2023 MHSEB Participants Striking their Best Philosopher Poses
Our friends in Ann Arbor report another successful Michigan High School Ethics Bowl. That makes 10 in a row! The only event cool enough to open with a 12-school trolley conga (no rail workers were injured), here are highlights from longtime organizer Jeanine DeLay.
“Our winner of The Hemlock Cup and Michigan regional champion was a first timer – The P-Zombies from Ann Arbor Skyline HS. And the runner-up and Keeper of Philosophy Flame prize also a first timer – Saline HS. The Best Team name prize for ‘Ethically Kantscious’ was submitted by Ann Arbor Huron HS. And The Best Team song prize for ‘I Won’t Back Down’ by Tom Petty was submitted by Beaverton High School’s ‘Dazed and Confucius’ team.”
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. No HSEB out-styles the Michiganders!
Jeanine and team are curious about other bowls’ traditions and colloquial brands of fun. If you’re up for sharing, shoot me an email or simply post a comment. And super EthicsBowl.org congrats to A2Ethics and Ann Arbor Skyline!
According to a recent press release, leaders in the US and Australia have agreed to hold the very first International Collegiate Ethics Bowl (aka Tertiary Ethics Olympiad) this coming April!
“In October 2022, ten university teams participated in the first-ever Tertiary Ethics Olympiad. Teams from universities in Queensland, NSW, Victoria, ACT and Western Australia participated in these heats. And in the end, teams from ANU and Monash University were awarded medals. This event is based on the popular Inter-Collegiate Ethics Bowl held annually in the US for nearly three decades. Given the long history of running these events in the US and the recent history of running Ethics Olympiads in Australasia, it made sense for the first International Tertiary Ethics Olympiad to happen on Wednesday, 19th April. Four top teams from Australasia will face the top US teams from the recent Intercollegiate US Ethics Bowl.”
To clarify, while it’ll be held the morning of Wednesday, April 19th down under, it’ll still be the evening of Tuesday, April 18th in the U.S. However, not too late – 6 til 10:30 Eastern, 3 to 7:30 Pacific. Awesome that a mutually amenable schedule was set.
Thanks to the folks on all sides for making this happen, chiefly Matthew Wills and John Garcia. Someone needed to do it. No one was. Way to be the change rather than merely talking or dreaming about it. Cheers!
Ethics Bowl Creator Bob Ladenson with another legend, Max Minshull – the only high schooler to organize a HSEB while still a student.
Ethics Bowl creator Bob Ladenson recently published an article in The Philosopher’s Magazine outlining benefits of and lessons from Ethics Bowl.
Benefits include “experiential education for open-mindedness” which participants gain by thinking through difficult, controversial, and as Bob puts it, often “highly viewpoint dependent” cases.
Another is “deliberative thoughtfulness” attained via “serious effort to understand [others’] views from the inside – to comprehend the key concerns motivating the viewpoint, and, at least to some extent, appreciating the force of those concerns.” Bob considers this ability to understand and empathize with those who disagree with us central to a stable, respectful democracy, and I agree.
The article also includes tips on how to offer stellar case commentary, even when your team agrees with the other’s conclusions, as well as a cool sample case on whether and how medical professionals should treat prisoners subjected to waterboarding and other “advanced interrogation techniques.”
If you’ve not had the pleasure of chatting with Bob or reading his work, the article is an easy, quick way to appreciate Ethics Bowl from the original founder’s perspective. Check it out here – and thanks to the Phil Mag editors for spreading the good word!
As promised, the NHSEBAcademy Studio recently began offering Zoom-based supplementary coaching. Beyond the Staffed Scrimmages, teams also have the option to book a Case Brainstorm session, Presentation Consultation or Practice Q&A.
That this is free and available to any team — public or private, seasoned or rookie, near or far — is marvelous. Coaching on the public speaking aspects will help so many inexperienced and shy participants. And I think the Case Brainstorms will be especially helpful. So often we get caught up in the competitive aspects. A chance to simply share ideas and explore lines of reasoning may be the best way to promote the true spirit of Ethics Bowl yet.
