ethics – Page 30 – dangermouse.net

Application day

After applying for the Alaska Robotics Comics Camp yesterday, today I did another application. This time for a job. Primary Ethics, the non-profit organisation that runs the ethics classes I teach, is seeking people to train ethics teachers.

I remember the training course I did nearly 3 years ago, and I’m sure I can deliver the training. I have all the relevant experience and skills as per the job description. And it’s a contract position, expecting an average of 2 full days of work per month. This is exactly the sort of thing I wanted, to give me a bit of income while still allowing me to do my creative projects close to full-time in an effort to turn them into income as well. So here’s hoping!

Speaking of Ethics, today was my weekly class with the Year 6 students. We discussed reasons why it’s okay to kill animals for meat (next week discuss reasons why it isn’t okay). Most of the class were away today – being year 6 kids near the end of the year, they had a high school orientation at one of the nearby high schools, to prep them for moving up in January. With only about 8 kids, the discussion was tighter and more focused, and I got a lot of good responses from them.

New content today:

Back to Ethics

It’s Wednesday, which means Ethics teaching day. I walked to the school – which is a bit of a hike, and very hilly. The kids told me that last week they didn’t have a substitute Ethics teacher, so I did the final lesson of the Homelessness topic with them.

One of the scenarios today was about and 8-year-old girl named Jenny, whose mother and father lose their jobs, and can’t afford their rent any more, so they move to a caravan park, and then after a while the bills pile up and they can’t even afford that, so the family ends up sleeping in their car. The question: Did Jenny’s family choose to become homeless? Or did they have no choice in the matter?

The first kid to answer said it was the parents’ fault, because they must have done something wrong at work to get fired and lose their jobs. As someone who lost my job earlier this year, because the company was closed down, I had to bite my tongue. Fortunately some other kids mentioned that people can be made redundant and companies can shut down, so no, it probably wasn’t their fault. I think some of the kids have had their assumptions challenged during this topic!

I walked home via a longer route, passing by the post office depot where I had a package waiting to be picked up. It’s weird – when I have to pick up a package sometimes it’s an one of the nearby post offices, sometimes it’s at the other post office, and sometimes it’s at the further away postal depot. There seems to be no rhyme nor reason to which place I have to pick it up from. Oh, the item was a Kickstarted roleplaying book that I backed almost a full year ago – so it was good to receive that! And my total walk was close to 9 kilometres.

I got home close to lunch time, and spent the afternoon mostly cleaning the house. Oh, and this evening I played the first game with my wife of Walking in Burano that I picked up at Spiel in Essen. It’s very strategic for a small game. My wife beat me 61 points to 53. But it was only a learning game, so the result doesn’t count! 😉

New content today:

Finishing comics

Most of today was spent writing annotations for the batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips that I photographed on Monday and assembled yesterday.

This morning I had my Year 6 Ethics class, and we continued last week’s discussion of homelessness. The goal this week was to educate the kids on some of the facts about homelessness, including statistics on how many Australians are homeless, and in what age and demographic groups. Most of the kids were shocked that at the last census over 8000 children of primary school age (that is their age or younger) were classed as homeless. And that the largest age group of homeless people is under 18s, not older people like they had thought. They heard the story of a homeless boy, who had been living on the street since he was 8. One student said that she had a 7-year-old brother, which is not much short of 8, and she couldn’t imagine him being out on the streets and surviving like that.

The rest of the lesson concerned stereotypes about homeless people. I asked the kids what ideas they had about what homeless people were like. Then we went through an exercise about jumping to conclusions from a small sample or hearsay, ending up with the question that if someone says homeless people are just lazy, does that mean all homeless people really are lazy? And would it be harmful to conclude that? Since last week there were a few of the kids who expressed the view that homeless people should “just get jobs”, I hope that today’s lesson made them think again about that assumption, and realise that 8 year old kids on the street can’t just get a job, and older homeless people might want to work but have trouble finding a job because potential employers turn them away.

I’ll miss next week’s lesson with my kids since I’ll be travelling in Germany. I’m not sure if they’ll get a substitute teacher or have a non-lesson time.

