Building Bridges for Dialogue: A Multi-Faceted Approach to Deliberative Moral and Civic Education for All

We outline a vision for NHSEBBridge—a novel strategy for moral and civic education for implementation with students in grades 9-12. NHSEBBridge operates as an extension of the award-winning National High School Ethics Bowl program. In this paper, we focus on the challenges involved with extending such programming to students from underserved schools and communities who are often left out. In our own work, this has focused on schools in the rural American South. We find that the unique challenges faced by schools we work with create similarly unique opportunities for a deliberative brand of educational programming to thrive. Ultimately, we propose NHSEBBridge as a model for educators at the collegiate and high school levels to expand access to philosophy programs which focus on building students’ deliberative skills.