PICKLED ETHICS
PRE-ACTIVITY DISCUSSION:
1. Can an absolute set of ethics be established or are ethics relative to the situation?
2. How do ethical standards change when applied to a particular situation?
3. Are ethical standards easier to apply to another person or group than they are to the self?
4. Do classical ethics apply to the modern world?
ACTIVITY:
The phrase “caught in a pickle” is used to describe a dilemma from which no easy way out appears. This activity places groups of students in a pickle, asks then to portray the situation in a skit.
Students are broken into groups of four and an appropriate number of situations are placed in a “pickle jar”. Each group draws one situation and the class is given twenty minutes for skit preparation. Each skit must be held to five minutes and must include a portrayal opposing opinions.
The problem themselves should be relevant to the particular classroom but also to the students. Current situations for a sociology or modern living class are numerous and include:
1. You are a bridesmaid at your sister’s wedding, and her soon to be husband (for whom you have always had some special affection) makes you move on you. What do you do?
2. You are 100% anti-abortion. Now you are on your way to Harvard on scholarship. You become pregnant. What do you do?
3. On a trip across county, you go to a small diner. They have only two items on the menu. The first you cannot eat because of religious reasons. The second because of political reasons. You have to eat something to avoid starvation. Which do you eat?
4. If your best friend sold drugs and asked you to hold them or him/her, would you?
5. Your friend is living off the welfare system. She is able- bodied and has the ability to work. You know she is lying to the welfare department about looking for jobs. The welfare department questions you. What do you do?
6. Your friend just got into a good college which rejected you. She has lower grades and lower test scores. It is obvious that the only reason she was admitted was because of her ethnic background. DO you bring this to the attention of the appeals office hoping for admission?
7. As a doctor, you have found a possible cure for cancer, but you must test the drug on animals. There is a strong possibility that the animals tested will die. Should you go ahead and test the drug?
8. You are on a winning athletic team. Right before the big game, you find out the star player is on steroids. What do you do?
9. Your grandma knits you pink sweater with bunnies on it. She is coming to your graduation and she wants to see you in the sweater she spent all year on. Do you wear it to graduation?
10. You have been raised in a strict, fundamentalist Christian family. While attending a university, you fall madly in love with an Orthodox Jew. Your parents are coming to visit. Do you introduce your “true love”?
Follow-Up Writing Assignment:
1. Do the moral standards of the world’s great religions need to be rewritten for the modern world?
2. Design an ethical standard which can be applied to conflicting duties.