New content today:

Homeless Ethics

Today was my first Ethics class of the new school term, the last term of the year. Just nine lessons to go until the end of the year and my kids move on to high school, and I get a new batch of Year 6s next year.

We started a new topic today: Homelessness. The first lesson today was really just talking about what homelessness is, and how being homeless might affect people – making them feel unsafe, unhappy, making it harder to eat healthy food, keep clean, etc. In the next two lessons we’ll be talking about what people and society can or should do about homelessness.

The teacher’s materials started with introducing the topic to the children with a short story, and then telling them we’d be discussing homelessness, and to tell them that some people in the class might know someone who has been homeless, and so to be mindful of that during the discussion. The teacher’s eyes only notes contained advice that this topic might upset some children, and to be aware of their behaviour and handle it appropriately (using our training materials). The discussion was going really well, and the children were a bit more engaged than usual – it’s clearly a topic that some of them had pretty strong feelings and ideas about.

Then one girl put her hand up, and when I called on her she said, “My parents told me that before I was adopted I was living on the streets.”

I don’t remember what I said in immediate response. I had to handle this sensitively and keep the class both moving on with the topic and from harassing this girl with inappropriate questions. I must have said something sensible because we managed to move on with the discussion. Fortunately the girl didn’t seem upset in any way – I guess it’s a fact about her past that she’s already internalised and become comfortable with. So that was an interesting revelation – I had no idea this girl was adopted before.

The other good thing about today’s class was another girl who is usually very quiet and says nothing volunteered to answer a question, and gave a very well-considered response. I had this girl in my Year 4 class two years ago and she was similarly quiet. I feel her thought processes are not as rapid as most kids her age, but since then she seems to be gaining in confidence and ability to absorb and discuss a topic. It’s really wonderful to see her develop and become more intellectual in this way.

After my class, I took a long walk home, detouring past the new location of a kitchen supply shop that used to be near us, but recently moved. They had a normal sort of retail store before, but now they’ve moved to an industrial area and are operating out of a warehouse. It was hard to find – I walked past the building twice looking for any signs, but saw none, then finally had to go knock on a door and ask the woman who came to answer it. When I said I was looking for Kitchen Kapers, she directed me to walk around to the back of the building, through the car park, where I found the place with a giant open garage door and no signage whatsoever. I had to confirm with a guy that they were open for retail sales, which they were. Given my recent experiences with shops in industrial areas, this was relatively positive. I didn’t end up buying anything though.

This afternoon I drove across town to pick up some super cheap second hand golf clubs that I won on eBay. Andrew C. has been suggesting I move up from playing a “pitch and putt” course to a full length golf course. I’m keen to try, but needed some clubs suitable for a beginner without a job. The ones I picked up have seen some heavy use, but should do the trick. We’re planning to go play a round of the short course on Friday, followed by some driving practice at the range next door, so I can start to get a feel for hitting with more power.

New content today:

End of term Ethics

This week is the last week of school term 3 in New South Wales, so it’s my last week of teaching Ethics class before a two-week break. We finished off the topic on “Jumping to conclusions”, which was really about applying a couple of rules of formal logic to language to avoid drawing incorrect conclusions from statements. (As discussed in the posts for the last couple of weeks.)

Today I thought I’d take some photos to show the classroom setup I use. This is the room after I go in and rearrange the furniture, putting enough chairs in a circle for the group discussion:

The school has very nice grounds, with plenty of trees and grassy areas. There are often Australian ravens (you can see two in the photo) and rainbow lorikeets and other birds on this patch of grass. This is the view from the door of the classroom I use:

After teaching my class, I walked home via Chatswood, a suburb with a large shopping centre, where I bought some new footwear for the imminent summer, and had some sushi for a slightly early lunch. I caught the train home and started work on assembling the new batch of Irregular Webcomic! that I photographed yesterday.

New content today:

Ethics morning tea

It rained all day again today, which was good in terms of the climate, but bad in terms of getting stuff done. Normally I walk to my Wednesday Ethics class, but this morning I drove, since it’s a solid half hour walk and would have been very unpleasant in heavy rain.

