Unit 8 · Ethics, Complexity & Wicked Problems · Lesson 37
Ethics in Public
Moral reasoning without moralising
By the end of this lesson
You'll be able to:
- make a moral argument in public without sounding like you are moralising
- tell the difference between an ethical claim and a personal preference dressed up as one
- steelman a view you find uncomfortable well enough that its holders recognise themselves
- write reflectively on a live public question in a voice a thoughtful stranger will trust
Stage 1
Get Talking
Here's what you'll do
Three lines from real op-eds. Which one is ethics, which is moralising, which is neither?
You produce
You classify each and rewrite the moralising one.
- 'A society that will not house its own key workers has already made a moral choice — it has simply declined to name it.'
- 'Anyone who still eats industrial meat in 2026 is failing every basic test of decency.'
- 'We would all agree that the treatment of our elderly is a matter that deserves attention going forward.'
Your notes
Group extension (optional)
In pairs, one defends each classification; the other has to steelman the opposite call.
Stage 2
Notice the language
Here's what you'll do
Four moves for making a public moral argument that thoughtful strangers keep reading.
You produce
You label each move in a paragraph you write live.
Ethics in public: name the stake · own the position · concede the cost · refuse the certainty
Moralising is what happens when the speaker announces the conclusion, positions themselves above the audience, and asks the audience to agree in order to remain a decent person. Ethical writing does the opposite: it names what is actually at stake, states its own position as a position (not a fact about the universe), concedes what its own view costs the people who disagree, and refuses the false certainty that would make the argument feel finished when it isn't.
The structure
Examples
- Name the stake'If we get end-of-life care wrong, what is lost is the last three months of someone else's grandmother's cognition. That is the specific thing.'
- Own the position'I think the school day should start later. I'm going to try to convince you. You are allowed to disagree with me and remain a serious person.'
- Concede the cost'What I'm asking for would make the working parents' morning harder. I know that. I still think the argument holds. Here's why.'
- Refuse the certainty'I don't know whether I'm right. I know what I'd defend on a Wednesday. On a Sunday I'd want to reopen it.'
Try three
1. Rewrite as ethics, not moralising: 'Anyone who opposes this reform is on the wrong side of history.'
Reveal
'I think this reform is right, and I don't think its serious opponents are on the wrong side of history. I think they are weighing the same goods differently, and I want to argue with the weighing.'
2. Name a specific stake for: 'We must do more about loneliness.'
Reveal
'Fifteen minutes of unstructured human conversation, three times a week, is what many of our over-eighties will now not have from tomorrow morning. That is the specific missing thing.'
3. Concede the cost of your own view on a policy of your choice.
Reveal
Model answer will vary; must name a concrete group whose life is harder if the writer's preferred view wins.
Stage 3
Vocabulary in action
Here's what you'll do
Ten items for ethical writing that reads.
You produce
You use each in a live paragraph on the ethical question you brought.
announcing a conclusion from above and demanding agreement as the price of decency
"That paragraph is moralising, not ethics — nobody's allowed to disagree and stay respectable."
to say specifically what would be lost, and to whom, if the question is decided wrong
"Name the stake. What exactly disappears from someone's life if you're wrong?"
to state your view in the first person as your view, not as the obvious view
"Own the position. Drop 'we all know'."
to name what your preferred view costs the people it would bind
"Concede the cost. A view that costs no one nothing usually isn't really a view."
to end on the honest edge of your thinking rather than on a verdict
"Refuse the certainty. Say what you'd reopen on Sunday."
to state an opposing view so well its holders recognise themselves in your account
"Steelman first, argue second. Anything less is theatre."
a taste or comfort dressed up as a moral claim
"That's a personal preference in ethical clothing. It doesn't survive a 'why is that wrong for the other person?'"
the rhetorical move of framing disagreement as evidence of bad character
"That's the decency shortcut, and it's why nobody who disagrees will finish the paragraph."
the standard test for whether your argument is ethics or moralising — a serious person on the other side must exist
"Ask yourself: could a serious person disagree with me here? If not, you're not doing ethics yet."
the point in your own thinking where the case is genuinely still open
"End on the honest edge, not on a verdict."
Guided practice
1. Fill: 'That's a personal preference in ____ clothing.' (1 word)
Reveal
ethical
2. Fill: 'Ask yourself: could a serious person ____ with me here?' (1 word)
Reveal
disagree
3. Fill: 'End on the ____ ____, not on a verdict.' (2 words)
Reveal
honest edge
Stage 4
Speaking Task
Here's what you'll do
The uncomfortable-view round: steelman first, argue second.
