Promoting Bioethical Literacy in Primary Education: The European Reality and the Case of Greece

Abstract

The development of biotechnology during the last decades brings societies and policymakers a fresh view on how to communicate and manage the biotechnological knowledge and ethical aspects that arise, concurrently. During the era of biotechnological accomplishments and globalization, a new field of ethics arises, the field of Bioethics. It aims to balance between the dangers that emerge because of the implementation of biotechnological accomplishments on human life and their benefits. With the promotion of Bioethics education, everyone has to realize his personality, his mentality, his citizenship, and his connection to others. Many educational institutes worldwide embody bioethical courses for their students and an adequate number of curricula have been created for this purpose. Researchers and educators accord with the necessity of public ethical and bioethical literacy already from elementary school. At the same time in many seminars organized by the Committees on Bioethics, the appropriateness of teaching Bioethics primarily is presented and organizations worldwide support the introduction of Bioethics courses in the curricula. The majority of European countries have incorporated ethics and bioethics courses into their curricula for Primary Education. Greece amongst other countries is the exception to that rule. The goal of this dissertation is to convince the local education policymakers about the importance of Bioethics education so to include ethics and bioethics courses in the Greek educational system, in all grades and especially in elementary school, based on the necessity for the creation of educated future citizens for the country and the world.