The topic was more on inverting sentences, like last week, only this time we considered negative sentences like “No lions are eagles”, which inverts to “No eagles are lions”. The inverted sentences last week changed from true to false, but these ones stay true when inverted. So we now had a second rule. Then we discussed how useful this is, realising that many sentences can be converted to an “All * are *” or “No * are *” form. I thought this topic was a bit abstract when I read the teacher’s notes, but the kids seemed to follow it okay.

After the class there was a morning tea meeting for the ethics teachers at the school. We don’t really meet much, so this is a good chance to catch up and share stories about our classes, and get news from our coordinator about the progress of classes at the school, and plans for recruiting new volunteers and so on. I stayed for a couple of hours before realising if I stayed any longer I’d have to pay for parking, so I dashed off home.

This afternoon I mostly wrote up another post for 100 Proofs that the Earth is a Globe, but I haven’t quite finished it tonight, so I’ll do that and post it tomorrow.

New content today:

New walking route

Ethics teaching day! We started a new topic today (having finished “stealing” last week): Jumping to conclusions. It’s actually about applying a bit of formal logic to statements to transform them into other statements, and how that changes the truth value. For example, one of the statements we discussed today is “All carrots are vegetables”, which is true. If you reverse the statement, “All vegetables are carrots”, you get a false statement.

Then we moved to trickier examples, like “All Persian cats are fluffy” – which you can’t reverse in the same way as easily: “All fluffy are Persian cats”. You need to add a noun to the second part: “All Persian cats are fluffy animals” → “All fluffy animals are Persian cats”. Again, true becomes false. Then “All birds have wings”, which needs to be modified to “All birds are animals with wings” → “All animals with wings are birds”. Again, true becomes false.

Next week we move on to examples where the truth value doesn’t change when you reverse the sentence. The goal of the topic is really to get the kids thinking about the rules of logic rather than to teach them rote rules, so that they can avoid jumping to incorrect conclusions.

On the way home I walked a new route which I haven’t explored before, through a local bush park. This is a park that straddles a creek, and consists of uncleared eucalyptus forest. I took some photos on the walk:

It’s nice having relatively untouched bushland so close to home. There are several areas like this within walking distance of my home. The full walk to Ethics and home via the bush park was over 9 kilometres, and I climbed 176 metres of elevation. It’s a very hilly area around here.

Speaking of which, I’ve been keeping track of everywhere I walk using the Fog of World app for a few months. Here’s my current map showing everywhere I’ve walked in that time:

New content today:

Late Wednesday update

I had some strange issues with WordPress last night, so this post is several hours late.

On Wednesday my year 6 Ethics class topic was the Heinz dilemma. I introduced it by reading the text from the syllabus: “Today we’re going to discuss a famous ethical dilemma.” Immediately one girl put her hand up and asked “What, like the trolley problem?” I hadn’t expected anyone in a class of 10 and 11 year olds to be familiar with that, but it was good to hear! I had to say no though, it was a different problem.

I was interested in how this discussion would go because in a previous topic most of the kids expressed the principle that saving a human life was of paramount importance, while previously in the current topic (on stealing) several of the kids had stated that stealing is always morally wrong, because it’s against the law. Often the same kids. So pitting the saving a human life against having to steal to do it led to a lot of interesting back and forth as the kids took their turns to talk. In the end, most fell on the side that stealing to save someone’s life was morally acceptable, but there were a significant number of holdouts who said that because it was against the law, sadly they would have to let the person die. Hopefully the kids will continue to discuss this one after the class.

I spent much of the rest of the day researching and writing annotations for the new batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips that I made earlier in the week. I still have a few more to do to complete the batch, and then it’ll be on to writing a new entry for 100 Proofs that the Earth is a Globe.

New content for Wednesday:

On a road to nowhere

This morning was my Ethics class, and we continued the topic of stealing, with three example stories about various common forms of theft that many people do: pirating software, not reporting being undercharged by a shop, and public transport fare evasion. We discussed whether these things are actually morally wrong and, if they are, why so many people do them. The kids were reasonably well behaved today – I think my behaviour management efforts from last week have had some effect.