Special thanks to the Parr Center and Team NHSEB for making this superb resource available. Click here to check it out, and please help spread the word!
Earlier this week the first ever Tertiary Ethics Olympiad was hosted by Matthew Wills and team in Australia. I was honored to serve as a judge, and was supremely impressed with the quality of analyses and discussion. The results, shared by Matthew via email afterwards:
“[Australian National University, ANU] (Green) was awarded the Gold medal, ANU (White) the Silver medal and Monash University (Red) received the Bronze medal. Close behind and in order were; [University of Western Australia, UWA] (Aqua), UWA (Green), Monash University (Yellow), University of Wollongong (Blue), UQ (Orange), Curtin University (Black) and UQ (Plum). The following teams received honorable mentions from the judges; Curtin University (Black), ANU (White), Monash University (Red & Yellow), UWA (Aqua & Green), University of Wollongong (Blue) & UQ (Orange and Plum).”
Super congrats to Australian National University for winning both 1st and 2nd place! But thanks and congrats to all coaches and teams for making this first event possible. I know Matthew was thrilled to expand Ethics Olympiad to the collegiate level, and the broader Ethics Bowl community couldn’t be more proud.
Ethics Bowl began in the U.S. on the college level, first in Bob Ladenson’s classroom, then at APPE sessions under the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl. Several years later, folks like Fred Guy in Baltimore, Roberta Israeloff on Long Island and George Sherman in St. Petersburg found success extending them into high schools. And slowly, innovators like Deric Barber in Houston tried Ethics Bowl in middle schools as well.
In Australia, the high school version came first, followed by middle and elementary school. And this fall, our friends down under are holding their first collegiate-level Ethics Olympiad.
Gold, silver and bronze awards will be determined by three Zoom-based heats on October 4th. Each team needs a coach, up to two teams are allowed per institution, members may be undergraduate or grad students and must be enrolled in “a tertiary institution in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore or Hong Kong.”
Kudos, Matthew and team! I understand that several schools in India participated in a recent high school Ethics Olympiad. Awesome that you’re not only expanding geographically, but across age groups as well.
For more information click here or email admin [at] ethicsolympiad [dot] org.
We’ve witnessed the benefits of Ethics Bowl in others. We’ve experienced them firsthand. But anecdote is no substitute for cold, hard data, especially in the eyes of school administrators, budget officers and grant committees.
Few (if any) large-scale Ethics Bowl studies exist. But our friends at UNC’s Parr Center are fixing that, and they’re maximizing participation with the promise of guaranteed pizza!
If you’re a high school Ethics Bowl coach or participant, take one 10-minute survey next month, then another in February. You don’t even have to be on an Ethics Bowl team. You just have to be a student at a school that participates. That’s it. 20 minutes of painless surveying, and unless I’m mistaken, there’s no requirement that the pizza be healthy, organic, or locally-sourced!
The full details are available here. But the upshot comes in the final paragraph.
“If you are interested in participating or would like more information, please complete this short form or send an email to Study Coordinator Michael Vazquez. We are happy to correspond via email or to arrange a Zoom meeting to discuss any aspect of your participation in further detail. It is important that we have involvement from both students involved with NHSEB and students not involved with NHSEB. So, we would greatly appreciate your help recruiting fellow educators or coaches at your school to get involved with the study. Click here to download a flier that you can share with your colleagues.”
Parr, thank you for taking the initiative, and kudos for making this easy, painless and yummy. Hopefully some portion of the results will be shared with the broader Ethics Bowl community. And on behalf of hungry teenagers everywhere, thanks for the pizza!
As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently took my nephew skydiving, and in the process decided to give away my books. (Facing mortality at the speed of gravity inspires clarity!)
