Debate the dilemma.
Monthly bioethics seminars and student debates with John Carroll University. Real questions, like who gets the organ and when gene editing is allowed. No experience needed.
One Monday a month · in your PLTW course · kickoff Aug 28 with JCU
Take a sideTake a real biomedical dilemma, build a case from claim, evidence, and reasoning, and defend it out loud against the other side's best point.
Practice arguing honestly on organ allocation, gene editing, clinical trial ethics, and AI in medicine, with John Carroll faculty in the room.
No experience, and it happens inside your PLTW course, not as one more thing after school. First-timers are paired with experienced debaters, and nobody is thrown in cold.
What a seminar looks like
- 01Read ahead
The case worksheet is posted the week before. Read it and you walk in with something to say.
- 02Frame the dilemma
John Carroll faculty and students lay out the real question: organ allocation, gene editing, a trial that has to stay ethical.
- 03Make the case
Claim, evidence, reasoning. You state your position and show the work that carries it.
- 04Answer the best objection
Take on the strongest point the other side has, and keep it respectful.
The first time you defend a claim out loud, your voice will shake. By the second seminar you are asking the hard follow-up.
You
You practice the skill under every hard conversation: state a claim, back it with evidence, and change your mind when the evidence does. Members often say it is the first class where being wrong out loud stopped being scary.
John Hay
Philosophy for Kids brings John Carroll University philosophy faculty into the PLTW courses once a month and closes the year with a symposium. It gives John Hay students a university-level room to argue in.
Medicine
Hospitals, ethics boards, and trial teams make these calls for real, on deadlines, about actual patients. The reasoning you practice here is the reasoning those rooms use.
Careers
Where this points
The skills you practice here are the same ones these jobs run on. Every card carries pay and outlook read straight from O*NET, the US Department of Labor's occupation site, the schools that train for it, and an honest read on what AI is likely to change.
- Healthcare Social Worker
- Genetic Counselor
- Epidemiologist
Inside Philosophy for Kids
Explore & practice
Philosophy for Kids calendar
When we meet
Year at a glance
Community boards
- • Celebrate specifically. Shoutouts name the win, not just the person.
- • Ask anything. No question is too basic, and families are welcome.
- • Protect privacy. First names and last initials only. Never post a phone number, address, grade, or health detail.
Every post is reviewed by Mr. Mendoza before it appears.
No bulletin posts yet. Be the first! 📌
Members and families only. Your post shows just your first name and last initial.
Vetted resources
Our JCU partner department.
The Hastings CenterThe founding bioethics research institute.
Kennedy Institute of Ethics (Georgetown)A leading academic bioethics center.
NIH: Department of BioethicsFederal bioethics resources and cases.
AMA Journal of EthicsCase-based ethics articles, ideal for debate prompts.
Questions families ask
Then this is good practice, and it is built to be safe. You are paired with an experienced debater, the worksheet comes a week early, and the room is graded on reasoning, not on winning.
No. The whole point is learning to argue from claim, evidence, and reasoning. First-timers are paired with experienced debaters.
Real biomedical dilemmas: organ allocation, gene editing, clinical trial ethics, AI in medicine. The same territory as PLTW coursework, argued out loud.
Mr. Mendoza with philosophy faculty and students from John Carroll University, one Monday a month, embedded in the PLTW courses, plus a spring symposium.
Take a side at the next seminar.
One Monday a month · in your PLTW course · kickoff Aug 28 with JCU
Drop your Philosophy for Kids submission in the OneDrive folder, or hand it to Mr. Mendoza in class. Both count. Sign in with your Microsoft (district) account, not a personal one. Nothing is turned in on Schoology: that is where the report-card grade shows up later.
Name the file exactly like this, with two underscores between the name and the title:
Lastname_Firstname__Assignment Title.pdfTwo underscores between the name and the title. Do not put your student ID in the file name: your district sign-in already tells me it is you. A file named any other way is not lost. It waits in a review folder until it is sorted by hand, so it is graded later.
Your receipt. Your own upload panel says Uploaded, with a green check beside the file name. That is your receipt. Screenshot it if you want a record of your own. Do not wait for the file to appear in a list. You should not be able to see anyone else's work in there. If you can see other students' files, stop and tell Mr. Mendoza.
Open the OneDrive drop