After the class, I’d decided to go for a bit of a drive and check out a game shop out in the suburbs which has a good reputation but which I’d never visited before. They had a bunch of sale items on their web site and I thought I’d browse around and maybe pick up a cheap board game or two. The website said they opened at 10:30. I arrived a few minutes early, so went for a a bit of a walk around the premises, which was an industrial estate – it seems most of their business is mail order shipping, rather than walk-in customers.

I got back a few minutes after 10:30, but the door was still locked. I looked on it and saw a faded sign saying they opened at 11:00! So I had half an hour to wait. There wasn’t anything else interesting in the area, so I checked Google Maps and found a bakery about 10 minutes walk away, where I could go to get a snack and a drink. I did so, then waked back again, arriving a bit after 11:00… only to find the door still locked. I examined the sign again, and saw that they opened at 11:00 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. They were closed all day Wednesday!

So I’d driven 40 minutes to this place for no reason, spent over half an hour waiting around fruitlessly, and could do nothing but drive home again. That pretty much wasted half the day, and it was hard to get motivated again after returning home, so I ended up wasting a lot of the afternoon too. I did achieve going to the hardware store to buy some stuff, and taking Scully to the pet store to let her browse around – she loves visiting the pet store and sniffing everything. But didn’t get any sort of work-type stuff done.

Sometimes you just have one of those days.

New content today:

Ethics of stealing

It was time for my weekly Primary Ethics class again this morning. Today we started a new topic: stealing. The discussion centred around a series of questions designed to probe the question of what exactly is stealing, and even if it’s illegal is it always morally wrong?

We started easy with: “If you borrow a book from a friend and forget to return it, does that count as stealing?” Then follow-up questions: “What if you really love the book and decide not to return it?” and: “What if you know your friend doesn’t even like the book?” The kids were pretty agreed that forgetting to return the book isn’t stealing, but keeping it if the friend asks for it back is stealing and is morally wrong, even if you know they don’t like it.

Next: “If you pick fruit from a fruit tree in your neighbour’s front garden, does that count as stealing?” Kids said yes. Follow-up: “What if your neighbour isn’t picking the fruit and it’s just going to rot?” Now some kids (but not all of them) were of the opinion that picking the fruit while technically stealing, isn’t morally wrong if it’s just going to go to waste otherwise.

Next: “Suppose it’s a very cold day and to warm up you decide to wander around a shop even though you have no money to spend. Does using the shop’s heating in this way count as stealing?” Kids said no. Follow-up: “But the shop is paying for the heating, and you’re getting the benefit, even though you have no intention to buy anything. So is it stealing, is it morally wrong?” Kids were generally no, it’s okay, because the shop invites people in.

And now the most interesting one: “You walk past a bakery and stop to smell the delicious smell of the freshly baked bread. Is that stealing?” The kids laughed at this one – of course it’s not stealing! Ah, but then: “The baker bought the flour and other ingredients, and paid for the electricity to run the ovens, so does he own the smell of the bread?” Kids laughed again – no of course not! Then: “Suppose the baker seals his shop so the smell can’t get out, and then allows people to come inside to smell the freshly baked bread, if you pay $1. Is he allowed to do that?”

Kids, a little uncertain: Yes, he’s allowed to do that.

Me: So he does own the smell? If you went inside to smell it, but didn’t pay the $1, would that be stealing?

Kids: … Yeeeeeeeessss….

Me: What if you found a crack near a window, and stuck your nose right up against it to smell the bread. Would that be stealing? Would it be morally wrong?

By now the kids were realising this topic isn’t as easy as they thought, and they’re giving really thoughtful answers across a spectrum of responses. It was a good class! And after it was over and the kids left to go back to the regular classrooms, I walked out past the other classes, and overheard one kid telling a friend who hadn’t been in my class about the bread smell example. So I consider that a success! Getting the children talking about the topics outside the classroom is basically the measure of success for my classes.

New content today: