Lack of a (moral?) compass?

The fact is that there is a failure on the part of the educational system to establish the differences between ethics, morals and justice. We expect the courts to provide justice, we deplore the lack of morals, but we as a group do not understand or apply or discuss ethics. Ethics, from the Greek "Ethos" or reason, had been the gold standard for educated minds since before the Reformation, but even the discussion of ethics is now seen to be a matter for university professors only and has departed from the general public as something of serious import.

Yet we see all around that the failure to establish what is ethical and substitute in its place what is legal or moral brings about. Confused imposition of personal morality and/or the tyranny of the group moral codes against the individual and the failure to accept responsibility for one's own actions unless actually indicted (and even then sometimes it requires conviction before the individual is prepared to accept that his actions did indeed have consequences).

The handling is the reestablishing of ethics as a subject for discussion and concern for what constitutes ethical behaviour in society.