This semester, our department sent a delegation of volunteer judges to officiate the Ontario High School Ethics Bowl! These volunteers included Professors Melissa Frankel and Kyla Bruff, as well as Dr. Matthew Scarfone and EPAF PhD student Ann Cronin-Cossette. Our delegation contributed to public philosophical education and had a great time doing so. Check out info about the event below, and watch the interviews with our delegates in our first ever video Spotlight below!
Carleton University’s Department of Philosophy is now an official partner of the Ontario Ethics Bowl! We are thrilled to have joined up with this great initiative, and so glad to be bringing philosophical education to the public in a festive way!
The Ontario Ethics Bowl invites high school ethics teams from all over the province to deliberate on important ethical issues in the context of a friendly competition. Winning teams get to go on to the national competition, where they compete for the top spot at the Canadian High School Ethics Bowl.
This year, questions included:
- Is doing ‘good’ the same as being ‘good’?
- Ought we to be friends with bad people?
- What does living justly on unceded territory demand?
- How do assessment methods like grades or deadlines affect the fairness of student evaluations?
- Does accepting a donation signify that the recipient endorses the donor and their activities?
Our four Carleton delegates had the pleasure of judging discussions on these questions, and some of our judges—as well as student participants!—reflected on their experience in the video below:
We also had the pleasure of hosting the Canterbury High School Ethics Bowl Team at Carleton in the Fall semester and had a blast talking philosophy with them! The students attended one of Dr. Matthew Scarfone’s undergraduate classes and had the opportunity to ask questions. You can see some news about that visit here, and keep an eye out for some familiar faces from the OEB video!
If you are a high school teacher interested in making a similar visit at Carleton, we wholeheartedly linvite you and your students to our department. Please reach out to us using the contact information listed here.
Thanks again to all our delegates. This is the last Spotlight post until Fall 2023, so we wish all of you a lovely summer, and we invite you to check out the series again in the Fall. To see our past spotlights, click here.
