Teaching

It’s Global Ethics Day 2025 on Wednesday 15 October and to celebrate, we turn the spotlight onto some of our volunteers and hear about the impact of ethics education in their own lives.

This global celebration of the importance of ethical tools highlights ethics as a process for finding solutions in the collaborative and respectful manner often missing in today’s world. It’s about how we learn to live together, respect our differences and together face our major global challenges.

Ken Welsh, ethics volunteer southern Sydney for five years

For five years I’ve volunteered as the manager of two regions – Kogarah and Beverly Hills. In those regions the ethics program is taught in 12 schools to over 600 students by 32 ethics teachers.

I was a high school teacher and principal in NSW, Queensland and the ACT. Then for 15 years immediately prior to retirement I worked within the Australian Department of Defence assisting ADF members with the education of their children. These children frequently changed schools because of their parents being posted around Australia. Parents were sometimes absent due to overseas deployments or distant training. All this impacted on their children’s education.

Becoming a volunteer with Primary Ethics allowed me to continue to be involved in education more broadly and to make a contribution to my local community.

As manager of the two regions I have oversight of the program, work with ethics coordinators in some schools to promote Primary Ethics, advertise and recruit volunteers to teach in schools that do not have an ethics coordinator, allocate teachers to classes in those schools and liaise with appropriate Department of Education staff to ensure the successful implementation of the program. Because of my background I hope I also can provide support to all those 32 teachers and the coordinators if and when they need it.

‘Think critically, reason ethically and discuss respectfully’ are the three keystones of the ethics program. I can’t think of anything more important than developing those qualities in young people who live in a world that is so conflicted by differing ideas, powered by an influential social media environment and which doesn’t seem willing to listen to others. It’s a huge enough challenge for us as adults, so how important is it for us to do what we can to prepare young people to live in this future world. As adults we can become complacent in our attitudes and values – it is much easier than being challenged to examine what we hold so dear and possible re-evaluate that.

My major subject when I was a teacher was modern history. It doesn’t just require the ability to recall names, events and dates (Wikipedia can do that!) but rather the ability to examine why events occurred and how they impacted on people and societies. By questioning we learn and by learning we can change – ourselves and our societies – for the better. Primary Ethics provides opportunities for young people to do just that too. To consider how they think and feel about a particular topic. To listen to what others think and feel. To evaluate our thoughts and feelings. And maybe to change.

This old History teacher is thankful that besides the usual teachers working away in our schools there is also a group of volunteers offering their time and talents to develop enquiring minds. I’m very satisfied that I still play some part in that development.

It’s Global Ethics Day 2025 on Wednesday 15 October and to celebrate, we’ll turn the spotlight onto some of our volunteers and hear about the impact of ethics education in their own lives.

This global celebration of the importance of ethical tools highlights ethics as a process for finding solutions in the collaborative and respectful manner often missing in today’s world. We can use ethics to guide personal decisions, mitigate harmful outcomes, create a more respectful structure for debate, develop helpful public policy, build and deploy technologies responsibly and address some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

Ethics is not about getting everyone to agree on a single set of values. It’s about how we learn to live together, respect our differences and together face our major global challenges.

William Mitchell, volunteer in inner-west Sydney for 11 years

What drew you to ethics volunteering? My journey with Primary Ethics began through my interest in the Ethics Centre  and their Festival of Dangerous Ideas. After learning over coffee about a friend’s experience as an ethics facilitator, I was immediately convinced to volunteer. I’m now approaching my 11th year as a facilitator, currently teaching Stage 1 students at Taverners Hill Infant School in Petersham, having previously taught Early Stage 1 and Stage 2 classes.

Unlike many volunteers, I don’t have children or grandchildren of my own. Rather, philosophy was the focus of my undergraduate degree, so I thoroughly enjoy having the opportunity to help the children engage in the types of thinking and skill development that I am passionate about but didn’t get to explore until much later in my life.

What do you get out of the lessons? Has it given you a clearer sense of your own ethics? The benefits I derive are numerous and profound. As a lawyer by profession, it provides a refreshing contrast to my daily work (though there are surprising overlaps between the skills required to ensure the children keep discussion on track and respectful and running meetings as a professional). The program allows me to connect meaningfully with my local community and gives me a sense of accomplishment in helping children develop crucial life skills. The children’s unfiltered, creative responses serve as a reminder of the importance of maintaining open and innovative thinking in adult life – something we often lose touch with as we reach adulthood.

The curriculum has significantly influenced my own ethical framework and daily behaviour over the past decade. Preparing for classes requires deep personal reflection on the same questions we pose to the children. Likewise, the process of truly engaging with the children’s responses often challenges my own beliefs and introduces me to perspectives I hadn’t considered. This aligns perfectly with my background in philosophy and continues to enrich my understanding of ethical reasoning and subjects which, as the curriculum was designed to do, apply routinely to what is going on in my everyday life.

What do you see as the benefits for the children? The Primary Ethics curriculum offers children numerous valuable skills, but perhaps the most crucial are the abilities to engage in respectful disagreement and to be open to changing their minds based on new information or perspectives. It’s particularly heartening to witness students becoming increasingly comfortable with revising their positions as the school year progresses, demonstrating their growing capacity for reasoned discussion and intellectual flexibility. Seeing the hand of a child go up to let the group know that they’ve changed their mind on an earlier answer they gave based on someone else’s response or reasoning is exactly why I facilitate ethics.

Why is ethical decision-making important in today’s world? The Primary Ethics program provides children with essential life skills that aren’t expressly practised or developed throughout formal education. These skills and behaviours are fundamental to human interaction and decision-making, yet opportunities to develop them in a structured environment are rare and can be far more challenging to learn as an adult. By enabling the next generation to identify and meaningfully engage with ethical questions that are inherent in everyday life, we’re investing in the development of better communities and societies of which we are all a part. As a staunch believer in this mission, I volunteer my time to help children develop these crucial capabilities so that they can go on to help the world and achieve far greater accomplishments than I could ever hope to achieve as an individual.