late winter update
speech on campus and going viral
Up here in the upper midwest, only a few weeks til spring. Here are latest updates from the Center for Ethics & Education, including an upcoming talk on campus speech, new teaching guides, a viral TikTok, and a call for submissions to our podcast.
Welcome to Teresa
Teresa Nelson is a first-year undergraduate student studying Psychology. On campus, she is involved in UW track club and the Action Research Facility Psychology lab. Outside of school activities and work, she enjoys hiking, running, writing fiction, and jazz music. Teresa is working with the Center on audio production and communications.
Teaching Guides
Trinity reformatted our teaching guides and they look amazing:
Jeff Frank (St. Lawrence University) wrote a great post about our work developing curriculum with students:
I love how the Center for Ethics & Education sees undergraduates as partners in curriculum development. Working with juniors and seniors to create realistic cases and dilemmas that help first and second year students engage with ethical and philosophical issues related to campus life has two key benefits. (1) It gives students ownership of the curriculum, and (2) it helps us faculty stay connected to issues and problems that our students care about.
Speech on Campus
A recent article titled “Surveys reinforce UW–Madison’s longstanding commitments to free speech, civil dialogue and belonging” hints at certain students’ hesitancy to express (specifically political) views in the classroom and on campus. A UW Systems survey reveals that, although a substantial majority of students at UW-Madison report that their instructors encourage diverse viewpoints in the classroom and in discussions, many students still withhold their opinions about controversial topics due to fear of their classmates’ reactions. The results of the survey also suggest that the students who are especially tentative to speak up about their views are more politically conservative.
The Center for Ethics and Education works to promote respectful and engaging classroom discussions. Our teaching guide, “Speech in the Classroom: Student Responsibilities in Classroom Discussion,” asks, what are the responsibilities of students to each other in classroom discussions?
On the subject of our teaching guides, we hope instructors take a moment to browse through our newly reformatted teaching guides and find inspiration for their lesson plans, or perhaps some helpful tips or new ideas. These teaching guides are freely available and downloadable from our website.
Upcoming Event: Cancel Wars
“Cancel Wars” by Sigal Ben-Porath
March 30, 6-7:30pm
1295 Grainger Hall
At UW-Madison on March 30, CEE is hosting a talk by Sigal Ben-Porath about speech on campus, based on her new book, Cancel Wars. We hope to see you there! This event is open to the public.
Call for Teacher Stories
We have an open and ongoing call for teachers to submit their dilemmas to us for the Ethics & Education podcast. We’d love to hear from you, and hope you’ll share with the teachers in your lives:
TikTok
Anna and Trinity filmed TikToks at the NAAPE (North American Association for Philosophy of Education) Conference last fall and they really seem to be resonating:
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Reach out anytime,
CEE
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