Year 12 Ethics – Area of Study 1 – SAC

Outcome 1: On completion of this unit the student should be able to explain the
variety of influences on ethical decision-making and moral judgment in societies
where multiple worldviews coexist.

This SAC is comprised of TWO sections:

Section 1 Multiple Choice 10 marks
Section 2 Glossary of Terms 10 marks
Section 3 Extended Responses and Scenario 20 marks
TOTAL MARKS 40 marks

Students must complete all sections of this SAC, in the spaces provided in this
booklet. You have up to 60 minutes to fully complete this SAC.

Instructions:
● All written responses must be in English
● All written responses must be in blue or black pen
Permitted in the SAC:
● Students are permitted to bring into the SAC room: pens, pencils, highlighters
● Students are NOT permitted to bring into the SAC room: laptop, mobile phones and/or any
other
unauthorised electronic devices, textbooks, workbooks, blank paper and/or a dictionary
Materials supplied:
● Question and answer book
● Additional space is available at the end of the booklet if you need extra paper to complete an
answer

Student name: ________________________________________________

Teacher name: ________________________________________________

Section 1: Multiple Choice - 10 x 1 = 10 marks
Please read the following multiple-choice questions and write the letter of the correct
answer in the right-hand box.

1. Christian love (agape) is:

a. Always sexual
b. Acting in a compassionate and just way towards everyone
c. Emotional love
d. One of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit
2. A utilitarian ethicist is one who:
a. Believes life is pointless, so no decision has any meaning
b. Makes decisions out of love and respect for others
c. Bases decisions on the greatest good for the greatest
number
d. Believes that there are good and bad responses to all issues
3. According to the Catholic faith, conscience is:
a. How the human intellect makes judgments about right and
wrong
b. A motive for action
c. Values learnt in the family and culture
d. The ability to dispassionately judge our own actions
4. A person who takes the relativist approach to ethical thinking is
someone who:
a. Has an innate sense of what is right and wrong
b. Believes that life has no meaning
c. Argues culture plays an important role in determining what is
right and wrong
d. Believes that there are good and bad responses to all issues
5. Which of the following could be regarded as an authority in
Catholic ethical thinking?
a. Rabbis and the Torah
b. The Ten Commandments
c. The Koran
d. A country’s laws and regulations
6. Which two of the following form part of a decision-making
process for an ethical issue?
a. Make a decision and live with the consequences
b. Think about it later and think of something else
c. Talk to someone and act on your intuition
d. Evaluate options in terms of core values and consider
relevant authorities

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7. Catholic conscience can be informed by:
a. Natural law
b. A Nihilist approach to ethical thinking
c. Media opinion
d. Popular opinion
8. Kohlberg’s theory of moral development:
a. Is nothing but wishful thinking
b. Suggests that all human beings can be trained to be good
c. Can be divided into six levels
d. Says that once you get to one level you do not go backwards
9. People’s morals are influenced by:
a. Their family
b. The ideas and values of friends
c. Their faith
d. All of the above
10. A pluralist society is one which is:
a. Tolerant of up to 3 different ways of thinking
b. Multi-cultural and multi-faith
c. Multi-faith within one culture
d. Multi-cultural and Christian

Multiple Choice Total Marks: / 10

End of Section 1

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 Section 2: Glossary of Terms - 10 x 1 mark = 10 marks
Please use the following 10 terms to complete the table below:

Ethical issues Ethics Morality

Nihilism Relativism Situation Ethics
Subjectivism Utilitarianism Natural Law
Individual Responsibility

The code of values a person holds about what is right or

wrong, good or bad behaviour. It is the basis on which we
respond to ethical issues.
An approach that reasons that what are right or wrong, good
or evil responses to an ethical issue can vary according to the
culture, context or circumstances in which it arises.
An approach that argues that love should be the basis for
responding to any ethical issue.
Each one of us faces choices about what is right or wrong in
every aspect of our lives and we have to make decisions and
take actions that reflect our values.
An approach that stresses the usefulness of an action for
benefitting the common good.
Personal, community or global issues that challenge us to
respond on the basis of what we regard to be right or wrong.
Our innate understanding of what is right and wrong that is
natural to human beings.
An approach that holds that life has no meaning and
therefore no right or wrong can be associated with any
actions.
Where an individual’s perception of right or wrong
determines the morality of the action.
The art of thinking about what are the right and wrong, good
or bad responses to personal, community or global issues.

Glossary of Terms Total Marks: / 10

End of Section 2
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Section 3 – Extended Responses and Scenarios
1. Using your knowledge of Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, choose any two
stages, NAME each, and EXPLAIN each by giving an EXAMPLE of how a person might
make decisions by operating at that level. (1 + 1 + 1 x 2 = 6 marks)
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2. The Catholic Church speaks of conscience as a ‘law written by God’ in the human
heart, and says that the conscience must be developed and informed. The following
table outlines six means by which this can be done.

