Our curriculum

Primary Ethics’ curriculum spans all seven years of primary school, teaching children how to approach ethical issues while developing their capacity for moral reasoning. By considering a wide range of ethical issues appropriate to their particular level of development, children will learn skills such as collaborative inquiry, logical reasoning, critical thinking and the capacity to evaluate good and bad moral reasoning.

The very first topic in Kindergarten, Thinking Together, introduces children to the concept of a ‘community of inquiry,’ which is the foundation of ethical thinking. This theme is followed throughout the curriculum, being revisited in different years through topics such as Respectful Disagreement, Courage and Getting Even.

Most of the topics in the curriculum provide students with the opportunity to develop increasingly sophisticated knowledge and skills in moral reasoning. Children in the younger primary years examine topics such as being left out, sharing and bullying, while older children reflect on issues such as homelessness and child labour to help them consider the feelings and interests of others – one important aspect of moral reasoning. Other aspects include understanding consequences, having empathy, appreciating difference, recognising common capacities, recognising and acting on duties and giving equal consideration. These are tackled through a range of topics as diverse as How Important is it to Look Good? Are Rules Always Fair? Pride, Teasing and Animal Rights.

A series of lessons on our treatment of animals and the environment throughout the curriculum encourages thinking about how far our individual moral responsibility should extend and engages students in considering the consequences of certain practices.

The idea of moral character is introduced in Kindergarten in Being a Good Friend and is then extended over the next few years in topics focussing on courage, pride, boasting and greed.

Our students will learn to recognise good and bad moral reasoning very early on, by introducing notions such as relevance, the difference between relevance and truth and the idea of weighing reasons against each other. Throughout the curriculum, children are asked to provide reasons to support their arguments/positions and Ethics Teachers are trained to test the validity of given reasons. Blind appeal to authority and moral relativism are exposed as bad moral reasoning in Advertising and Whaling respectively. Later lessons progressively introduce logical concepts and processes, including conditionals, assumptions, induction and validity.

Evidence shows that well-reasoned moral judgement does not come automatically as young people mature and that these skills are best developed by engaging children in collaborative dialogue about a wide range of issues that matter to them. That’s what our Primary Ethics’ curriculum does. Once acquired, these skills accompany individuals into adulthood.