Thinking Beyond The Curriculum
As the bloke from Slade says: ‘it’s Chriiiiiiiiiiiisssssssssstmas’ and that means I’m taking a long break to recharge after a big old year (new job, new book, new album) and will see you good people in the new year. Philosophy Unleashed will be back on Monday January 15th. Until then: enjoy the archives.
Read More“I’ve got to be honest folks…I am exhausted. More than that - I’m ill.“
Read More“When you speak to a classroom of teenagers about the possibility that playing violent video games might make them violent, you can immediately see the smirks and ready yourself for their knee-jerk defensiveness. After all, they are the smirks and defensiveness you, yourself, have given in response to the same suggestion your whole life…“
Read More“Sunak’s latest descriptive wish of a ‘safe’ Rwanda is just another modern day Gaunilo’s island: a stark example of the demonstrable failings of the ontological argument’s logic and, perhaps, of the UK Prime Minister’s troubling commitment to perpetuating damaging linguistic fantasies instead of solving actual problems in the real world.”
Read More“When things are so awful everywhere all the time, they lose their impact as being awful. Exploiting children to bring us cheap consumer goods is no longer an outrage, it’s just good business. Taking a home away from someone is just what happens. Another bomb is dropped on Gaza, we hit another year in the Russian invasion of Ukraine - this is just life for those people. We glaze over. We don’t think too much about it. We share some more funny memes and watch videos of people injuring themselves online.“
Read More“Asking for a cease-fire and ending a bloody conflict is the very definition of honouring those who died in the futility of war. Seeking peace instead of violence is the only worthwhile message of “never forget” when we remember those who needlessly lost their lives in wars or else we are forgetting.“
Read More“in a world where there is a very real epistemological threat coming from falling down online rabbit-holes into algorithm-guided conspiracies, we teachers are spending a lot of our own free-time guided by those very same dangerous algorithms as we hunt and click for hours looking for the perfect clips for our students. We then normalise this behaviour to our students“
We’re taking the week off to observe the important religious festival of Halloween. Lots of ghost stories will be read, horror movies watched, and episodes of The Uncanny TV show and podcast consumed. Also, it happens to be half term, when we usually take a brief break. If you’re missing your weekly Philosophy Unleashed fix between now and our return Monday November 6th, then enjoy our archives, or this recent interview with DaN McKee about philosophy, professional wrestling and anarchism.
Read More“Politics should not be a team sport. When it is, we’re doing it wrong. Usually because we’ve been manipulated by those who benefit from the division. It should never be Israel versus Palestine. My team versus yours. It should be ensuring our collectively assured mutual existence, always. Finding new ways to live together. Mutual aid. Walls and borders torn down. Sharing instead of seizing. Acknowledging wrongdoing and finding a way forward.”
Read More“if my utterly inconsequential change of capitalisation could not be easily noted and assimilated into the understanding of work colleagues, friends or family, then I could barely imagine what it would be for a far more important identity marker to be so similarly ignored“
Read More“One student was obviously unconvinced, and remained incredulous that I was advocating a world without punishment. The last question of the night saw them ask: “what would you want to happen then if someone right now, god forbid, ran to the stage and shot you dead? What would you want to happen to them?“
Read More“We realised that there was a big, and unjustifiable, leap that has been made to get from the starting assumption of needing a uniform to the end conclusion that children need to be dressing up everyday like businesspeople from a bygone age. That even if you wanted to justify the idea of enforcing a uniform, you needed to go a long way further from that to justify the bizarre uniforms most schools actually make their poor students wear.“
Read More“This week’s Philosophy Unleashed presents a very simple argument…“
Read More“I am interested in the question of whether the practical compromises economies necessarily demand on our actions are, in fact, immoral, and whether such immorality makes these economies not only unfit for purpose, but unfit to such a capacity that we actually have a moral duty to replace them?“
Read More“conspiracy thinking - the initial pathway that leads to conspiracy answers - trades on many of the motivating assumptions of philosophy as an activity: a desire to get to some underlying hidden truth beyond the superficial understanding of everyday life.“
As usual, Philosophy Unleashed will take a break during the school summer holidays because I believe very strongly in having a work/life balance. There’s also 160 past PU posts for you to read between now and September, so it’s not like I’m leaving you without any Philosophy Unleashed until then. However, I do feel slightly bad this year because, having now joined the ranks of the independent schools, my summer is starting about three weeks earlier than usual. Three weeks before summer begins in the state sector. So while I will remain on hiatus until September 11th because, like it or not, I am on holiday now, I do so leaving you with the ethical question of whether it is right that private schools get longer holidays than state schools? Is there any good reason that they do, or any compelling reason why they shouldn’t? Feel free to write me a PU post of your own about it, or send in a post about any philosophically interesting issue, HERE. As always: I’d love more student contributions to this website. It shouldn’t be all me!
If you do want more me though, and miss my writing, remember my new book, Anarchist Atheist Punk Rock Teacher is out now everywhere. Check out what my publisher has to say about it HERE.
I’ll see you all in September!
Read More“This week I’m doing something a little different on Philosophy Unleashed and releasing a lecture I gave last week to Year 12 students at a Sixth Form interdisciplinary conference on the theme of inequality…“
Read More“Like garbage washing up on the shore of a polluted sea, the Philosophy classroom is often where a lot of these deepities come to rest as students, impressed by their apparent wisdom, share them with the one person they think will be equally impressed: their Philosophy teacher. Often those students are soon disappointed, even angry, when that teacher is not impressed at all and, instead, pops the bubble of the illusion and exposes its emptiness.“
Read More“I had some interesting conversations with students this week about first principles. How, once you unpack the thing you are talking about you might realise that you no longer believe what you thought you did, or might even be having a different conversation entirely…“
Read More“Any time we approach an area of education with an attitude of it being too difficult or even impossible for someone to do something, we make it so through a process of self-fulfilling-prophecy.“