37. ELEMENTARY LOGIC - Why UK Schools Must Close Now
Read More“In the name of public health, but also sense and logic, we must close all UK schools now.”
36. COVID-19 AND PHILOSOPHY: Thinking Clearly In Times of Uncertainty
Read More“Doing the right thing only becomes hard when we have constructed a world which puts embedded obstacles in the way of doing so.”
31. GET WELL SOON - What Our Ethic of Personal Illness May Tell Us About Our Wider Hopes to be Ethical People
Read More“Possibly our lack of ethical concern about the spreading of diseases, speaks to our larger ethical deficit when it comes to sacrificing our own immediate pleasures for the greater good of others: the clothing that we want despite the potential bad treatment of workers who made them; the holiday that we want despite the environmental impact of our journey; the social media we enjoy despite the potential epistemic breakdown it is causing for many of our civilisation-sustaining institutions… “
29. THE VALUE AND LIMITS OF DEMANDING SILENCE - On Remembering Power’s Roots and Reasons in the Classroom
Read More“often neither students or teachers remember the justificatory roots for the powers, privileges and obligations which interplay within the classroom, and that this lack of awareness may well be the source of much student/teacher conflict at school.”
28. WHO ARE THESE CHARACTERS? - Questioning Using Teachers to Teach Our Children “Character”.
Read More“are those of us in society who chose to be teachers within the current education system actually demonstrating good enough character to be suitable character “role models” for the next generation?”
26. OUGHT WE BE PAYING MORE FOR MUSIC? - How A Charity Single Opened My Eyes to Exploitation
Read More“while I currently can listen to all the music in the world that I want to, wherever I am, on any device, through streaming services such as Spotify, the moral philosopher in me begins to ask should I? By not properly compensating the artists I listen to with renumeration for the work they’ve done and the joy it brings me, am I not absolutely complicit in their exploitation? “
24. BREAKING THE CODE OF POLITICAL SILENCE - On Why Teachers Ought To Share Their Political Beliefs With Their Students
Read More“A teacher therefore has a duty to model democratic engagement to their students. A teacher not discussing an upcoming election or not having an opinion on the current political situation sends a negative message to their students that political engagement is not important.”
22. THE VALUE OF FREE - Why Are We So Distrustful of Getting Something For Nothing?
Read More“Imagine giving a friend a brand new MacBook for their birthday. It is highly likely they will assume the computer is somehow broken, secondhand, or stolen before they would simply accept that you have spent that much money on them and expect nothing in return. Because when something that good is given away for free, for no reason, it makes no sense in a world where everything has a price and where we have been socialised into a worldview that says money has ultimate value and should be collected, even hoarded, as much as possible. To give something of value away for free is the action of a crazy person. Sensible citizens only part with something of value if it will bring them something of more value in return. At least, that is the story we have been conditioned to tell ourselves.”
21. WHAT MUST WE REMEMBER? - On The Worth of Remembrance Day
Read More“as long as we have had Remembrance Day and worn our red poppies, we have continued to have wars. If we truly want to honour those whose lives were lost saving the lives of others we ought to put every effort we can into ensuring the sorts of wars which cost them their lives are never fought again.”
17. WHY I CLIMATE STRIKE - A Student Striker Gives Us Their Thoughts From The Frontlines.
Read More'“Since when did kids have the right to get annoyed at adults, break rules and even participate in Non Violent Direct Action? It happened when you, the generations above me, chose not to act seriously on the climate crisis. The science has been around for 30 years, that’s 30 years of allowing emissions to rise uncontrollably. If people had acted back then, we wouldn’t need to strike now. But they didn’t. You didn’t.”
16. THE CHINESE ROOM THEORY OF LEARNING - Can We Avoid An Educational Imitation Game?
Read More“I think of the Chinese Room often as a teacher, especially around exam season, and wonder how much our obsession with testing has led to a Chinese Room approach to learning?”
10. IN DEFENCE OF WASTE - On the Essential Inessential
Read More“It is now my belief that the inessential, the waste, may be the most important thing in life for ensuring our true wellbeing. Furthermore, it may also ultimately have a knock-on effect of improving the productivity and efficacy of the essential.”
5. BIG DATA - The Importance of Remembering there Can be a Data/Facts Disjunction
Read More“Data, in theory, means measurability, tracking and accountability, and therefore is favoured and celebrated by those in the business of measuring education, tracking education, and holding education accountable. Every year teachers across the country collect spreadsheet after spreadsheet of meaningless data on their pupils. They analyse that data and discuss it endlessly with managers and leaders and make decisions about future planning based on what the data says. But the data gathered is, invariably, pure garbage.”
3. DO THE RIGHT THING - The Logic of Using Non-specialists to Deal with Mental Health
Read More“In society at large, as in their microcosm, the humble school, although imperfect, overall, our collective efforts to try and help add more good to the world than would exist in their absence, and so the continued struggle should be supported.”
2. THEN CAME THE LAST DAYS OF MAY - How Do We Mark An Ending?
Read More“To paraphrase Plato’s old Euthyphro dilemma: do we mark significant endings because they are special, or are endings made significant and special because we mark them?”