Stress-Testing Ethics: With Prospective Educators at the Buchenwald Memorial

The following teaching unit has been designed for prospective educators in their first or second year of vocational school. It focuses on the use of utilitarianism and deontology to assess a right to lie and a duty to disobey. The aim is to expose the students to a cognitive conflict. This consists in the fact that, depending on which example is considered, sometimes Kantian deontology and sometimes utilitarianism appear counterintuitive. To illustrate the explosive nature of the questions, the story of an escape from the Buchenwald concentration camp is discussed.