45b. THE COVID-SECURE CLASSROOM IS A CLASSROOM UNFIT FOR PURPOSE - Further analysis in light of the DfE announcement

May 12, 2020 by DaN McKee in COVID19, Education, Philosophy Unleashed, Philosophy, Politics, School, Work

“To re-open schools before it is safe to do so is to mistake the purpose of schools and ignore how fundamentally transformed a “Covid-secure” school will be from the schools we knew before. With no obvious benefit for returning to the socially distanced classroom before it is safe to do so, we must, as both teaching professionals and as a wider society, ask the question of what we are trying to achieve with the push to reopen our schools? “

45a. THERE IS NO ARGUMENT FOR RE-OPENING UK SCHOOLS YET - To Warrant Change, Something Significant Needs To Have Changed

May 11, 2020 by DaN McKee in COVID19, Data, Economics, Education, Epistemology, Ethics, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, Work

“When the stakes are this high (life and death) we need to be able to separate nostalgia and sentiment for what is sensible and what is necessary. “

43. CAPITALISM IS NOT BETTER, JUST EASIER - A Student Considers The Lazy Appeal of a Flawed Economic System

May 04, 2020 by DaN McKee in Economics, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, Student Writing

“This is the fundamental foundation of capitalism. It is not the ‘freedom’ of the (not so free) free market or the liberality you get from a government or the ethical right to keep what is yours – it is the simplicity in caring for oneself. “

42. LIFE DURING LOCKE-DOWN - Do We Remain Free While Trapped Inside?

April 27, 2020 by DaN McKee in COVID19, Free, Meaning, Movies, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, Work

“I feel strangely trapped in my own home, and yet my life this last month looks little different to the life I lived before lockdown.”

41. TO CLAP OR TO CRY FOR CARERS? - On The Importance of Being Able To Hold Two Ideas In Our Heads At Once

April 24, 2020 by DaN McKee in Anarchism, COVID19, Charity, Culture, Economics, Ethics, Meaning, Obligation, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics

“By clapping, was I supporting the myth, the propaganda, and the lies which have put so many unnecessarily in harm’s way during this crisis? From the unprotected nurse to their dying patient, infected because they couldn’t stay home for fear of losing their job - each a victim not of Covid-19, but of our political system?”

39. ANARCHISM AND COVID-19 - Does the need for government intervention undermine the anarchist argument?

March 30, 2020 by DaN McKee in COVID19, Culture, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, Anarchism

“Supporting the lockdown does not, therefore, undermine the anarchist argument, but, to the contrary, makes it even clearer how dangerous, infantilising, and corrupting such state-systems can be. “

38. QUESTIONS FOR THE END OF THE WORLD - Some Concerns and Queries As COVID-19 Continues To Spread

March 23, 2020 by DaN McKee in Work, School, Politics, Philosophy Unleashed, Philosophy, Obligation, Mental Health, History, Ethics, Epistemology, Education, Culture, COVID19

“the world has changed. And here are the questions arising to me as it does…”

37. ELEMENTARY LOGIC - Why UK Schools Must Close Now

March 17, 2020 by DaN McKee in Education, Ethics, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, School, Work, COVID19

“In the name of public health, but also sense and logic, we must close all UK schools now.”

36. COVID-19 AND PHILOSOPHY: Thinking Clearly In Times of Uncertainty

March 15, 2020 by DaN McKee in Culture, Death, Education, Ethics, Obligation, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, School, Work, COVID19

“Doing the right thing only becomes hard when we have constructed a world which puts embedded obstacles in the way of doing so.”

35. OUGHT WE FEAR A 'CANCEL CULTURE'? - Disentangling Fear From Fact

March 09, 2020 by DaN McKee in Improv, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, Pop Culture, Culture, Censorship, Free Speech

“The conservative narrative is the dominant cultural assumption of our daily news reporting and the framework within which even liberal media organisations must operate for their stories to make sense to audiences inducted into the norms of that predominant discourse. That this discourse - manufactured and disseminated by a whole industry of conservative think tanks, publishers, and strategists who have worked explicitly and intentionally to make it the dominant discourse since at least the 1970s - is also the view of the ruling political parties within the two specific countries - the UK and America - where worry has arisen about the silencing of conservatives, should be reason alone to be suspicious of the claim that such views are being censored.”

33. NO TO CHILDREN, YES TO THE PLANET - Should We Subscribe To Ecological Anti-Natalist Views?

February 24, 2020 by DaN McKee in Animal Rights, Death, Economics, Environment, Ethics, Obligation, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, Religion, Student Writing, Vegetarianism

“Ecological anti-natalism is the position that procreation leads to more destruction of our planet and therefore more suffering so it is morally bad, therefore we should abstain from it. I shall argue why we should take this view into account.”

