On Thursday 25 August the students met as the inaugural IGS Ethics Olympiad team for a training day.
The Ethics Olympiad engages with teams from other schools nearby, in other parts of the country and overseas via Zoom. Teams work to respond to questions while building and critiquing their own and others arguments.
Participants are given the opportunity to build arguments with each other in a framework that encourages careful considered responses to important ethical issues.
The IGS team is being coached by Dr Bruce Dennett, Gareth Douse, Margaret Borger and Deputy Principal Mary Duma. The online training day gave the teams and coaches an opportunity to start to examine the ethical dilemmas chosen for the competition, which is to be held in November.
“Students listened to and were challenged by Dr Matthew Deaton, author and academic from the University of Texas; Archie Stapleton from Harvard University, Theo Stapleton from Cambridge University, Dr Rachael Robinson-Greene from Utah State University who spoke to the students about consequentialism and Dr Matthew Beard from Sydney University,” Deputy Principal Wellbeing Mary Duma said.
“An Ethics Olympiad is a competitive yet collaborative event in which students analyze and discuss real-life, and timely, ethical issues. It differs from a debate in that students are not assigned opposing views rather, they defend whatever position they believe is right and win by showing that they have thought more carefully, deeply, and perceptively about the cases in question. The event encourages and promotes ethical awareness, critical thinking skills, civil discourse, international engagement, and an appreciation for diverse points of view.”
We wish the students and their coaches well as they prepare for the competition on 2 November.