Ethics Education playing cards

Published March 17, 2023 • Updated March 17, 2023

Ethics Education playing cards produced by the Centre for Military Ethics at King’s College London, 2016.

Universities are not generally known as producers of playing cards, but this interesting pack entitled Ethics Education Playing Cards was produced by the Centre for Military Ethics at King’s College London in 2016 and represents a serious attempt to raise ethical awareness and an appreciation of human rights as a significant component of the education of military service personnel wherever they may serve. The idea is to use the Ethics Education Playing Cards as a vehicle for raising ethical awareness. Fifty-two questions from across the broad area of military ethics have been carefully developed, based on professional military ethics education curricula. Questions are generally open-ended and encourage people to think about key issues that may arise in a military setting. For example:

Ethics Education playing cards produced by the Centre for Military Ethics at King’s College London, 2016 (2nd edition)

Should a soldier challenge an order if they consider it to be illegal?
Can soldiers refuse to serve if they disagree with their government’s decisions?

On the reverse of each card is a QR web link to the King’s Centre for Military Ethics webpages where there are additional prompts, questions and information for each question, along with reading and articles.

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NOTE: The King’s Centre for Military Ethics was established in 2015, to conduct research into the best ways of delivering effective professional military ethics education, and to develop material and tools to support those seeking to do it.

Above: Ethics Education playing cards produced by the Centre for Military Ethics at King’s College London, 2016 (2nd edition).

This review first appeared, without illustrations, in EPCS Newsletter, issue 124, Feb 2019, page 6.

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By Peter Burnett

United Kingdom • Member since July 27, 2022

I graduated in Russian and East European Studies from Birmingham University in 1969. It was as an undergraduate in Moscow in 1968 that I stumbled upon my first 3 packs of “unusual” playing cards which fired my curiosity and thence my life-long interest. I began researching and collecting cards in the early 1970s, since when I’ve acquired over 3,330 packs of non-standard cards, mainly from North America, UK and Western Europe, and of course from Russia and the former communist countries.

• Russian Playing Cards

Following my retirement from the Bodleian Library in Dec. 2007 I took up a new role as Head of Library Development at the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) to support library development in low-income countries. This work necessitated regular training visits to many sub-Saharan African countries and also further afield, to Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh – all of which provided rich opportunities to further expand my playing card collection.

Since 2019 I’ve been working part-time in the Bodleian Library where I’ve been cataloguing the bequest of the late Donald Welsh, founder of the English Playing Card Society.