To think about the ethics of teaching is to present the moral principles or the ethical virtues that organize and govern this professional activity. The ethics of teaching links three virtues: justice, benevolence and tact. In the three following sections, the question of ethics is examined from a completely different point of view. This consists in presenting the pitfalls that threaten it. We mention three such: minimalism, paternalism and moralism. This meticulous examination then leads us to say that teaching ethics must be neither minimalist (without being a thick morality), nor paternalistic (without undermining the dimension of care and of attention), nor moralist (not forgetting the requirement for an exemplary quality).