- MAY DAY BANK HOLIDAY 2021 -

May 03, 2021 by DaN McKee in Anarchism, Economics, Education, History, Philosophy Unleashed, Work

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.

79. OFFENSIVE IMAGES - An Ethic of Kindness

March 29, 2021 by DaN McKee in Censorship, Culture, Education, Ethics, Free Speech, Obligation, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Religion, School

“In my classroom, I don’t feel my free-speech is threatened, or my right as a non-Muslim to draw or see images of a Prophet I don’t believe in impeded, if I refrain from showing images to my students which I know violates their beliefs. It is an act of kindness to them, not an act of repression to me.“

78. TESTING OUR PATIENCE - Why Not Everyone Who Is Back At School Is Getting an Education

March 22, 2021 by DaN McKee in COVID19, Culture, Education, Economics, Philosophy Unleashed, Philosophy, School, Politics

“As I sat registering my form of Year 13 students and preparing to go teach my Year 11s, I asked them how they were feeling about being brought back to school in a pandemic to not be taught anything new and just focus on revision for an upcoming series of assessments? Not a single one was happy about it. Not a single student felt they were being “educated” anymore. They were there merely to be prepped for probing, so that they could amass as many “data points” as the school needed in order to give them a final letter or number and rank their so-called accomplishments.“

77. TIME TO EVOLVE ON GENDER - Why We Can't Ethically Support An Exclusionary Binary

March 15, 2021 by DaN McKee in Education, Ethics, Gender, Identity, LGBTQ, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed

“If you suggested that women should be barred from having the same rights as men because of their reproductive organs you would be laughed at or face a lawsuit for discrimination. We have overcome these old ways of thinking with technological, intellectual and emotional advances which have rendered the old narratives obsolete. Yet for some reason the myth of gender norms seems harder for people to shake despite the obvious failings of the binary male/female model.“

76. SOME PEOPLE SAY I'VE GOT A PROBLEM WITH AUTHORITY - So What?

March 08, 2021 by DaN McKee in Anarchism, Authentic Democracy, Censorship, COVID19, Education, Free Speech, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, Work

“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?“

72. THE 2021 EXAMS ARE NOT CANCELLED - But They Should Be

February 01, 2021 by DaN McKee in COVID19, Data, Education, Ethics, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, School

“I don’t believe in examinations, but I do believe in moral tests, and I worry that when we do eventually hear back from the consultation about the alternative to 2021 GCSEs and A-levels we will have failed yet another one.“

70. TRUMP, UNFORTUNATELY, HAS NOT BEEN SILENCED - Thoughts on Freedom of Speech in the Digital Age

January 18, 2021 by DaN McKee in Anarchism, Authentic Democracy, Censorship, Culture, Education, Elections, Ethics, Free Speech, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics

“Good ideas grow, bad ideas shrink. As a consequence, good speech gets louder and bad speech soon gets drowned out. Not censorship, but developed understanding and evolution towards better ideas that, at a certain point, recognise certain voices as no longer worthy of being listened to. The fascists, the racists, the sexists, the homophobes, the conspiracy theorists - they have little to offer once we look beyond mere transgression and take the ideas seriously as speech. And so, rightly, they are discarded.“

69. WHAT, IF ANYTHING, HAVE I LEARNT FROM HAVING COVID 19? - Reflections on Getting the Plague

January 11, 2021 by DaN McKee in Christmas, COVID19, Culture, Death, Education, Epistemology, Ethics, Free, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics

“now it is three weeks since the day I got my positive COVID test, and I cautiously think I may have survived it, I have decided to look back at the experience to see what, if any, philosophical lessons it taught me.“

68. ABUSIVE THEOLOGY - Why LGBTQ+ Students Deserve Better From RE

December 14, 2020 by DaN McKee in Education, Gender, Identity, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, School, Religion, LGBTQ

“As a teacher of RE, and head of RE at my school, that we RE teachers are supposed to give oxygen to such ignorant and discriminatory views in our classrooms – and treat their prejudice and hurt as something that is to be respected – is something I find an outrage.“

67. DISPATCHES FROM THE CAVE - Why Being "Realistic" Demands The Impossible

December 07, 2020 by DaN McKee in Anarchism, Authentic Democracy, COVID19, Culture, Economics, Education, Elections, Environment, Epistemology, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, School, Work

