HOW ETHICS BOWL WORKS

Ethics Bowl matches feature two teams meeting head-to-head to discuss and evaluate case studies which feature tricky moral questions or dilemmas. These cases come from one of the NHSEB’s annually released Case Sets—one for Regional Competitions, and one for the National Championship each April. Each match will have three judges and one moderator in attendance, and spectators are encouraged to join in as well.

competitive, collaborative

CONVERSATION

Parts of an Ethics bowl Match

To open the first half of the match, copies of the first case and question will be distributed to the judges and teams. The moderator will then read the case number, title, and a question for competition. Neither judges nor the teams will know in advance which case will be presented or which question will be asked. The first half then proceeds as follows:

Moderator Period

Presentation Period

Commentary Period

Response Period

Judges’ Period

  • A moderator will start the match by introducing a case from the set (which students have prepared with in advance) and asking a question that the discussion will address (which they have not).

  • After the case and question are introduced, Team A will have up to two minutes to confer, after which any member(s) of Team A may speak for up to six minutes in response to the moderator’s question, based on the team’s research and critical analysis. Team A must address the moderator’s question during the time allotted. NHSEB Regional Competitions typically use a 5 minute Presentation Period, and the National Championship uses a 6 minute Presentation Period.

  • Next, Team B will have up to two minutes to confer, after which Team B may speak for up to three minutes to comment on Team A’s presentation.

  • Team A will then have up to two minutes to confer, followed by three minutes to respond to Team B’s commentary.

  • The judges will then begin their ten-minute question and answer session with Team A. Before asking questions, the judges may confer briefly. Each judge should have time for at least one question, and may ask more questions if time permits.


This process will repeat in each respective half of the match, with the teams switching places (i.e., the team which presented in the first half will play the commenting role in the second, and so on). Upon the conclusion of each half of the match, judges will score each team based on the following criteria:

  • Team’s Presentation on the Moderator’s Question: Is the presentation clear and systematic? Does it address some central moral dimensions of the case? Does it indicate awareness of and responsiveness to opposing viewpoints?

  • Responding Team’s Commentary: Is the commentary constructive? Does it advance the conversation by offering opportunities for clarification, questions for the presenting team, etc.

  • Presenting Team’s Response to Commentary: Does the presenting team take seriously and adequately reply to the comments from their respondents?

  • Presenting Team’s Responses to Judges’ Questions: Are judges’ questions answered effectively, clearly, and responsibly?

  • Each team’s display of Respectful Dialogue throughout the match: Is each team committed to the central values of the competition—collaboration and the pursuit of truth, rather than, say, combativeness or belittling rhetoric?

For a full account of all NHSEB procedures and guidelines, see the NHSEB Rules Manual.

Ethics Bowl and Debate

While the Ethics Bowl activity may look similar to various speech and debate formats from a distance, the core skills and values emphasized by the National High School Ethics Bowl are quite different than those emphasized in debate. Here are a few key differences between the activities:

  • The Ethics Bowl format takes great care to emphasize high school students’ developing moral and political agency with respect to their own views, beliefs, and judgments. Unlike in many forms of speech and debate, students participating in an Ethics Bowl are not assigned particular propositions to defend, and the case-based design of the format de-emphasizes “pro vs. con” reasoning in favor of complex issues which are nuanced, multi-faceted, and admit of many forms of reasonable disagreement. The views that students end up advancing in response to these case prompts—and, importantly, their reasoning for the claims involved—are entirely of the students’ own design and development. This element of the format designed to take seriously students’ role as serious moral thinkers in their own right, and as sources of authentic claims and knowledge in their communities.

  • Debate formats are often adversarial in nature, focusing on subduing the opposing position with superior rhetoric or argumentation. Rather than this kind of approach which prioritizes rhetoric, the Ethics Bowl prioritizes underlying reasoning in a collaborative format. The goal, rather than “winning the argument” in the conventional sense, is to work with the “opposing” team to move toward a solution or analysis of a case which is true or reasonable, or has the benefit of generating new ways of thinking about an issue. This approach is meant to model deliberative, non-adversarial democratic decision making—a project-based task geared toward learning together, navigating disagreement, and building consensus where possible. Rather than on the extent of their persuasiveness where judges are concerned, students are evaluated on the structural quality of their reasoning, sincere and empathetic engagement with the reasonable views of their peers, and their grappling with tough and nuanced issues. In this way, Ethics Bowl balances its competitive and collaborative aims.

  • Unlike in some forms of debate, but very much like in life, changing your mind in response to new considerations or arguments is not, on balance, a bad thing in Ethics Bowl. Rather than indicating that a participant is insufficiently committed to the task or analysis, responsibly shifting or revising one’s position can clearly illustrate the collaborative process of learning and truth-seeking that lies at the heart of the Ethics Bowl format, and of democratic deliberation.

For a detailed treatment of the key differences between Ethics Bowl and Debate, see Robert Ladenson, “The Educational Significance of the Ethics Bowl,” in Teaching Ethics, Kyle Robertson, “Debating Democracy: Building Argument Programs for Good Citizenship” in Roberta Israeloff and Karen Mizell, eds., The Ethics Bowl Way: Answering Questions, Questioning Answers, and Creating Ethical Communities, and Marcia McKelligan, “Coaching: Winning Isn’t Everything,” also in The Ethics Bowl Way.

SEE it For yourself.

To see the Ethics Bowl format in action, check out the Championship Round of the 2018 NHSEB National Championship Event at the Parr Center for Ethics in Chapel Hill, NC. In this match, students from the Kent Place School (New Jersey) and Stanford Online High School (California) discuss cases focusing on the U.S. Electoral College system and the moral permissibility of felon disenfranchisement.