Student-Driven Seminars Engage Upper School Students in Wealth, Poverty and Ethics Class
Upper School students take over as Zoom hosts and fully facilitate a 45-minute dialogue exploring an ethical dilemma.
The Upper School’s wealth, poverty and ethics class has continued to explore perspectives and ethical questions through a student-created and student-driven seminar format as classes shifted to remote learning.
Over the past couple of weeks, students spent both synchronous and asynchronous time preparing the seminars. Then, on seminar day, team members take over as Zoom hosts and fully facilitate a 45-minute dialogue exploring an ethical dilemma.
“The goal of the ethical dilemma seminars is for the students to challenge each other to consider different perspectives, identities, ethical frameworks and alternative decisions,” said Director of Equity and Inclusion Victor Cota, who teaches the class.
In a recent remote seminar, Upper School students Sydney Johnston, Claire Kim, Ryan Krall and Sarah Pence led a discussion on a timely dilemma: “Due to the coronavirus pandemic, you are laid off from your job. Is it ethically justifiable to lie on your resume in order to land a new job?”
The seminar toggled between whole group dialogue, breakout rooms, and the chat function as students engaged in discussion.
“The team developed multiple iterations of the dilemma and explored ethical frameworks, wealth and poverty, identity, and life experiences,” Mr. Cota said. “They did a tremendous job. It’s incredible to experience the compassion, depth, and discourse from students in this course, especially in the current environment.”
Other ethical dilemmas that have been explored recently include whether to bypass the wishes of a child patient’s family when those wishes are religiously motivated, whether it is ethical to ignore a situation where a peer is cheating off of you during an assessment, and the ethics of parents monitoring children’s social media.
Wealth, poverty and ethics is a class in the religion and philosophy academic department which offers a survey of wealth, poverty, and the economic system in which they are grounded in the United States. Students study various theoretical frameworks on economic inequality and look at them in context of current social problems.
St. Margaret’s Episcopal School
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