‘When great Tao vanished, we got “goodness and morality”’

Abstract

The Department of Religion and Theology introduced ethics as a major in the Faculty of Arts at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) about 20 years ago. After a shaky start, it became wildly popular. Currently, we try, unsuccessfully, to cap first-year enrolment at 700. By the third year, there are still regularly over 200 students in each of the four modules. Students sometimes flock to subjects that they regard as relatively easy. The pass rates in ethics, however, have been below average. In the modules 311 and 312, pass rates have seldom been much over 60%, which is very low for third-year modules.