Category: Video

A webinar for Global Ethics Day 2025 – Misinformation & fake news

We celebrated Global Ethics Day 2025, 15 October, with a webinar featuring an ethics class composed of adults (also including one current high school student of ethics) discussing one of our high school lessons – on misinformation and fake news. You can watch the video of the class and discussion below.

The webinar was hosted by journalist Sarah Macdonald. Primary Ethics philosopher-in-residence and curriculum author Kelby Mason facilitated the lesson – an edited version of a lesson that is currently taught in secondary schools by Primary Ethics volunteer teachers. A Q&A followed the lesson.

Our special guest students included Allegra Spender MP (Member for Wentworth), Ed Coper (strategic communications specialist and author of Facts and Other Lies), Primary Ethics volunteer teachers Alexa Stuart (Bob Brown Young Environmentalist of the Year 2024), Winnie Tang (aeronautical engineer), Jean-Paul Leung (ethics team coordinator) and Kevin Farmer (corporate social responsibility consultant), plus current Year 7 ethics student Abby Webb.

Global Ethics Day 2025 webinar

Set aside some time to watch it here – well worth it!

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Inquiring Minds Spring 2025

Welcome to Inquiring Minds for spring 2025, where we bring you stories and reflections from our ethics classrooms and our volunteers, as well as recent Primary Ethics highlights.

In this issue we collected stories from our wonderful volunteers, such as:

  • we hear from two professionals who put their skills learnt as ethics volunteers into practice at work
  • you can watch the video of our panel discussion on critical thinking and empathy in the age of AI
  • and we share a letter from a supporter whose father asked for him to be removed from Religion lessons in 1965.
  • Plus many more stories!

To receive the next Inquiring Minds direct to your inbox, make sure to subscribe to our newsletters.

Join our volunteers in your local school
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Critical Thinking and Empathy in the Age of AI – panel discussion

In May 2025, Primary Ethics hosted a panel discussion on Critical Thinking and Empathy in the Age of AI. An appreciative audience saw host Sarah MacDonald (centre below), radio journalist, discuss the ethical thinking skills needed to address the AI challenge with panellists Kelby Mason (Primary Ethics curriculum author, left), Microsoft strategist and ethics volunteer Sinéad Fitzgerald (far right), digital education specialist Tim Powers (second from left) and coordinator of ethics at Pembroke School in South Australia, Gabrielle Corbett (second from right).

 

More about the Primary Ethics curriculum
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Empathy – an ethics class on Insight SBS-TV

What is empathy? Do we need to learn to be more empathetic? Can empathy be taught? The SBS program Insight dedicated an episode to this question, which aired on 16 May 2023.

Insight visited a public school in Sydney and filmed a wonderful Stage 2 ethics class on empathy taught by Primary Ethics volunteer Shing Ka, where students learn to consider other children’s feelings and motivations. It’s just a snippet of the whole 30-minute lesson but is a strong illustration of an ethics community of inquiry in action.

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Primary Ethics discussion rules

This year, the six ethics class rules have been replaced by five discussion rules. In this short video, trainer, ethics teacher and curriculum author Kelby Mason talks us through those rules.

First some important context: these discussion rules are for stages 1, 2 and 3 (which is Years 1- 6). They aren’t for Kindy or secondary students (who have separate rules and guidelines).

Why have we updated the rules?

  1. We now call them discussion rules as they are primarily a roadmap for the type of discussion we want to see in all ethics lessons. This name will help students see how they’re different to the school rules and any classroom behaviour rules you might have.
  2. We’ve reduced them to five to help students focus on what’s most important.
  3. We’ve clarified the language to make it as meaningful as possible to today’s children.

The rules are displayed in every class and referred to regularly throughout the lesson.Why’s that?The rules are our important grounding tool and roadmap for helping create a genuine community of inquiry.

When teachers notice a student – or the entire class – veering off course, they can point their attention to the relevant rule and remind them to follow it. If necessary at any point, teachers can start a discussion about a particular rule and our reasons for following it.

What are the ethics discussion rules?

  1.  Only one person speaks at a time.
  2.  Pay attention to the person who is speaking.
  3.  Build on other people’s ideas.
  4.  Speak to other students, not just to the teacher.
  5.  No put downs.

Read more about how ethics classes work.

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‘My small way to make a big difference’

Thousands of volunteers teach Ethics every week – they get as much out of it as the children do.
Hear from six of them about why they do it and how you can become an volunteer ethics teacher too.

Watch it with captions:

Watch it without captions:

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