I began the Moral Judgement section of TOK: using the TOK Teachers Guide as my beginning source of information. Being a new TOK instructor, I have found all the guidelines and topic areas very helpful in supplying background information. I had spent 2 weeks teaching and guiding the class through moral skepticism, making moral distinctions and looking at their own personal values. We read and discussed the ones of Kant, Aristotle, Mill, Ross and others and debated their positions. Now, all I needed was something to do with all this information. And I desperately needed something for Friday's class.
My second TOK class is held at the worst imaginable time of the week: Friday at 3pm. My students are focused more on their plans for Friday evening than their three o'clock TOK class. To say the least, my challenge every week is to get their attention and then to keep it for 45 minutes.
I decided it was time for them to debate some issues and come to some conclusions of their own. But just handing them pieces of paper with their assignment wasn't what I wanted. I had typed the objective for their lesson on the top of my paper and then began with their tasks. As I sat typing what I wanted them to do, I decided to set the lesson up as a "Mission impossible" assignment.
My Lesson Plan ended up like this: Purpose/Objective
Mission Impossible Team
The names of the students in each debate team were put here.
Your Mission
Instructions for the debate: Here they had to read their situation, decide which side of the debate they would be on and use their note cards to document ideas and notes.
Your Evidence
1.) What You Know: Here I summarized some of topics and theories we had studied in the last weeks.
2.) What You Don't Know: I suggested things like the moral principle of others in the group, all the details of the situation, cultural, language and academic influences of their group and emotional connections to the topic.
Your Task
The idea here was to make them respond to each other using sound, intelligent reasons that they could support. In addition, they had to try to get supporters from their audience.
Then I also gave them a time limit to prepare. (Similar to the tape self-destructing). <> You have 12 minutes to prepare. Start now. <> The "lesson" was put into a large envelope along with a note card and situation card for each member of the team. I labeled each envelope “Mission Team #" and sealed them. There are some good situations in John Hosper's, Introduction to Philosophical Analysis" which I used.
This was the best Friday I have had. They were really busy and although I had instructed them to put 2 points on their cards, most had written 5 or 6 points. The room was filled with busy talk and discussion as they argued and debated with each other. As the first team got into their debate, several students in the 'audience' were desperately trying to stay in their chairs and keep quiet, they obviously had their own opinions and wanted to be heard. Their debates became ad lib and a few of them began to get personally involved in it - it was no longer the assignment. Their responses were intelligent and soundly based on personal opinion and of course their knowledge of Moral Judgments. They were still debating when they left the room.
The lesson was two-told. First it was a good practical exercise in reviewing and practicing what they had been studying and secondly the debates were small and structured so as to prepare them for the more difficult moral judgements in our legal and medical systems.
As teachers we all know how it feels when we've seen that our students got the point and actually absorbed our lessons. That Friday was one of those days when I really felt like I had gotten the "A". It was a good feeling. Now my problem is what to do them next Friday?!
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