The Epistemic Insight team have recently written a new workshop for KS4 teachers, entitled ‘Saviour Siblings’. In this workshop, students critically examine the scholarly disciplines that may be relevant to answer the question ‘Should Science be used to create Saviour Siblings?’
This workshop was delivered to Year 9, 10 and 11 students in December last year, at a very successful KS4 day held at Canterbury Christchurch University. Both the students and their teachers enjoyed the workshop, although there were lots of commons about ‘brains hurting’ as we asked them to think so deeply!
The writers of this workshop, (Professor Berry Billingsley, Katie Clemmey and Claire Parkin) were very aware of the sensitive nature of this workshop. Therefore it is made clear to the pupils that the intention of the session is not to pass judgement in any way on families who may have chosen to have a ‘saviour sibling’ but instead to consider which disciplines you may look at when pondering the questions that arise from this issue. The workshop looks at the powers and limitations of science but also the power and limitations of other disciplines, such as history and theology. This highlights to the pupils the need to consider several disciplines when investigating ‘Big Questions’ in order to come to as informed a position as possible.
The pupils also investigate questions which are metaphysically sensitive during the workshop – which we tell them to go home and tell their parents/carers in order to impress them!
Featured image via Juliane Liebermann at Unsplash