At a recent evening with renowned philosopher Professor AC Grayling, 11-year-old Eli welcomed him to the Dulwich Hill Public School stage with these thoughts about being an ethics student.

Here at Dulwich Hill Public, some of us are lucky enough to do ethics classes on a Wednesday. I’ve had Catherine Grayling teaching me ethics since Year 2. I am now very ethical.

I think these classes give us some really important skills. Usually, Catherine gives us a dilemma and draws out our different opinions. She asks us whether our views change with new information. She teaches us to listen to what other people have to say, even if we don’t agree with them – because that helps us make our ideas better or more nuanced.

Over the years, we’ve grappled with lots of dilemmas. One week, it was a girl who had put in a heap of effort to grow sugar snap beans for her grandmother, but her brother did nothing and then got all the credit. Another time, it was about whether it was okay to lie to a bully about where your friend was.

In one class last year, Catherine asked us about palm oil and whether it was justified to cut down rainforest trees to make oil. Some people thought it was – it meant people could make money and then use the cleared land to build homes or schools and that would help grow and strengthen their community. Other people didn’t agree at all, because of the impact on the environment and the animals living in that area. As I sat there and listened to all the different ideas, I could see that there was merit to most of them, which then made me wonder whether there could be a solution that protected the animals and helped the people. Understanding competing interests can be a very powerful tool, as can developing advocacy skills. Both are proving quite handy with my parents.

* Please note that the photo above is not of Eli.*