29. THE VALUE AND LIMITS OF DEMANDING SILENCE - On Remembering Power’s Roots and Reasons in the Classroom

January 20, 2020 by DaN McKee in Education, Ethics, Free, Militarisation, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, School, Work

“often neither students or teachers remember the justificatory roots for the powers, privileges and obligations which interplay within the classroom, and that this lack of awareness may well be the source of much student/teacher conflict at school.”

28. WHO ARE THESE CHARACTERS? - Questioning Using Teachers to Teach Our Children “Character”.

January 13, 2020 by DaN McKee in Education, Ethics, Identity, Philosophy Unleashed, Philosophy, Politics, School, Work

“are those of us in society who chose to be teachers within the current education system actually demonstrating good enough character to be suitable character “role models” for the next generation?”

24. BREAKING THE CODE OF POLITICAL SILENCE - On Why Teachers Ought To Share Their Political Beliefs With Their Students

December 02, 2019 by DaN McKee in Education, Ethics, Philosophy Unleashed, Philosophy, Politics, School, Work

“A teacher therefore has a duty to model democratic engagement to their students. A teacher not discussing an upcoming election or not having an opinion on the current political situation sends a negative message to their students that political engagement is not important.”

23. THE NOT-SO GREAT DEBATE - On The Need For Intellectual Self-Defence In An Age of Stupid

November 25, 2019 by DaN McKee in Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, Epistemology

“There is a truth out there, beneath the soundbites and clickbait. There are actual facts about what our politicians have done and what they are planning to do and it is our duty as citizens, whoever we are voting for, to make sure our vote is as fully informed as is possible. A television debate will never give us that. They are nothing more than a PR stunt. Another stop on the campaign trail. A mechanism for repeating buzzwords and talking points. To treat them as anything more than that is to abdicate our democratic responsibilities and leave ourselves open for manipulation and propaganda.”

21. WHAT MUST WE REMEMBER? - On The Worth of Remembrance Day

November 10, 2019 by DaN McKee in Ethics, Philosophy Unleashed, Philosophy, Politics, School, War, Militarisation

“as long as we have had Remembrance Day and worn our red poppies, we have continued to have wars. If we truly want to honour those whose lives were lost saving the lives of others we ought to put every effort we can into ensuring the sorts of wars which cost them their lives are never fought again.”

19. ON THE NEED FOR A SECOND REFERENDUM - Why I Joined The People’s March

October 19, 2019 by DaN McKee in Ethics, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics

“The reason we see lifetime terms as undemocratic is because it is built into the fabric of a democracy that one vote is not enough. The mood of the nation is checked every four or five years for them to reconfirm their last electoral decision, or change their minds about the direction they want their country to go in. There seems no good reason to me why that same principle does not apply for something as significant as Brexit.”

12. ON WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A "TRAITOR" - A Student Struggles With Forced Obligation To A Country

September 02, 2019 by DaN McKee in Identity, Immigration, Obligation, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, Pop Culture, Student Writing

“I didn’t actually have a choice as to whether I wanted to accept these benefits or not. Some of these benefits, such as free healthcare, I agreed to as a baby before I had even developed long-term memory because if didn’t, I literally would’ve died. So I only really “chose” the United Kingdom in the same way someone with a gun pointed at them “chooses” to hand over their wallet. In other words, it isn’t really a choice. And if I didn’t choose to obey these rules, who can really call me a traitor?”

11. MONARCHY IN THE UK - Is This What Democracy Looks Like?

July 18, 2019 by DaN McKee in Philosophy Unleashed, Philosophy, Politics

“Either the monarch is sovereign or the people are. It cannot be both.”

7. YOU THINK YOU KNOW ME? - Re-evaluating Representation & Identity Politics

June 17, 2019 by DaN McKee in Identity, Epistemology, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, Qualia, Mind

“If each of our experiences of the world are isolated within a personal island of subjective qualia, then no two people can know for sure whether they experience the world in the same way. What this means for identity politics, is that the underlying notion that Muslims can talk about Islamophobia, the LGBT community about homophobia, non-white ethnic groups about racism, and women about sexism (etc.) with an authority that is lacking from a “non-member” of each group falls apart. Every woman will experience living as a woman in a patriarchal world uniquely; every person who has been discriminated against because of their race, sexuality or religion has felt that hurt without peer.”