Center for Ethics News
Update: Westwood High School won the wild card bid and is advancing to Nationals in April!
KETK - UT Tyler hosts 2025 High School Ethics Bowl
On Saturday, the UT Tyler Center of Ethics hosted the 2025 High School Ethics Bowl as a way for students from across Texas to collaborate and compete by discussing real-life ethical problems. Saturday's winning team will advance to the National High School Ethics Bowl in April.
13th annual Ethics Bowl teaches students critical thinking skills
Raquel Villatoro, Tyler Morning Telegraph
At the UT Tyler Soules School of Business, 10 high school teams from East Texas to
Houston gathered Saturday to compete in the 13th Annual Ethics Bowl.
The purpose of the bowl is to teach students critical thinking skills. The students
are encouraged to be collaborative, said UT Tyler Center for Rights Director Gregory
Bock.
UT Tyler hosted students from Austin and Houston for the first time. This year it was the only school in Texas hosting the competition. In the past, Rice University hosted its own competition.
The final round came down to one school: Westwood High School from Austin. Both teams were given a question, time to deliberate and answer questions from the other team regarding their position. In addition, the teams had to answer questions from the judges regarding the ethical question posed at the beginning.
The students prepare for months ahead of the competition. They are given a list of potential questions. During the final round, Team A was asked a question regarding limiting time on what children spend time doing and Team B was asked a question about whether there should be limits on how many hours someone works.
During their question, Team A took the broad stance that there should be limits on time children spend their time doing but not based on time. Instead, the limits should be based on trade-offs the child will have to take and consider their future.
For Team B’s question, they took the stance that there should be limits on hours an employee works because it can lead to toxicity and other problems. When Team A took their turn to respond, they asked about necessary jobs such as medical workers.
After tallying the points, Team A was revealed to be the winner. The winning team will compete at the regional level for a chance to go to nationals, hosted by University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Westwood High School student Landon Iley, 17, previously participated in the Ethics Bowl held last year at Rice University. Iley, along with his classmates, prepared together for the competition.
He learned about the Ethics Bowl from other friends in speech and debate class who described it as a more collaborative process. The skills he learned in class came in handy when preparing for the competition.
“I think it prepared us massively,” Iley said. “A lot of the strategies we did are almost mirrored directly from speech and debate. For instance, very much focusing on what the question is asking us and each individual word in the question, as well as the fact that, like taking alternative routes and courses of action, mirrors ideas such as counterpoint.”
The experience has taught Iley to think about things differently.
“I think it’s forced us to look a lot more at what the root ethical reason for doing stuff,” Iley said. “A lot of the times we go about life where we’re just assuming, ‘hey, I know this is good, so let me go about that.’ But when you’re being forced to answer so many questions about where do we draw the line, how do we differentiate, it gives us the ideas of how do we weigh one issue against another and what are our true ethical beliefs when we’re forced to look at something.”
Since the students practiced together, they felt comfortable competing against each other. Both teams prepped together the night before, however, both teams kept their answers separately.
“We also knew these were other skilled people,” Iley said. “We’re gonna have to lock in and really focus on these questions.”
After winning, both the teams gathered together to take a picture. During the awards ceremony, the winning team proudly held their new trophy.
“We’re just really proud of our team for being able to close out this tournament and looking forward to fighting Minnesota in regional playoffs,” Iley said.