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 Choose two of these and follow the cues to explain each of them in more detail.
2 + 2 x 2 = 8 marks

a. One way a Catholic’s conscience can be informed is:

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What this means in more detail is: (2 marks)
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An example of how this could be applied to an ethical issue is: (2 marks)

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b. Another way a Catholic’s conscience can be informed is:

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What this means in more detail is: (2 marks)
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An example of how this could be applied to an ethical issue is: (2 marks)

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 3. Please read the following scenarios and then CHOOSE ONE to use to complete the
questions that follow:

OPTION 1
Child’s spouse visa bid
By Keith Moor, Herald Sun (abridged)
A Lebanese man who married his 12-year old, Australian-born, cousin and fathered two
children with her before she was 16 could be allowed into Australia.
Walid Khodr began his relationship with his child bride, Abeir, when she was 9 and he was
almost 19. The couple married in 2005 in Lebanon, and Ms Khodr moved back to her home
in Victoria in 2013, bringing her children with her. The couple’s 4 children are all Australian
citizens.
An application by Mr Khodr for an Australian visa so he could join his family her was rejected
in 2019 by the then immigration minister, David Coleman. Mr Khodr appealed this decision
and Federal Court Justice Bromberg has ordered the current Immigration Minister Alex
Hawke to redetermine Mr Khodr’s bid to move to Victoria to live with his family.
In his ruling, Justice Bromberg said that the 2005 marriage of Mr and Mrs Khodr in Lebanon
– when he was 21 and she was 12 – was ‘lawful under Lebanese law’. It is illegal for a person
under 18 to marry in Australia, other that in exceptional circumstances.
When questioned by Immigration Department officials following his 2014 visa application,
Mr Khodr said if a daughter of his wanted to get married, ‘as long as she reached puberty
and it is 11, 12, 13, it is fine with me’.
In his 2019 decision to refuse to grant Mr Khodr a visa on the grounds he was not of good
character, Mr Coleman described Mr Khodr’s actions as ‘immoral and offensive’.
Mr Coleman said Mr Khodr was employed in Lebanon as a teacher of the Koran in a mosque.
Granting him a visa and seeing him in a similar job here ‘could provide him with a platform
to espouse his views regarding marriage and consummation of marriage with female
children, including those under the age of 16’, the minister said. He feared Mr Khodr could
encourage others to do the same.
However, in his ruling last week, Justice Bromberg said the minister was wrong to treat Mr
Khodr’s beliefs as ‘present general conduct’. He ordered that Mr Khodr’s case be remitted to
the current Immigration Minister ‘for the redetermination of the applicant’s application for
a visa’.

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OPTION 2

Seriously, Just Wear Your Mask

This is not complicated, folks.

By Jesse Wegman
July 2, 2020

Wear a mask.

Seriously, just wear one. Almost any mask will do, really. N95, surgical, spandex, homespun
cotton. For people who aren’t front-line health care workers, what matters is whatever you
can get your hands on that fits over your nose and mouth.

As the nation plunges for a second time into the depths of this brutal pandemic, officials
worry we’ll soon have as many as 100,000 new cases every day. Summer won’t save us.
Neither will bluster or bleach.

It’s easy to want to give up, but it would be wrong. Wearing a mask is not only simple and
cheap, it’s also proved to be effective in slowing the virus’s spread. It will protect the health
and even save the lives of your loved ones, your neighbours and people you don’t know.

This isn’t hard. If the lower half of your face is not covered when you go out in public, stop
searching for excuses and go mask up.

Think about it as good hygiene and common courtesy. Would you sneeze into your hand
and then not wipe it off before shaking the hand of person standing next to you? Of course
not. So why wouldn’t you wear a mask?

Or think about it as the best path to economic recovery. If all Americans were required to
wear masks in public, we could reduce the number of daily cases to a level that would
otherwise require lockdowns that would slash nearly 5 percent, or $1 trillion, from the
nation’s gross domestic product, according to an analysis released this week by Goldman
Sachs.

Or, if you like, think about it as a gesture of patriotism as we mark a stark and sombre
Independence Day.

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But please, just don’t think about it as so many Republicans do. “Mask-wearing has become
a totem, a secular religious symbol,” Alex Castellanos, a long-time Republican strategist, told
The Washington Post. “Christians wear crosses, Muslims wear a hijab, and members of the
Church of Secular Science bow to the Gods of Data by wearing a mask as their symbol,
demonstrating that they are the elite; smarter, more rational, and morally superior to
everyone else.”

This is a bizarre way to talk about people who are guided by facts, science and reason. It’s
not about making a political point or asserting moral superiority; it’s about saving lives and
protecting one another — which should be a basic element of citizenship in any democracy.

And yet, like so many seemingly non-political topics, donning a mask has become
partisanized to the point that people are brawling in supermarkets over their right to infect
others. “It’s a free country; I can do what I want” sounds charming when it comes from a
child. It can be far worse when it is shouted from the mouth of a possibly infected adult. It’s
a strange sort of freedom that includes exposing other people to a potentially deadly virus.
What’s to resist about showing respect to your fellow Americans? Why turn a
straightforward public health issue into a political one? The virus doesn’t care whether
you’re a Republican or a Democrat. It ravaged blue states in the spring, and now it’s
ploughing through red ones. All it cares about is finding open mouths and nostrils.

The way to deal with the pandemic’s daily assault on America today is to do the things
regular people can do with little to no effort: Wash hands regularly, practice social
distancing and wear a mask. On this July 4 weekend, consider it the least you can do for
your country.

This is an abbreviated version of the original article which was sourced online at
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/opinion/coronavirus-masks.html on 15/3/21.

Questions to complete: 2 x 3 = 6 marks

 Please note, your responses here will not necessarily reflect YOUR own point of view!
In order to show you’ve engaged with the different ethical approaches, you are
required to answer them using the specific approach that’s identified in the question.

Please identify the article you’ll be referring to in your answers: OPTION 1 or OPTION 2:

The questions are on the next page.

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 a. Referring to the scenario, how would a person using MORAL RELATIVISM respond to
this scenario? Justify your answer. (3 marks)
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b. Referring to the scenario, how would a person using a UTILITARIAN approach

respond to this scenario? Justify your answer. (3 marks)
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END OF SAC QUESTIONS

EXTRA SPACE – Please indicate which question /s you are continuing here:

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