Thinking Beyond The Curriculum
There’s been a lovely write-up HERE about what we’re trying to achieve with the anarchism and punk book project that I’d love you to check out - and remember, there’s still time to chip in for the crowdfunding to help keep costs down, pay translators, etc… https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/the-anarchism-and-punk-book-project
Two weeks away from the horrific hustle and bustle of a busy school in the middle of an ongoing pandemic. Two weeks of not having to wear a mask from 8:30am - 3:30pm. Two weeks of not having to shudder at the number of student noses I see each and every lesson as their flimsy face coverings slip down and put us all at risk. Two weeks of finally letting my hands rehydrate from all the cheap bulk-buy hand sanitiser. And, as always, two weeks away from Philosophy Unleashed.
If you miss your fix of new philosophy during the holiday lull, please do some yourself and write us something (submissions HERE). We’ll be back again with a new post every Monday morning at 8am from April 19th.
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.“
Hi all - I’m writing a chapter for an upcoming collection of books on Anarchism and Punk, coming out later this year on Active Distribution. In a bid to keep it both DIY and global we want to fund things like translation costs and contributor copies, as well as keep distribution costs low, through crowdfunding. If you’re able and interested in supporting the project - please check out the link: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/the-anarchism-and-punk-book-project
Many thanks for your support!
- DaN
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.“
Read More“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.“
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?“
Read More“I find it increasingly difficult to cast a philosophical eye on the world when that world so constantly ignores logic and reason.“
Read More“By working together instead of against each other, as anarchists since Kropotkin have argued, everybody wins and the seemingly zero sum game is exposed for the capitalist con it always has been.“
A week away from excess screen-time! Half term has arrived and it’s time for you to look at the sky instead of a computer. If you insist on looking at a computer then scroll down and take a look at our archives - and if you fancy looking a bit longer write us something (submissions HERE). We’ll be back again with a new post every Monday morning at 8am from February 22nd or March 1st (depends if I can be bothered to write anything during the holiday on top of other writing commitments I have, or if someone sends in something good this week!)
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.“
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.“
Read More“…what is actually missing from the current business model of the music industry is not more pennies per stream, but a meaningful ethics instead of mere talk of ethics with very little substance. So here is my first attempt at drafting some…“
Read More“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.“
Read More“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.“
Well, it’s been a hell of a year and it’s finally coming to an end! At the stroke of midnight January 1st 2021 there will be a magic cure to all the ills of 2020: COVID-19 will be no more, Trump will be resolved and Brexit will be easy. I joke, of course. The loosening of safety precautions for COVID around Christmas is going to be an unnecessary death sentence for many and we are in for a bleak winter ahead. But for now, take a rest and enjoy the two week break (or latest 14 days of self-isolation, depending on how your year has been!). We’ll be back with new posts again from Monday January 11th. See you then!
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.“
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…“
Read More“And yet this post exists…”
Read More“The Grinch who steals Christmas this year isn’t COVID 19, it’s the mindset that is so rigid about what Christmas has to be it can’t conceive of doing things differently.“