“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…“

66. IF A POST FALLS IN THE WOODS - When Is A Post Not A Post?

November 30, 2020 by DaN McKee in Obligation, Mental Health, Education, Philosophy Unleashed, Philosophy, School

“And yet this post exists…”

64. THE UNEXAMINED LIFE IS WORTH LIVING - Why An Emphasis on Exams Misses The Point of Education

November 16, 2020 by DaN McKee in Education, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, School

“As I tell my students, the absolute worst way to judge how good a philosopher you are would be to take away all of your books and resources, isolate you so you cannot speak to anybody else, and set you an arbitrary chunk of time in which to answer a really big question.“

59. IS THIS BLOG DANGEROUS? - On Indoctrination, Ideology and the DfE

October 05, 2020 by DaN McKee in Anarchism, Education, Book, Philosophy Unleashed, Economics, Free, Environment, Philosophy, Free Speech, Authentic Democracy, School, Black Lives Matter, Censorship, Politics

“unlike the politician, doomed to blind allegiance to whatever colour team they are playing for, on whatever side of the aisle, the philosopher has loyalty only to the truth. If you can show me my argument is wrong, I am not only willing to change my mind, logic dictates that I have to.”

57. IT’S HARD TO FOLLOW THE LOGIC ON COVID 19 - Though It's A Little Easier If You Follow The Money

September 21, 2020 by DaN McKee in COVID19, Culture, Economics, Education, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, School, Work

“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.“

54. REFLECTIONS ON THE FIRST YEAR OF PHILOSOPHY UNLEASHED - Looking Back & Looking Forward

July 13, 2020 by DaN McKee in Education, Philosophy Unleashed, Philosophy, Student Writing, School

“I hope after a year of Philosophy Unleashed existing people have figured out that these little quotes are NOT the full article and that they have to click the title to read the whole piece…”

53. WHEN IS A BUBBLE NOT A BUBBLE? - Educating The Department for Education

July 06, 2020 by DaN McKee in COVID19, Death, Education, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, School, Work

“It doesn’t take a logician to see the problems with the Department for Education’s plan for secondary schools this September, but it can help to crystallise the specific flaws by laying out the argument carefully.”

51. SNAPSHOTS OF WHITE PRIVILEGE - Why It Is Not Enough To Just Not Be Racist

June 22, 2020 by DaN McKee in Black Lives Matter, Culture, Education, Gender, Identity, Obligation, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, Racism, School

“it is not enough to just not be racist (or sexist, or homophobic, or transphobic) in a world which has racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia built in to its very fabric. We have to do more.”

50. THE PROBLEM WITH CIS-NORMATIVITY TO A NON-PASSING TRANS WOMAN - A Student Asks Us To Confront The Consequences Of Cis-Normative Thinking

June 15, 2020 by DaN McKee in Culture, Education, Ethics, Free, Identity, Mental Health, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Student Writing, Suicide, Gender

“Cis-normative thinking therefore has disastrous consequences when it perpetuates the idea of passing being a requirement for those who aren’t cisgender“

48. WHY THIS UPRISING IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WAS A MATTER OF WHEN, NOT IF - A Student Questions The Limits of Peaceful Protest

June 08, 2020 by DaN McKee in COVID19, Culture, Death, Education, Ethics, Free Speech, Identity, Militarisation, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, Student Writing, Racism, Black Lives Matter

“The reason we are seeing such outrage, and even riots, in the U.S.A today is due to the level of systematic oppression that black people have faced across the world for much of the last millennium”

47. A LIFE WITHOUT SANCTIONS - Thinking About Consequences And Their Lack In An Age Without Punishment

June 01, 2020 by DaN McKee in Anarchism, COVID19, Culture, Death, Education, Ethics, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, School

“Sanctions, punishments, threats…these may bring some short term sense of comfort that justice is being done, but true justice comes when we no longer need such threats to ensure good behaviour. When the logic of the genuine consequences of an action is enough to make people make better choices. When police aren’t racists and politicians aren’t liars because the obvious wrongness of being a racist or a liar, and its logical consequence in the death and suffering of innocent people, is sufficient to not want to be racist or lie. “