Home/Guidance material for university and general education teachers/Bioethics in Islam: dilemmas, perspectives, questions/Exercises/Exercise 1: Yes or No?

Exercise 1: Yes or No?

Instruction for teachers

  • Duration: 25 min
  • The aim of the exercise: verification of how individual experiences influence choices, finding material, teaching respectful discourse.
  • Materials: large cards, pens, list with questions
  • Methods: teamwork, individual work, discussion,

Before the class or in the classroom with students, the teacher prepares large sheets of paper with statements “Yes”, “No”, “Rather yes”, “Rather no”, “I don’t know” (Template 12.1) and places them in different parts of the classroom. Subsequently, the teacher asks the first question (mentioned above) and students move to the part of the classroom where the card that reflects their opinion is located. They may prepare a brief explanation for their choice. Then the teacher asks a second question and students may change their location. This question is followed up by one more and students are allowed to change their positions again. Finally, the group discusses why they changed places and what influenced different views.

 

Questions:

  1. Do you support genetic engineering?
  2. Do you think that genetic engineering should be used to save human lives?
  3. You are pregnant. You are from a family where male children are born sick and die within a couple of years, suffering from progressive muscular atrophy (all their muscles will gradually disappear). This genetic disease progresses only in boys. All women in the family have the gene and pass it on to their offspring. Every girl will carry the gene but will not be affected by the disease. Every boy will get the disease and die quickly suffering. Would you use genetic engineering to remove only this gene to have a healthy son or daughter?

 

As the answers may wary, therefore it is important to pay attention to what motivates a given response. The teacher’s role is to help students realise that the answers given are the result of a particular worldview constructed on the basis of different elements such as religious or cultural affiliation. It is useful to ask students questions about motivation during the exercise in order to help them understand different answers, even if they disagree with them.