No, not a typo! An ethlete is a student who, like an athlete, trains for an Olympiad, but in their case, it’s an Ethics Olympiad.
In Semester 1 this year, St Kilda Road Enrichment teacher, Joey Clapper, put out a call for interested students to get involved and compete against 17 other Victorian school teams in this year’s state Olympiad. And get involved they did… making it to the state final where our Year 10 team received an honourable mention, and our Year 11s took home the gold medal!
Similar to debating (but less adversarial), an Ethics Olympiad involves students in teams of five exploring eight ethical case studies and competing against other schools to come up with the best possible answer to these difficult ethical questions. Unlike debating, students can take any position they want on an issue. From the ethics of cultivating child social media stars to the issue of ‘sportswashing’, topics are wide-ranging, and the exploration of them provides rich opportunities to develop valuable skills.
‘The Olympiad helped me work on my critical thinking and improvising skills,’ said Jenna, a member of our gold medal team. ‘My favourite skill was applying normative ethics to real world examples, allowing complicated situations to be simplified through different theories and moral rules.’
Teammate Neel said he ‘enjoyed the teamwork aspect of the competition. I think the reason we did well was because we planned out our responses to the cases beforehand and came up with strong justification for our arguments.’
‘We were all very interested in a few of the topics, which definitely helped us discuss them with a greater level of investment and passion,’ added Jenna.
