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28/03/24

📚What better way to end a FANTASTIC spring term than with MORE NEW BOOKS in the HGABR Library! Thank you to all our generous parents and students who have donated. 📚Wishing our whole HGABR community a brilliant Easter break pic.twitter.com/vaCupQFlIZ

28/03/24

Alongside other students, Year 10 students took part in an "inspiring advocacy" workshop led by the learning about Careers in Law, developing their advocacy skills by taking part in a mock trial with professional Barristers pic.twitter.com/SiiNhisKHk

28/03/24

JOB ALERT👀👀👀VP Role at - 80th highest performing school in the country- Outstanding in all areas- Part of the amazing - Brilliant staff culture DM me if you would like to chat or come in for a tour. https://t.co/0A6wvNBAX9 pic.twitter.com/KjGYaRtOnr

27/03/24

Today we welcomed the awesome to the academy to create podcasts. Year 8 students applied for the opportunity to create audio content about topics and issues that matter to them, expertly guided by David & Ieshah. Thank you for this opportunity! pic.twitter.com/zPuqLGMzm3

25/03/24

Starting our final week of term with an inspirational year 11 assembly from our Head Girl team Mishka, Marina and Taija about their sixth form experience - and the power of friendship and support to get you through a challenging two years pic.twitter.com/5oHEwfn1il

23/03/24

First session. One for you pic.twitter.com/sDI00oPf3J

23/03/24

Loving learning about the world of secondary with

23/03/24

Really looking forward to attending this today. There are talks from some hugely inspiring and successful educational leaders. will also be doing a talk. https://t.co/qdjZKbWi3q

22/03/24

900 of our students attended our Bromley Ambition Careers Fair today and networked with over 50 professionals, alumni, universities and colleges. Such a buzz of aspiration around the school - thank you so much for everyone’s time pic.twitter.com/9ub0lUUhrC

22/03/24

We have welcomed back alumni, professionals, apprenticeship providers and sixth form colleges to our annual careers fair today and year 8-13 students are enjoying networking, learning and planning their futures. Thank you so much for all our volunteers 👩🏾‍💼🧑🏽‍💼👩‍🏭👩🏽‍🔧👷🏻‍♀️👩🏾‍🚒👩‍🔬👩🏾‍⚖️🧑🏾‍⚕️ pic.twitter.com/Ap1Z8ryNAg

22/03/24

Bromley Youth Activities still have spaces on this years Spring Holiday Activites and Food Programme for young people aged 8 years and over who are in receipt of free school meals.Please follow the link or the QR code and make your booking… pic.twitter.com/RBPsAbk0jL

21/03/24

Our Student Commission had the most wonderful day! Thank you for this fantastic opportunity for our students https://t.co/Th7DF6x3XO

21/03/24

The HGABR Student Commission are representing the academy annual youth conference today! First task of the day is discussion and designing a 'perfect Bromley' pic.twitter.com/2ddSywgQT3

20/03/24

Our Year 12 Biologists are on a 2 day residential at Juniper Hall! The students are sampling the ecosystems and collecting data to conduct statistical tests, all contributing to the practical element of A Level Biology pic.twitter.com/Xspn5KOv3O

20/03/24

An incredibly exciting opportunity for experienced & established leaders to join one of the highest performing schools in the country.Contact us if you would like to see us in action and discuss your next move https://t.co/i2Syx1Uauz

19/03/24

Our Year 12 biologists are having a fantastic time at Juniper Hall! The students are sampling the ecosystems & collecting data to conduct statistical tests pic.twitter.com/M3FJV1UhHo

18/03/24

📚 A sunny Monday at HGABR today and how exciting that we have TWENTY-FIVE NEW BOOKS in the library! A brilliant new selection from coding to thrillers. The library is always changing. Discover the adventure within 📚 pic.twitter.com/MyyJHExGoS

16/03/24

📚Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio. – Hamlet isn’t the only one who gets philosophical about skulls. Here at the HGABR library, we are curious about biology. Grab a book and examine the science exhibits. pic.twitter.com/giAzQPsjn7

15/03/24

🥇📚 We have a winner! On World Book Day we held a school wide one-day comic competition. Sidra won with her amazing entry about a techno-ghost who haunted you through your phone.... 📚🥇#allcanwewill pic.twitter.com/dfpZ1kj25v

15/03/24

Its been a busy week at HGABR! Our experience students had an inspiring trip to on Wednesday pic.twitter.com/uQZLs2bT5C

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Posted on May 27th 2018

Academic Corner - What is the right thing to do?

This was the challenging and worthy subject of a recent Academic Lecture. You have £30; should you buy something for yourself or spend it on a friend? You’ve forgotten to buy your mum a birthday card; do you admit you don’t care enough about her to remember or lie and say it got lost in the post?

For centuries philosophers have tried to come up with water-tight, fail-safe equations to apply to any situation you might find yourself in and establish what the ‘right’ thing to do is. In order to find answers to these tricky scenarios we considered two of the most famous ethical theories: utilitarianism and rule-based theories.

Utilitarianism argues that an action is right if it produces the highest utility (utility being the overall balance of pleasure and pain produced by an action). Bentham, the famous 18th Century ethicist, stated ‘Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do’.

In contrast to Utilitarians, Kant, another 18th Century philosopher, argued that acts are right or wrong in and of themselves, because of the kinds of acts they are and not simply because of their ends or consequences. Duty is not based on the pain or pleasure of the outcome, but on a set of immovable moral principles; the categorical imperative.

To illustrate what these theories mean in practice, we looked to the ‘Trolley Problem’. This notorious dilemma outlines the following situation:

         
   

There is a runaway trolley barrelling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options: (1) Do nothing, and the trolley kills the five people on the main track. (2) Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person. Which is the correct choice?

   
         

Both theories, rule-based and utilitarian, argue the best option is to pull the lever, thereby killing one person rather than 5. For the utilitarian this is because it’s a lesser evil to kill one person than five. For the rule-based ethicist, by pulling the lever you are acting in accordance with the principle that it is wrong to kill to avoid the deaths of five people. That this will result in the death of one person does not jeopardise your moral purity.

The dilemma becomes more interesting with the introduction of the ‘fat man’. In this problem, instead of a switch to divert the trolley there is a fat man on a bridge who, if you push off it, will stop the trolley, thereby saving the five people in its path but losing his own life in the process.

Interestingly men were more likely to be happy to sacrifice the fat man than women. People were also more likely to be happy to push the fat person off the bridge if they were male. So does this mean men always take a utilitarian, greatest-happiness approach when faced with moral dilemmas?

Finally, we considered Winston Churchill’s tactics during the Second World War. He, controversially, intentionally mislead German bomber planes during the Blitz so that they thought they were dropping their V-1 bombs on central London and Parliament, they were actually dropping them on areas of south London, considered to be less important, such as Bromley. He took a utilitarian approach – was it the right thing to do?

By Miss Heaton-Armstrong