86. I'VE TOLD YOU BEFORE - On the Potential Deception of Knowledge Transfer
Read More“If the relationship of knower to supposed transferee is asymmetrical and hierarchical, abuses can happen.“
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.“
79. OFFENSIVE IMAGES - An Ethic of Kindness
Read More“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
Read More“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.“
72. THE 2021 EXAMS ARE NOT CANCELLED - But They Should Be
Read More“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.“
68. ABUSIVE THEOLOGY - Why LGBTQ+ Students Deserve Better From RE
Read More“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
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…“
66. IF A POST FALLS IN THE WOODS - When Is A Post Not A Post?
Read More“And yet this post exists…”
64. THE UNEXAMINED LIFE IS WORTH LIVING - Why An Emphasis on Exams Misses The Point of Education
Read More“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
Read More“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
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.“
54. REFLECTIONS ON THE FIRST YEAR OF PHILOSOPHY UNLEASHED - Looking Back & Looking Forward
Read More“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
Read More“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
Read More“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.”
47. A LIFE WITHOUT SANCTIONS - Thinking About Consequences And Their Lack In An Age Without Punishment
Read More“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. “
45b. THE COVID-SECURE CLASSROOM IS A CLASSROOM UNFIT FOR PURPOSE - Further analysis in light of the DfE announcement
Read More“To re-open schools before it is safe to do so is to mistake the purpose of schools and ignore how fundamentally transformed a “Covid-secure” school will be from the schools we knew before. With no obvious benefit for returning to the socially distanced classroom before it is safe to do so, we must, as both teaching professionals and as a wider society, ask the question of what we are trying to achieve with the push to reopen our schools? “
38. QUESTIONS FOR THE END OF THE WORLD - Some Concerns and Queries As COVID-19 Continues To Spread
Read More“the world has changed. And here are the questions arising to me as it does…”
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.”