Developing Ethical Literacy in a Changing World
Why Ethical Conundrums Help Us Grow (Even If We Didn’t Come Up With Them)
Let me just say it upfront:
This wasn’t my idea.
I didn’t invent the idea of classroom conundrums. I just saw it, stole it (lovingly), and made it part of PivotED—a school that’s never finished, always growing.
So, I stumbled on a slew of conundrums while wandering the interwebs (as one does), and after watching like five of them back to back, I was hooked.
Each one made me sit with something that felt strangely uncomfortable, questions I thought I had clear answers to…until I didn’t.
That’s the beauty of a good ethical conundrum:
It doesn’t just ask for an answer…it asks for your thoughts, shaped by your experiences, your values, and your lens on the world.
That’s where the real learning lives.
Because no two people have the exact same schema.
And when we let that complexity into the classroom magic happens.
🧠 Why Bring This Into the Classroom?
Because this is what real thinking looks like.
When students wrestle with questions like:
What’s the right thing to do when there’s no clear answer?
How do we weigh fairness, feelings, and consequences?
When do rules help—and when do they harm?
What does it mean to do the right thing when it’s hard?
…they’re not just learning.
They’re becoming.
That’s the work.
🔁 What This Means at PivotED
At PivotED, we’re not in the business of filling heads with facts.
We’re in the business of growing people.
That means:
Creating room to stretch beyond what feels familiar
Asking questions without clear answers
Exploring what it means to be human, especially in a world where “human-like” is getting trickier to define
It’s not just a thought experiment.
It’s a humanity lesson with a side of future ethics.
And it’s exactly the kind of learning we’ll keep making space for
from Day One until the day we turn off the lights.
🤓As I said, I Didn’t Come Up With It
I didn’t write these scenarios.
I didn’t go looking for them.
I found them. Or maybe they found me.
And I’ll likely bring them to my students because if they made me pause, wrestle, reflect…
I know they’ll do the same for them.
That’s the beauty of education:
We don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
We just have to stay open, curious, and collaborative.
Whether it’s a colleague, a podcast, a YouTube video, or a well-timed AI suggestion
That’s how brains grow.
Mine included.
🤖 See what I did there? Blog turned conundrum.
The Chatter box (as I call it) pushed my thinking in new directions kind of like the conundrum I presented you with in that Facebook post.
Here’s the honest truth:
If I’d written this blog all by my big self, it’d probably be in neat(ish) paragraph form like my usual stuff and it probably would’ve had more of my uncensored personality if I’d done it without the chatter box politely holding me back.
But I also know that for me and maybe for you too, when a post is broken down like this, it just feels easier to read.
Looks faster.
And sometimes, formatting is the difference between “I’ll skim this real quick” and “Nope, too long.”
The content? Still mine.
The voice? Still mine.
The reflection? 100% mine.
But AI helped me get it out of my head and onto the page in a way that’s clear, readable, and finishable.
Because that’s what good tools do.
They don’t replace us they help us keep growing.
And really, that’s part of the bigger conundrum too.
Using AI at all is still a gray area for a lot of people. Some see it as cheating. Others call it collaboration. Some are wary of its influence. Others are building with it daily.
Sound familiar?
That tension—the uncertainty, the questions, the ethics of it all—is exactly what makes conundrums powerful. And by choosing to use AI and share that openly, I wasn’t just writing about ethical dilemmas—I was living one.
I asked myself:
Is this honest? Is it helpful? Does it reflect my values?
Would I want my students to do the same?
That’s the kind of thinking I want to model.
And that’s exactly the kind of learning we’re making space for at PivotED.
🧩 Final Thoughts
If nothing else, give this series of conundrum videos a looksy.
They’re short.
They’re smart.
And they’ll definitely make you go 🤔.