From February to April of this year, I participated in the Oxford OPGDI Tutorial Programme with the support of the College. Under the tutelage of Dr Mackenzie Graham, I learnt a lot about basic ethics such as Meta-Ethics (Relativism and objectivism), Utilitarianism, Kantian Ethics and Virtue Ethics. In addition to these classic schools of ethics, the tutor discussed with us several cutting-edge issues, including but not limited to the ethics of “Genethics” and the ethics of “Vaccination”.There was no doubt that such a course is different from our usual courses. Through the course, not only did we learn more about what we were interested in, but we also learned more about ethical issues that we had not previously focused on.
What struck me was the tutor's discussion style of teaching. As a non-native English speaker, I was too shy to open up and discuss issues at the beginning of the course. But the tutor did not ignore me, he pushed me to think about the questions and to speak up by asking questions. He rarely told us what the standard answer to a particular ethics question was, but expected us to give our distinctive views. This made me feel that ethics was interesting.
At the end of the course, I completed two end-of-programme papers. It was the first time I wrote an academic paper in English, which to some extent enabled me to hone my English writing skills. The themes of both papers related to issues I have thought about in class. The title of one is To Defend or Refute: A Comparative Study of Ethical Relativists' and Non-Relativists' Views on Cannibalism, and the other is The Veil of Ignorance: Prerequisite for Establishing an Ideal Theory of Justice.
I think this project has brought me a lot of progress and I am very grateful to the college for this great opportunity.
