moral
judgments.
It is the transition which, as noted, was insisted on in the Opinion of the
NBC Bioethics and education in the health care system, from “the ability to
379 E. AGAZZI (ed.), Quale etica per la bioetica, Franco Angeli, Milan 1990.
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