You produce
Two 3-minute deliveries in a row on the ethical question you brought.
Take the ethical question you prepared for homework. Deliver TWICE.
- 1Round 1 (3 minutes): steelman the view you find hard so well that a holder of it would say ‘yes, that’s what I mean‘ — no straw men, no ironic tone, no ’they would say'.
- 2Round 2 (3 minutes): make your own argument using name-stake / own-position / concede-cost / refuse-certainty. Teacher scores the steelman: if a holder of the view wouldn't sign off on your
- 3Round 1, you go back to it before
- 4Round 2 counts.
Use these
Prompts
- · The ethical question you brought.
- · A back-up if yours collapses: 'Should employers be allowed to require workers back into offices five days a week?'
- · A back-up: 'Is it ethical to have a third child in a country with our carbon footprint?'
Your speaking notes
Group extension (optional)
In pairs, the listener holds up a red card if the steelman turns into a strawman — Round 1 restarts.
Stage 5
Read or listen
Here's what you'll do
One op-ed. Read for ethics vs moralising, line by line.
You produce
Five close-reading calls on where the piece earns trust and where it burns it.
Reading — Op-ed — 'On making my mother's last decisions'
My mother is 82. Last spring, over a Sunday lunch that neither of us pretended was casual, she told me what she wanted us to do when her mind began to leave her, and what she wanted us not to do. I wrote it down in the margin of the wine list. I want to be honest about what I think, and then about what I'm not sure of.
I think we should let her be the author of the last chapter. I think the country I live in is too frightened of letting people like her make the choices she has just made. I think the current arrangement — where a family sits in a hospital corridor, and a doctor tries in five minutes to guess what a stranger would have wanted — is not compassionate. It is only tidy.
I am also not moralising. If your view is that a legal right to refuse late-stage treatment will, in practice, be used most against those with least — the poor, the disabled, women whose children are tired — that is not a stupid objection and I do not think you hold it because you don't love your mother. You may hold it precisely because you do, and because you have watched the systems near you fail the people they claimed to protect. I would ask you what the current arrangement costs the same people, and whether their voices are being heard in it either. But I would ask, not lecture.
My own preferred position costs something. It puts a burden on doctors I have never met. It asks a family to speak, at 7pm on a Tuesday, about a Sunday-afternoon conversation they wrote on a wine list. It risks — and this is the risk I take most seriously — that a version of me in fifteen years, tired and short of money and desperate for the house to be sold, will read the wine list differently than I do now. I don't have an answer to that. I have a draft of one.
So I want to end where I actually am, not where an op-ed usually ends. On a Wednesday I would sign the reform tomorrow. On a Sunday, in my mother's kitchen, I would want us to keep talking one more time. I don't think either of those two versions of me is wrong. I think the fact that both of them exist is what an honest position on this looks like — and I would trust a policy that took both of them seriously more than one that pretended only one of them counted.
Comprehension
1. Where does the piece NAME THE STAKE with a specific harm rather than a slogan?
Reveal
'A family sits in a hospital corridor, and a doctor tries in five minutes to guess what a stranger would have wanted.' And later, the risk that 'a version of me in fifteen years, tired and short of money and desperate for the house to be sold, will read the wine list differently.' Both are concrete, not abstract.
2. Where does the piece STEELMAN the opposing view without irony?
Reveal
Paragraph 3: 'that is not a stupid objection and I do not think you hold it because you don't love your mother. You may hold it precisely because you do.' The opposing view is stated in a form its holders would recognise, with their motive charitably attributed.
3. Where does the writer CONCEDE THE COST of their own position?
Reveal
Paragraph 4 in full — puts a burden on doctors, asks a family to speak from a wine-list conversation, and names the future self who might read it in bad faith. All three are costs the writer's own view creates.
4. How does the piece REFUSE THE CERTAINTY at the close?
Reveal
Wednesday-self vs Sunday-self. Neither version is dismissed. The verdict-shaped ending is refused; the essay closes on the reality of the writer's own unfinished thinking rather than on 'therefore we must'.
5. Where is 'we' EARNED in this piece, and where is it AVOIDED?
Reveal
'We' is almost entirely avoided — the essay is 'I', 'you', 'my mother', 'a family'. The one 'we' — 'let us be the author of the last chapter' (rendered as 'we should let her') — is the writer speaking as the daughter, not as a spokesperson for the reader. That is why the piece never triggers the decency-shortcut alarm.
Stage 6
Look closer
Here's what you'll do
Rewrite one paragraph as moralising, then diagnose why it is worse.
You produce
One rewritten paragraph + a 60-word diagnosis using the target vocabulary.
