What is Ethics Day?

Ethics day is an innovative program designed to elicit discussions about ethics from high school seniors. The program does not present lectures on ethical precepts or try to espouse any specific set of ethical beliefs. The four modules that constitute the program each ask young people to apply their ethical values to real life situations and then challenges them to support those ethical decisions.

The Ethics Day program is called Senior Ethics Day because the entire senior class at the high school participates. The class is equally divided into four large groups – to match the number of modules of the program. The large groups are each further subdivided into groups of 7-8. These smaller groups are table groups, who will sit together for all segments of the program. Each of these table groups is assigned a table leader, who is an adult recruited by the sponsoring groups. The function of the table leader is to facilitate discussion among the students, but they are encouraged to refrain from injected their thoughts or beliefs. Further, since the table leader generally has no connection to the students, he or she demonstrates the importance of the program merely by being present and willing to donate his or her time. Students are assigned to the large groups and the table groups to create table groups of students that otherwise might not associate with one another