Exterminate bunnies? Kill whales? Big questions for ethical children

This article was published in The Sydney Morning Herald 7 December 2009

Just how ethical is it, in the mind of the average primary school student, to hunt elephants for their tusks?

What about exterminating rabbits, racing horses or testing cosmetics on animals, for that matter?

Students will wrestle with these and similar dilemmas as part of ethics classes to be offered as an alternative to special religious education studies in NSW.

As a consequence, the students will unwittingly encounter the higher thoughts of philosophers such as John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant, whose works underpin the classroom exercise.