Teaching Ethical Dilemmas

It is vital to student development to incorporate moral and ethical dilemmas throughout the curriculum.

This semester, the powers that be decided to give me an elective science class. What the topic was had yet to be determined. I decided to call the class, "Ethical Dilemmas."

Students came in asking, what the hell is ethical dilemmas? What do I plan to learn from this? The principal exercised his own curiosity in terms of this untapped area of science by visiting the class.

The roster was all girls, and one boy (poor chap). I've had all girl classes before. They typically turn into beauty salons but this group is more attentive than they are vain so there's a lot of interesting potential for this group. And it's hopeful in the sense that the girls are more talkative about controversial issues so this class seemed natural to them.

It was curious to bring up and argue with the students about various aspects of science that are in heated debate: cloning, stem-cell research, animal testing, abortion, and others.

If there's an online curriculum out there on ethical dilemmas, I'd love to see it, but at this point, I'll settle for the case studies I found earlier...