The Center for Philosophy for Children hosted another successful Washington State High School Ethics Bowl at the University of Washington, on January 31, 2015, involving over 100 high school students and teachers, as well as lawyers, philosophers, other educators, and UW students who volunteered their time as judges, moderators, and coaches.
Congratulations to Newport High School for their first place win in this year's competition. They will compete in the National High School Ethics Bowl on April 10-11, 2015 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
It was inspiring to observe all of the teams who participated with such enthusiasm! We appreciate their hard work, including second place winner Lakeside High School, third place winner West Seattle High School, and the winners of the Award for Civil Dialogue — The Bush School Team 1 and Tesla STEM High School Team 1 (both schools received a trophy and $250 cash award).
The Ethics Bowl is an exciting tournament and a great way for students to deepen their understanding and appreciation of interesting ethical and philosophical issues. High school ethics bowls utilize case studies relevant to high school students, involving wide-ranging ethical questions such as cheating, plagiarism, peer pressure, use and abuse of social media, privacy, and relationships, as well as political and social issues such as free speech, gun control, cloning, parental consent, and stem cell research. More information on the cases for this year's High School Ethics Bowl is available at http://nhseb.unc.edu/
Although the High School Ethics Bowl is competitive, it is intended to promote collaboration. Teams do not have to take pro/con positions; in fact, they can agree with each other. Teams are judged according to the quality of a team's reasoning and how well team members organize and present their cases, analyze the case's morally relevant features, and anticipate and respond to commentary and questions.
For a student perspective of participating in a High School Ethics Bowl, please read Lakeside student Courtenay Roche's blog post "Discussing Morality at Washington's Second Annual High School Ethics Bowl".
We greatly appreciate all our generous 2015 High School Ethics Bowl sponsors:
University of Washington College of Arts & Sciences, Division of Social Sciences
University of Washington College of Education
University of Washington Department of Philosophy
University of Washington Program on Values in Society
University of Washington School of Law