This year a third member of the Scott family has become an ethics volunteer. Peter Scott describes their journey to being an ethics family.
As ethics teachers, we often reflect on the benefits the Primary Ethics program has for our students. I have been an ethics teacher at Glenmore Rd Public Sschool in Paddington for 13 years now. Not only have I seen it benefit my many students over that time, but ethics volunteering has given my family a sense of common purpose and brought us closer together as we grow older.
In my second year I taught our younger son Lachlan, who was in Year 6. He was a little embarrassed to have his dad in front of his mates, although he got used to it as I brought my soccer coaching skills to bear. Our older son Alasdair had already left for high school when I started ethics teaching and felt a little left out of the conversations we were having at the family table.
Eight years later their mother Sarah became an ethics teacher too, partly to better inform her architectural work designing early childhood education facilities. She could see how much value I was getting from teaching the curriculum. Now she is part of our group of eight teachers at the school and absolutely loves it.
Sarah tells this story about witnessing the impact of ethics thinking skills in her class:
``One of my favourite ethics moments occurred with the lesson about the intent and structure of an ethics class. I followed the script, starting the class with random questions about unrelated topics which they could not possibly have answers for. They were all initially very puzzled and confused, but then one girl had a lightbulb moment and put her hand up with much animation. 'I know what this is!' she exclaimed excitedly, then in a conspiratorial voice she added, 'It’s an ethics class about ethics classes!' They all went 'Ahhhh'.``
Sarah Scott
After all these years the wheel has now turned full circle. Alasdair, who just missed out on being in the primary school ethics program, finally had some time to contribute after completing six years of university. We did the teacher training together in January 2025 – it was my second time and after 13 years it was completely different. Not only had the curriculum evolved, so had the teaching techniques.
So now Alasdair too has become part of our group of teachers and also loves it.
So we are an ethics teaching family! We sit down at the dinner table, speak one at a time, there are no putdowns and we build upon each other’s ideas … Okay, no, that doesn’t quite happen – we are a normal family and all talk at once. However, we all recognise that the ethics program offers a really positive way of engaging with younger generations and listening to each other in order to build a future together.
