182. MUCH TOO QUIET ON SET - Stepping on Eggshells as we All Work Under Capitalism
Read More“This is not just Hollywood stuff. This is not just the entertainment business. This is all work under capitalism.“
164. CHALLENGING UNIFORM - The Unwarranted Assumption Behind What Children Wear at School
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.“
157. I WON'T MISS SIR - On Naming Our Teachers
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.“
ANARCHIST ATHEIST PUNK ROCK TEACHER
Is the memoir of DaN McKee's twelve years as a conflicted Philosophy and Religious Studies teacher out June 16th on Earth Island Books!
It not only contains some highlights from the last four years of Philosophy Unleashed, but shows how anarchist philosophy, atheism and a background in DIY punk rock has influenced and shaped DaN's approach to the classroom, as well as his approach to life.
As the blurb says: "'Anarchist Atheist Punk Rock Teacher' is more than just a memoir of some teacher you've never met. It is philosophy of education, of anarchism, of authenticity, and of life. Throw in some personal history, the deaths of both of his parents to deal with on top of juggling all the professional absurdities that come with the job (not to mention having to teach through a global pandemic), and you have all the earmarks of a biographical classic."
If you want to pre-order it directly from the publisher, do so here. If you want to pre-order it from Amazon, do so here. It's available in both paperback and as an eBook.
140. SABBATICAL - On The Importance of Taking a Break
Read More“It shouldn’t be surprising to realise that, for an animal which literally shuts completely down every night and knocks itself unconscious as a means of essential restoration, stopping is good for human beings.“
127. REMEMBERING WHERE WE CAME FROM - on the privilege of travel
Read More“what it is we travel for today? What is the lack we seek to find? What is the need that makes us leave the comfort of our homes and brave the journeys beyond?“
123. THOUGHTS ON STRIKING - Why We Need More Striking, Not Less
Read More“As philosophers we can smell fallacious argument a mile off. We know an ad hominem attack when we see one, attacking the person (or people) rather than the actual idea. When it comes to discourse around striking in this country, it seems that fallacy and fear-mongering abound. And I would suggest that if you can’t counter the actual arguments of the unions you should be supporting their strikes, maybe even joining them, rather than complaining about them or attacking their industrial action.”
- MAY DAY BANK HOLIDAY 2022 -
As always, we are taking May Day off to celebrate International Worker’s Day, remember the Haymarket Affair and the battle for an eight-hour work day, and ask that you spend at least some of this day off work thinking about what needs to be done to improve your workplace, or work in general. More autonomy? More democracy? More meaningful participation in the decisions that determine your day? Less hierarchy? Better communications? More money? Less time for more pay? Two recent books I have loved which investigate our current relationships with work are Sarah Jaffe’s Work Won’t Love You Back and Amelia Horgan’s Lost in Work. Meanwhile, CrimetInc’s Work is a long-time favourite and there is no better book about work than the late, great David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs. And while we’re talking books and May Day, you may as well check out radical publisher, Haymarket Books, on this day as they, too, are named after the Haymarket Affair. We’ll be back (at work) next week as always - Monday May 9th at 6am - with a new proper post. But for now, I shall leave you with this lovely quote from Bertrand Russell’s In praise of Idleness:
“It will be said that, while a little leisure is pleasant, people would not know how to fill their days if they had only four hours of work out of the twenty-four. In so far as this is true in the modern world, it is a condemnation of our civilisation”.
Happy May Day everyone!
Author: DaN McKee
My book - AUTHENTIC DEMOCRACY: An Ethical Justification of Anarchism - is available HERE , from the publisher, and from all good booksellers. Read my Anarchist Studies journal paper on Anarchism and Character Education here. For everything else DaN McKee related: www.everythingdanmckee.com
112. KILLING THE AUTHENTIC SELF - Why Is It So Hard To Be Yourself At Work?
Read More“It’s time that schools became more diverse, and their staff, at least in the short-term, a little less comfortable.“
109. QUITTING MY JOB - The Thought Behind Making A Change
Read More“I told my form on Friday that this would be my last year at the school. I hadn’t been keeping it a secret, but there also hadn’t really been a relevant opportunity to bring it up.“
101. TEACH MORE PHILOSOPHY IN SCHOOLS - Why Philosophy Deserves Distinct Curriculum Space
Read More“Not all study of Philosophy ends in revolution. But it could. Certainly the careful and methodological scrutiny of our ideas and concepts - shining a probing light on the underlying arguments which uphold them - and learning how to question the fundamentals of logic make it harder for the manipulations of rhetoric and emotive reasoning to deceive us and might therefore lead to outrage if such deceptions are exposed in the Philosophy classroom. But this ought to be welcomed if one of the end goals of our education system is a student’s ability to be an informed citizen of a cooperative democracy. One might therefore see Philosophy’s diminished, corrupted, place on the school curriculum as evidence that producing such capable citizenry is not, therefore, one of the actual aims of this current education system.“
100. UNVACCINATED NEED NOT APPLY - Ethics, Healthcare Jobs and Mandatory Vaccination
Read More“The anarchist in me naturally balks at any enforcement of mandatory rules from on high. But the ethicist in me can see the moral reasons why those people either looking after the most at risk of dying from Covid-19, or most likely to come into intimate contact with large numbers of members of the public, specifically for health-related reasons, should want to do what they can to protect both themselves and others.“
