Ethics Education playing cards

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:

• 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.