Q: My husband donated time and money to computerize a public-middle-school teacher’s successful remedial math program. It is up and running in that teacher’s classroom. A number of people, including the school’s principal, have come to see it in action and are interested in using it in their private- and public-school classrooms. This teacher would be pleased to sell it to them and other math teachers. May this public-school classroom ethically be a showroom for interested visitors? — Name Withheld, New Mexico
A: It may not. This is a classroom, not a showroom; these are students, not a focus group. In middle school, all “interested visitors” are disturbing or at least distracting. Even if the customers — sorry, pedagogic observers — enter on little cat feet, the kids will notice, and their attention, and learning, will be at least momentarily ruffled.
It is a fine thing that this teacher and your husband voluntarily developed a promising teaching tool, but there are better ways to involve the students. One approach: Make participation a voluntary, after-school activity. They might, for example, work with the school’s math club, securing parental consent to enlist those kids as guinea pigs in their attempts to develop the computerized math genius of tomorrow. Will chips be implanted in anyone’s head? Does this involve biotech advances to grow a second head? Will I get a share of the profits for suggesting the whole second-head idea?
The teacher did the right thing by being transparent about his activities: The principal knew about this project and gave at least tacit permission to proceed. And it’s great for the school to be a hotbed of innovation. But that’s the optimistic version of this situation. What if this computerized system does not abet learning? Then the volunteer design team squandered class time and disadvantaged the students. Rather than allowing such experiments on an ad hoc basis, school authorities must develop formal policies to govern such activities.
Q: I operate a convenience store in a residential neighborhood. Some customers ask for credit for a soda, pack of cigarettes, headphones, etc., when they’re broke, and have amnesia when it comes to paying their debts. To avoid a confrontation and maybe losing a customer, may I overcharge them by a small amount on future purchases — just 50 cents or so — until I get my money back? — Foad Muthana, Bronx
A: Your plan is ingenious, harms nobody and makes me queasy. The system of gradually paying off a debt is a Layaway Plan, not a Lie Away Plan. It is wrong to engage in deceptive billing, even to reclaim money you are owed.
I think you’re onto a useful idea, one that would benefit both you and your customers. It may well be easier for them to pay off these loans in tiny increments, but that’s an arrangement they must explicitly agree to. Why not propose it when they request credit? Tell them it is store policy to add 50 cents to each subsequent bill until their debt is cleared.
Update: Muthana proposed this plan to people who accepted it, but still faces the more daunting challenge of customers who deny they even owe him money.
Write Randy Cohen at Universal Press Syndicate, 4520 Main St., Kansas City, MO 64111, or ethicist@nytimes.com.