92. WORKING ON HOLIDAY: Am I Really About To Defend Dominic Raab?
Read More“the issue I would like to consider as we return for the 2021/22 academic year is, surprisingly, given my usual vocal opposition to all things Tory, whether Dominic Raab actually did anything wrong by staying on holiday while Afghanistan fell to the Taliban. Or, more broadly, whether holiday should mean holiday - a total cessation of work - even when your work brings with it important responsibilities.“
85. WALKING IT OFF - Avoiding Atrophy and Learning How to Self-Govern
Read More“The anarchist thinker, Errico Malatesta, once suggested growing up with external authority imposed upon us was like learning to walk in leg braces. We don’t even realise the imposition that is dragging us down, and the limitations put upon our ability to walk, let alone run. We simply trudge as best we can in the belief that this restricted movement is the best propulsion possible because we know no better.“
83. SCHOOLS ARE GETTING IT WRONG AGAIN - It's Not The Uniforms, It's The Entire Broken System
Read More“There is a sense the wheels have come off. And so the idea is we need to "get back to basics". Administer punitive sanctions for loose ties, untucked shirts, off-brand hoodies, phones and earphones. Get the kids to stand up behind their chairs in silence when the lesson begins. Ask them to remove their coats if the temperature no longer requires one. The argument goes that if the students look ready to learn, they will be ready to learn...and conversely, their currently sloppy appearance must therefore be a sign that they are not in the right mindset to do well at school.“
- MAY DAY BANK HOLIDAY 2021 -
It’s May Day - an International Worker’s Day in memory of the Haymarket Affair and the battle for an eight-hour work day, amongst other things. As the teaching profession encroaches more and more into the free time of its employees, and our unions do very little about it, and teachers encroach more and more into the free time of their students with endless homework and revision tasks, this week I will not be writing a new Philosophy Unleashed and encourage you instead to consider what needs to be done in your school or workplace to make the working day more humane for all? Longer or more frequent breaks? Democratic say in the decisions that impact on you rather than top-down decision making? Looser rules, or no rules at all, about what you wear? Being left to work independently without micromanagement? Being able to collaborate more with others? Whatever it is - identify it and then work on making it happen. Happy May Day from Philosophy Unleashed.
76. SOME PEOPLE SAY I'VE GOT A PROBLEM WITH AUTHORITY - So What?
Read More“people seem to forget that their authority is a gift we must choose to bestow; one for which they have to give us good reasons. For anyone ever told they have been “insubordinate”, the question must be asked: what damage did this insubordination do?“
73. OF NESTS AND PALIMPSEST - Am I Really Making An Aesthetic Choice?
Read More“I have always loved chaotic collage and my childhood bedroom walls quickly became an ever-evolving palimpsest of posters, pictures, postcards, photos, and things I’d cut out of newspapers or magazines, their content adapting over the years alongside my tastes but generally maintaining the same ragged aesthetic; an aesthetic initially limited to a single cork noticeboard on a nicely painted wall but eventually sprawling out and taking over everything until, at one mad point, I was even hanging posters upside down on my ceiling, occasionally waking startled in the night as they lost their battle with gravity and came crashing down on my face.“
67. DISPATCHES FROM THE CAVE - Why Being "Realistic" Demands The Impossible
Read More“The pandemic has shown just how flimsy “the way things are” actually are. From basic norms of social interaction to entire economic systems, COVID-19 has unwittingly acted as the liberating hand breaking the chains of Plato’s epistemological prisoner and dragging them out of the cave and into the light…This isn’t, however, a post about the coronavirus…“
57. IT’S HARD TO FOLLOW THE LOGIC ON COVID 19 - Though It's A Little Easier If You Follow The Money
Read More“As a philosopher it’s hard to follow the logic around Covid policy because in many cases there simply isn’t any. There is only the illusion of logic. A symbolic nod to a vague sense of health and safety which doesn’t dare follow its own argument to a conclusion for fear of what that conclusion might say.“