When they’re not discussing whether the bagels have chocolate chips or raisins in them — a priority first thing in the morning — the Hickman High School ethics team takes on real-world problems. On a recent Tuesday morning, the focus was migrant issues within the European Union.
They divided into two groups. Team A had six minutes to state its case, then Team B had three minutes to confer and another six minutes to reply to Team A. Back and forth it went. They weren’t competing with each other; rather, they were helping each other make the best case they could for their point of view.
Since the beginning of January, the team of nine has practiced every weekday before school. Practices have taken on greater importance since mid-February, when the team won the divisional playoffs over a private school in Indiana. Now, the Hickman team is on its way to the National High School Ethics Bowl on Friday at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Although the divisional playoffs were on Zoom, the national competition is in person. With days left to go, the team has honed its approaches to 15 potential questions that may come up in the national bowl. The students — freshmen, sophomores and juniors — take their work seriously, but they also enjoy it.
“I feel like it’s largely just like a group of friends talking about an issue, and I think that’s a culture that I really have tried to cultivate as the captain,” said team captain Alex Fajen, a junior.
In addition to Fajen, this year’s team members are: freshmen Bailey Moore and Lorelei Hardin; sophomores Luke Swofford, Elena Tucker, Elizabeth Odette, Clementine Buehler and Ada Kirkpatrick; and juniors Alex Fajen and Harini Arunkumar.
Hickman gifted education teacher Caysea Dachroeden, who coaches the team along with Hickman alum Lou Kraxberger, said the members are hard-working and like to have fun.
“A lot of the other teams are a little bit more strict and professional than us,” sophomore Clementine Buehler said. “I think that we have a little bit more fun with it, and that’s why I think we’ve appealed to the judges more than some of the other teams.”
Alex Richardson, director of the National High School Ethics Bowl, said the ethics bowl is kind of like speech and debate — “only it’s better.”
“The whole goal is based around how well the students pursue this constructive objective of helping each other build an argument that moves towards something true or reasonable together, rather than sort of trying to fight each other with rhetoric through the course of exchange,” Richardson said.
The decade-old program has 45 regional competitions across 35 states. Richardson said the goal is to reach all 50 states by 2025.
Hickman’s ethics team has competed nationally in 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. In 2016, the team placed third overall. The last time the Hickman team went to the national bowl was in 2019, however, the team did not place within the top three teams. That also was the last time the competition was in person; 2020-2022 were virtual.
Regional competitions were held in person January and February; Missouri teams gathered Feb. 4 for the regional competition held at Columbia College. The divisional playoffs, held Feb. 14, were virtual.
Matches are structured almost as a series of conversations.
Two teams meet in a room, and a moderator poses a question. The first team gives a presentation on the selected case. Then the opposing team responds with comments and questions. The purpose of the response isn’t so much to reject the first team’s presentation but to constructively challenge it to make it better. The first team has the right to reply.
Halfway through, the presenting team speaks with the judges. The two teams face off again, and it’s the second team’s turn to present and to be challenged.
At the end of the match, a winner is announced.
Opposing teams can have the same opinion on a particular case. Because the ethics bowl match focuses on depth of thought, teams can arrive at their conclusions for a different set of reasons.
“Some of the most interesting conversations I’ve seen actually come when students find that they agree on the conclusion but differ substantially on the reasoning,” Richardson said. “And that’s where it gets really cool.”
Students develop lifelong skills including critical thinking and logical reasoning. Richardson said the social benefits are more interesting to him. “Students often report that the ethics bowl is a sort of empowering experience for them,” he said.
Richardson especially recalled one student who appreciated the experience because it was the first time an adult had asked them an open-ended question about which they could develop their own point of view. The student felt an adult truly cared about what they had to say in response.
Dachroeden said she is proud of the team’s success. She said it comes despite her own limited knowledge in teaching ethics.
“These students, they don’t need help with ethics. ... They know what’s ethical and what’s not, and they can verbalize why,” she said. “But I can provide them with a bigger picture that comes with experience of life that they don’t have.”
Dachroeden said it’s been meaningful for her to come in “as the weakest link.”
“To see them build me up as a coach was just so interesting. These kids didn’t need me. They could have done the same thing with anyone else,” she said. “But I’m so glad to be a part of their team and honored to be that — because they really are stellar.”