196. ARGUMENTS DON'T WORK - And I Won't Be Able to Convince You
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.“
194. SHOULD THE STATE CARE ABOUT PRIVATE SCHOOLS? - On the Meaning of Independence
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. “
193. THE WRONG CHOICE - Why Voting for Trump is More Than Just A Choice I Disagree With
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.“
191. WRESTLING WITH DONALD TRUMP - Why We Ignore The Wrestling Connection at Our Peril
Read 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."
190. TWO STUDENTS, BOTH ALIKE IN DIGNITY - On The Illusion of Individual Exam Success
Read More"Does a grade truly reflect the work and ability of a student, or is it merely a result of a context and circumstance over which the student is powerless?"
189. THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE - Still Haunting AI
Read More"if these AI machines were conscious then we would effectively be using them as our slaves; they do not have a choice in the matter and are also not getting paid. This raises important questions on the morality of the use of AI" A student writes on AI and slavery...
188. GRENFELL - On Individual versus Collective Responsibility
Read More"The Grenfell Inquiry blamed everyone for the tragedy that took 72 lives, but if everyone is responsible, is anyone responsible?"
187. SHOUT OUT TO CHILDLESS CAT PEOPLE - Why I Still Don't Want Kids
Read More"In the wake of this summer’s comments from Donald Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, J.D. Vance, about ‘childless cat ladies’ (and as a US citizen who is registered to vote in November and will be voting for Kamala Harris…who actually does have step-children) I thought it might be worth reviewing the sound reasons for my own decision not to have children and defending the decision of others who have done likewise..."
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.“
178. FREE PALESTINE - On Anti-Semitism
Read More“As a Jew, I want to live in a world without anti-Semitism. I also want to live in a world with a free Palestine. These two ideas are not mutually exclusive, or in tension with each other. And we need to ask questions of motivation from those repeatedly peddling the myth that they are.”
177. REACHING ROCK BOTTOM - Why England Needs to Sober Up
Read More“I guess what I am really doing is posing the following thought experiment: do you think a sober society would have sat by and done nothing for twenty-four years as their country failed to meet even the most basic standards of functioning anymore? And does the fact that England is not a sober society give us some explanation as to why the English have seemingly done exactly that?“
175. SUING MADONNA - The Ethics of Honouring Stage Times
Read More“is Madonna’s late start really “unconscionable, unfair, and/or deceptive”? In philosophical terms: are such late start times, different from those advertised, genuinely immoral?“
174. THE TRAITORS AND EPISTEMOLOGY - Why We're All Floundering In The Dark About Knowledge
Read More“It is epistemically wild to watch how fellow human beings construct seemingly viable theories of knowledge out of the flimsiest of observations and inferences.“
172. INFLUENCERS - Why Violent Video Games Must Make Us More Violent
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…“
171. RISHI SUNAK'S ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT - Rwanda and the Greatest Fallacy of Which We Can Conceive
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.”
170. ON HEELS - Whatever Happened to Good and Evil?
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.“
168. IT'S NOT JUST THE KIDS, IT'S US - Why It's Important for Teachers to Look in the Mirror
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“
166. WHAT'S IN A NAME? - What The Trivial Can Tell Us About The Significant
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“
165. JUSTICE FOR VICTIMS - Why I Wouldn't Want My Killer Jailed
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?“
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.“