January
8
ELA 20: Jan 8 Panel discussion on moral dilemas…
- In order to facilitate a bit more dialogue and discussion between students, I moved a round table from the library into our classroom and set up chairs around it. We listened to the “At Seventeen” song and then listened to the chorus of the Nickelback song that talks about valuing hope, caring, humility, life, freedom from suffering, etc. We discussed the reality that some values are temporary, such as teenage girls desiring to be popular or beautiful. With age and through the different stages of life, our values change and become more broad and other-centered. Appreciating the value of just living becomes something you’re more able to understand.
- To give us some topics of discussion, I used several examples from yourmorals.org, a website created by a Psychologist from a University doing an online study from the responses. We talked about the moral dilema whether it is better to sacrifice the life of a few to save the lives of thousands. We also discussed a scenario that had several different examples of what was “fair” but each student different in which one they thought most fair. The final question seemed to be a very bizzar question but came from the website and students were asked to write their responses down and hand them in.
- Because this was an assessed activity, I had given them the outline for how they would be marked prior to our beginning. The activity will be worth ten marks, with them deciding half of that through a self-assessment following the rubric.