Thinking Beyond The Curriculum
Read More“I have long been inspired by the teaching philosophies of bell hooks, and a core element to her ideas about both teaching to transgress and teaching community, is to “genuinely value everyone’s presence” in the classroom. to “have interest in one another, in hearing one another’s voices, in recognising one another’s presence.““
Read More“Had I done something wrong by choosing sense and reason over unwavering support for the team?“
Read More“#PhilosophyMatters to students because it’s a unique space in the school curriculum where they’re taught to take everything they think they know and see if this received wisdom can stand up to philosophical scrutiny. Including the wisdom they receive in the philosophy classroom itself. In a world where we are increasingly bombarded with truth-claims, and information and misinformation is coming at us without any distinction between the two, when students have the tools to be able to analyse claims for their validity, it’s a vital intellectual self-defence that we should want all young people to have. And that is why #PhilosophyMatters.“
Read More“Part of my answer of why #PhilosophyMatters to students is that Philosophy is a unique space on the school curriculum where students are able to take received wisdom - including the wisdom they learn in the Philosophy classroom - and see if it stands up to philosophical scrutiny. So I thought it would be worth doing exactly that with the claim that #PhilosophyMatters and asking - does it?“
Read More“We teachers are complicit in any increased “dumbness” our culture is showing because we are often the ones dumbing things down for the next generation.“
Read More“This month marks the 50th anniversary of long-running (fifty years!) American sketch comedy TV show, Saturday Night Live. To celebrate, I thought it worth taking a look at the philosophical life lessons its fifty year success story can teach us.“
Read More“humanity routinely ignores the evidence of their eyes to make the common, everyday, standard oppressions and violences that are going on to people other than themselves ‘inconceivable’“
Read More“I wonder if the economics of medicine are too-often overlooked, even in countries with a decent free public healthcare system. I wonder how many people have lived or died because of investigations presenting as questions of epistemology - how can we possibly know what is going on in this body? - which are actually questions of finance - can we justify the expenditure it would take to find out?“
Read More“Trump is a symptom, not the sickness itself. There are other possible worlds where his overt peddling of misinformation and self-evident unfitness for office were immediate disqualifiers for an informed voting public. Where his allusions to Nazism and explicit fascistic authoritarianism were repulsive to us instead of something which won him votes. Where the intention disrupting of democratic institutions and surrounding himself with an oligarchy of tech billionaires rang alarm bells instead of raised cheers of support. That we do not live in one of those worlds should be the thing we ask the most questions about.“
Read More“Manson always was a symptom and not a cause of the social sickness he personified. Watching the documentary this week simply reminded me that the world which created him continues to fail to confront the true causes of its sickness, and points the finger at individuals we can demonise instead of looking in the mirror and asking why such demons continue to exist.“
Read More“why do I get news headlines sent to my phone?“
Read More“I pointed out that while their ‘evidence’ certainly seemed to point to the idea that none of them were being given gifts from Santa - at least not on the Christmases in question - it did not completely remove the possibility that Santa Claus might still exist…“
Read More“And now normal is what happens when we live so long in denial about our generational wounds that they fester and metastasise into something ugly and, possibly, untreatable.”
Read More“one could even call it a ‘reasonable adjustment’ to ensure one’s universal ability to end one’s own life is not unfairly denied to people just because of a physical disability (a protected characteristic under UK law). Not allowing assisted suicide is discriminatory to those of us without the physical capability for killing ourselves.“
Read More“I have been thinking about arguments. And the more I do, the more I think they don’t actually convince anyone of anything.“
Read More“Either I’d got Trump wrong, or I’d got the morality of my fellow citizens wrong? And neither explanation was particularly comforting.“
Read More“the conversation around VAT on independent schools being a conversation purely based around money, costs and affordability, instead of it being a serious public conversation around education and what a good education should look like is a conversation that fails to address what really ails the current state school system and what the advantages of going to, or working in, the independent sector actually are. “
Read More“Sometimes, when given a completely free choice, to choose any other way but one can be so self-sabotaging that there really is no choice at all. The 2024 US election is one such case. Whoever wins, we lose, but if Trump wins, what we lose is so significant we may never be able to win again.“
Band Praxis - Punk and the Anarchist Squint by DaN McKee (taken from The Anarchism and Punk Book Project’s Book 2 - DIY or Die: Do it Yourself, Do it Together & Punk Anarchism)
Read MoreRead More"Trump is undoubtedly a monster. Trump is a massive threat to the kind of democracy that all Americans should hold dear. But he is using the playbook of professional wrestling to win the White House once again and is therefore a monster we are responsible for keeping alive so long as we continue to not take the influence of professional wrestling on politics seriously."