My philosophical ethics primer, used by college, high school and even jr. high students on at least three continents, has been available on the Resources page in PDF here at EthicsBowl.org for several years. And I released the audiobook at Audible last summer. But as of this morning, the audiobook edition is now free and available to all on good old YouTube.
Enjoy! I hope this helps students lacking the stamina or time to read (reading wasn’t my #1 hobby growing up, either), as well as educators and Ethics Bowl coaches brave enough to teach them. Re-introducing philosopher’s approach to morality, now rather than in 100 pages, 100 minutes.
Handy Timestamps (also in description at YouTube):
Search the Dobbs. v. Jackson Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade for “philosopher” and you’ll find references to Australian ethicist Peter Singer, ethicist Mary Anne Warren’s “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion” and the leading academic journal Philosophy & Public Affairs all supporting a section analyzing personhood.
As readers of Abortion Ethics in a Nutshell know, personhood is a moral concept capturing the capacities we associate with the most valuable creatures of all: adult humans – consciousness, the ability to feel pleasure and pain, the ability to engage in relationships, and higher order reasoning which facilitates moral agency, responsibility, and full membership in the moral community.
Unborn Developing Humans (aka fetuses, unborn children, etc.) possess none of these features of personhood at conception, but they do develop some over the course of gestation, and become more likely to develop into full persons the closer they are to birth. Accordingly, the “gradualist” position – that a UDH’s value increases as they develop, and therefore later term abortions are more difficult to justify – makes a lot of sense. (For more, listen to the “The Nature of the Conception” chapter here.)
I’ve not read the full decision yet, and so I’m not sure if the ruling acknowledges the appeal of gradualism. But I share the simple fact that they mention philosophers and ethicists by name and employ one of our key terms to help you appreciate how our work has implications at the highest levels.
Sometimes it can feel as if Ethics Bowl is an isolated game and that the world-changing action happens elsewhere. In some ways, it does. Losing Ethics Bowl team coaches aren’t jailed (thank goodness!) and Ethics Bowl judges’ proclamations aren’t legally binding (doubly thank goodness!). But the sort of analysis we refine and the progress that we drive through our collaborative pursuit of moral truth can and does find its way into the minds of decision-makers. Slowly but surely.
We won’t always agree with their decisions. And we rightly doubt their commitment to objective, truth-oriented analysis (including Jarvis-Thomson or Maggie Little in their analysis would have helped). But the broader philosophical, applied ethics and Ethics Bowl communities are leading by example, and our work is making a practical difference.
Here’s that section, in which the Justices challenge viability as a useful criterion for granting a UDH full legal protection.
“This arbitrary line [the time at which a UDH can survive outside of the womb] has not found much support among philosophers and ethicists who have attempted to justify a right to abortion. Some have argued that a [Unborn Developing Human] should not be entitled to legal protection until it acquires the characteristics that they regard as defining what it means to be a ‘person.’ Among the characteristics that have been offered as essential attributes of ‘personhood’ are sentience, self-awareness, the ability to reason, or some combination thereof. By this logic, it would be an open question whether even born individuals, including young children or those afflicted with certain developmental or medical conditions, merit protection as ‘persons.’ [They’re right, but biting the bullet and excluding some categories of humans from full personhood is the price we pay for being honest about the importance of personhood.] But even if one takes the view that ‘personhood’ begins when a certain attribute or combination of attributes is acquired, it is very hard to see why viability should mark the point where ‘personhood’ begins.”
Check out the full ruling yourself (it’s a landmark decision and you’re more than capable, so analyze it firsthand!), and if you’d like to author a post connecting it to Ethics Bowl, guest submissions welcome.
The American Philosophical Association recently showcased an ethics bowl syllabus redesigned and taught by Michael Vazquez of UNC’s Parr Center.
Using the ethics bowl format to teach democratic deliberation, the class pairs UNC undergrads as coaches for NHSEB teams across the country via the new NHSEBBridge program.
Especially impressive is Michael’s “toolkit” approach to teaching ethics. Check out the full post and syllabus, and leave Michael some positive feedback here.
