The Ethics Bowl is a fun and rewarding way to get high school students thinking about the challenging ethical and political issues of our time. As a team member, you will investigate and debate such issues as medical ethics, censorship, violence in schools, and the financial practices of world governments, all in a chiefly collaborative manner. The goal is not to prove your friends and opposing teams wrong, but to debate in a careful, thoughtful manner about the positions which make the most sense.

While similar in structure to a debate, students on a team are not assigned positions or captains. This means no one tells you what to think or when to speak—it's the job of the entire team to come together to make the best case for their position to the judges and the opposing team. In turn, the other team will comment on your position, perhaps helping to clarify or perfect it. Even the judges have a chance to chime in, and your team will field their questions too.

As cooperative as the Ethics Bowl is, teams are still scored based on the strengths of their presentations. In the end, one team will be declared the winner, and will be eligible to travel to North Carolina in the Spring to participate in the National Ethics Bowl competition!

See maps, scoring criteria, and more.

How it Works

The Ethics Bowl promotes respectful, supportive, and rigorous discussion of ethics among thousands of high school students nationwide. Each Fall, the National Ethics Bowl committee releases a set of cases covering a broad range of ethical issues, which then serve as the focus for the year. Teams meet together regularly, with a coach from your school and an assistant coach from American University, to research the cases, to discuss the issues they raise, and to identify clearly how they think those issues should be addressed.

Wrapped around this work is a model for the competitions that rewards students for the depth of their thought, their ability to think carefully and analytically about complex issues, and the respect they show to the diverse perspectives of their peers. As a result, the Bowl cultivates the virtues central to democratic citizenship, and prepares students to navigate challenging moral issues in a systematic and open-minded way.

For more information, please visit the National High School Ethics Bowl website, like us on Facebook, and follow our hashtag, #NHSEB, on other social media sites. You can also watch our 2019 keynote speaker, Alice Dreger!