Ethics, Justice & Political Economy

Objectives

• D09.S1.09.01 Analyze a moral question using more than one ethical framework (such as consequences, duties, and virtues) and compare what each shows.
• D09.S1.09.02 Evaluate the role of conscience and self-criticism in forming one's own values.
• D09.S2.09.01 Analyze a systemic injustice, tracing how individual actions, rules, and structures combine to produce unfair outcomes.
• D09.S2.09.02 Evaluate the idea of human rights across cultures, including critiques that they reflect some traditions more than others.
• D09.S3.09.01 Analyze how power is distributed in a society and how citizens can hold power accountable, using a specific case.
• D09.S3.09.02 Evaluate the strengths and limits of democratic participation, and compare with alternatives across different societies.
• D09.S4.09.01 Analyze the causes of conflict and violence, including inequality, fear, and scarcity, and how they can be addressed at the root.
• D09.S4.09.02 Evaluate reconciliation and restorative justice as responses to serious harm, including their possibilities and limits.

Essential questions

• How do I reason about a moral question across more than one ethical framework, and what role do conscience and self-criticism play in forming my values?
• How do individual actions, rules, and structures combine into systemic injustice, and how should I evaluate human rights across cultures?
• How is power distributed and held accountable, how does democracy compare with alternatives, and what are the roots of conflict and the limits of reconciliation?

Big ideas

• Reasoning across consequences, duties, and virtues shows different truths, and conscience and self-criticism keep my own values honest.
• Systemic injustice arises where actions, rules, and structures combine, and human rights can be both affirmed and critiqued across cultures.
• Power, democracy, conflict, and reconciliation are studied as questions — with more than one defensible answer — never answered as dogma.

Lessons

1. 1 Three Lenses on Right and Wrong 50 minutes
2. 2 Consequences: What Happens, to Whom? 55 minutes
3. 3 Duties: What We Owe 55 minutes
4. 4 Virtues: Who We Become 55 minutes
5. 5 One Question, Three Answers 55 minutes
6. 6 Conscience & Self-Criticism: Keeping My Values Honest 50 minutes
7. 7 Systemic Injustice: Actions, Rules, Structures 55 minutes
8. 8 Tracing a Systemic Injustice 55 minutes
9. 9 Human Rights Across Cultures 55 minutes
10. 10 Power & Accountability 55 minutes
11. 11 Democracy & Its Alternatives 55 minutes
12. 12 The Roots of Conflict: Inequality, Fear, Scarcity 55 minutes
13. 13 Reconciliation & Restorative Justice 55 minutes
14. 14 Capstone: Reasoning Across the Whole 55 minutes

Assessment plan

A multi-framework moral analysis, a conscience-and-values reflection, a systemic-injustice trace, a cross-cultural human-rights evaluation, a power-and-accountability case study, a democracy-versus-alternatives comparison, a roots-of-conflict analysis, and a reconciliation-and-restorative-justice evaluation as portfolio artifacts.