Take paragraph 2 or paragraph 5. Rewrite it as MORALISING — 'we', ‘must’, ‘anyone who’, ‘wrong side’. Keep the same length. Then, in 60 words, diagnose your own rewrite: which moves have you lost (name stake / own position / concede cost / refuse certainty), and which reader has your rewrite just decided isn't worth talking to?
- · Which single word carries the most ethical weight in the original?
- · Which sentence in the original would you cut if you had to lose one — and does the essay survive without it?
- · Where does the piece earn the right to end on 'I don't have an answer' rather than sounding evasive?
Your analysis
Group extension (optional)
In pairs, swap moralising rewrites and mark them for every 'we' and every 'must'. Each one costs a point.
Stage 7
Communication Challenge
Here's what you'll do
The 20-minute op-ed room: on the record, with an editor who reads for moralising.
You produce
One 220-word draft op-ed opening + a live defence of it against an editor's line-by-line pushback.
Take the ethical question you brought. In 12 minutes, draft the OPENING 220 words of an op-ed. In 8 minutes, teacher plays an editor: reads it aloud, marks every ‘we all know’, every ‘anyone who’, every decency-shortcut, every un-conceded cost, every un-owned position — and you must revise, live, in the room. You cannot leave the draft with any decency-shortcut still intact. If you cannot defend a sentence to a reader who disagrees, the sentence goes.
Timing
3 minutes brief the topic, 12 minutes draft, 5 minutes live edit under pushback.
Use these
Deliverable
The revised 220 words, on one page, marked with the changes made and one sentence naming which sentence still worries you.
Your deliverable / notes
Group extension (optional)
In groups of 3, one drafts, one plays editor, one is the imagined disagreeing reader — the reader has veto over any un-conceded cost.
Stage 8
Exam Connection
Here's what you'll do
C2 Proficiency Writing Part 2 — the article/essay option.
You produce
A 40-word opening paragraph and a 40-word closing paragraph for a Part 2-style essay prompt.
C2 Proficiency — Writing Part 2 (article/essay/review/report/letter, 280–320 words)
Task
Examiners at Band 5 reward candidates who take a defended position and refuse false certainty. The ethical moves — name-stake, own-position, concede-cost, refuse-certainty — map directly to the C2 Writing rubric's ‘holds a nuanced position with control’.
Strategy
For any Part 2 essay on a public question, open with NAME-THE-STAKE (a specific harm, not a slogan) and OWN-THE-POSITION (first person, not ‘we all agree’). Close with REFUSE-THE-CERTAINTY — the honest edge of your own view, not a verdict. That opening/closing pair alone lifts a solid essay into the top band.
Mini-task
Take one C2-style essay prompt (e.g. ‘Some argue that older workers should be given priority in re-training programmes. Others disagree. Discuss.’). Draft ONE 40-word opening (name-stake + own-position) and ONE 40-word closing (concede-cost + refuse-certainty). Read both aloud and cut anything a serious person on the other side would call decency-shortcut.
Your mini-task answer
Stage 9
Writing
Here's what you'll do
One 300-word ethical reflection on the question you brought.
You produce
The 300-word piece + a 40-word steelman of the view you disagree with, submitted alongside.
Write a 300-word ethical reflection in the register of the op-ed you read today. It MUST:
- aNAME THE STAKE with a specific harm, not a slogan
- bOWN THE POSITION in the first person
- cSTEELMAN the strongest opposing view in a paragraph its holders would sign
- dCONCEDE what your own view costs the people it would bind
- eREFUSE THE CERTAINTY at the close on the honest edge of your own thinking. Use at least SEVEN target items naturally. Alongside the 300 words, submit a 40-word standalone steelman — one paragraph in the voice of someone who disagrees with you, that a holder of that view would recognise as their own.
Word count: 300 words + 40-word steelman
Must use
Your writing (autosaved draft)
Stage 10
Reflect & take home
Here's what you'll do
End of L37. Two questions, one prep.
You produce
Spoken 30-second reflection + prep for L38.
Reflection
- · When did you last publicly moralise about something, and what did it cost you with someone whose mind you wanted to change?
- · Which of the four moves — name-stake, own-position, concede-cost, refuse-certainty — did you find hardest today, and why?
Homework
For L38 (AI, Climate & Trade-Offs): pick ONE real live trade-off that a government, employer or organisation you know is currently facing. Bring:
- athe two goods being traded off in one sentence each
- bthree positions actually held by serious people on how to weigh them
- cthe one option you‘d rank last and the one you’d defend against everyone else at the table.
Your reflection
How confident do you feel with this?
Homework response
Need more practice with this language?
Extra Practice