PU #240 - TEACHING THEMSELVES: On The Lessons Within The Lessons
Read More“it is a reminder that the ostensible lesson taught inside a classroom can be an abject failure, but this does not necessarily mean that no learning has taken place. “
PU #239 - MAKING LINKS - The Skills Atrophy We Haven't Noticed
Read More“My suspicion is that, in a world where connections we used to have to work for ourselves have been repeatedly handed to us for so long (and without any resistance) by pre-loaded links and algorithms, adults raised in the previous paradigm will have seen a serious skills atrophy in their cognitive abilities to make such links for themselves, and children, who have never needed to develop those initial skills to atrophy, will be raised with a serious deficit“
PU #238 - CENSORING TOURETTE'S - Baffled By The BAFTAs
Read More“How the BBC dealt with John Davidson’s attendance at the BAFTAs last week is definitely morally questionable and offensive, but not because they let the racial slur slip past the censors when other insults were cut…“
235. EVERYTHING GOOD COULD STILL EXIST - On The Internet Without Capitalism
Read More“The most powerful idea we can ever hear is this: if we took away money right now, everything that exists would still exist.“
234. WHAT IF THEY WERE RIGHT? - On Kids These Days
Read More“What if what our parents warned us about did cause us harm but we were too harmed to see?“
224. LIP SERVICE - On the Difficulty of Transforming What is Entrenched
Read More“As Audre Lorde so famously put it: “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”. Yet schools, as reproducers of the dominant culture of any given society by design, are the very definition of “the master’s house” and it is they which are giving students their useless tools. “
222. JUSTIFYING FREEDOM - On Assuming Rights We Might Not Have
Read More"Freedom is not as self-evident as these young people seem to think it is, and an appeal to individual freedom is not the knock-down killer argument they seem to think that it is. In a world where are freedoms are routinely curtailed, often for very good collective reasons, the argument that X can’t be allowed because it will take away some freedom or another is simply insufficient."
220. HELLO HUMANS - A Teacher Writes on Their Inclusive Classroom
Read More“the bell rang and I could not think of a response in the thirty seconds I had to dismiss the class so left the question unanswered. I have been thinking about a response ever since so I have decided to write this.“
Association of Philosophy Teachers Annual Conference 2025: REPORT
Read More“The third annual conference of the Association of Philosophy Teachers (APT) took place on a beautiful June day at the equally beautiful St Dominic’s Sixth Form College in Harrow last Friday…“
211. TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS - Why the UK Supreme Court Got It Wrong
Read More“Despite the court’s lip-service assurance that this judgement does not suddenly make it ok to discriminate against transgender people in the UK, in practice it absolutely does in ways that are both predictable and disgraceful.“
210. HOW WAS YOUR WEEKEND? - Radical Intentions Within the Seemingly Mundane
Read More“I have long been inspired by the teaching philosophies of bell hooks, and a core element to her ideas about both teaching to transgress and teaching community, is to “genuinely value everyone’s presence” in the classroom. to “have interest in one another, in hearing one another’s voices, in recognising one another’s presence.““
208. WHY #PHILOSOPHYMATTERS IN THE CLASSROOM - Reports from the Field
Read More“#PhilosophyMatters to students because it’s a unique space in the school curriculum where they’re taught to take everything they think they know and see if this received wisdom can stand up to philosophical scrutiny. Including the wisdom they receive in the philosophy classroom itself. In a world where we are increasingly bombarded with truth-claims, and information and misinformation is coming at us without any distinction between the two, when students have the tools to be able to analyse claims for their validity, it’s a vital intellectual self-defence that we should want all young people to have. And that is why #PhilosophyMatters.“
206. THE IDIOTS ARE TAKING OVER - Is Culture Getting More Stupid?
Read More“We teachers are complicit in any increased “dumbness” our culture is showing because we are often the ones dumbing things down for the next generation.“
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. “
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?"
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?"
186. TO LOVE AND HATE PHILOSOPHY - What is really needed to think deeply?
Read More"Philosophy is all about fine distinctions, and it is a fundamental error to conflate philosophy itself itself with its professional cousin. There is no logical reason the philosophy produced by a primary school student cannot reach conclusions just as profound and perception-changing as the philosophy produced by a professional academic."
180. WHAT PHILOSOPHY COULD BE - Breaking The Norms That Don't Have To Be Norms
Read More“Philosophy is difficult. But it is only as difficult as we choose to make it. Rigorous thinking does not have to be alienating. It does not have to speak a secretive and opaque language different from the way non-philosophers speak. That is a choice, not a necessity. Nor too should academic specialisation and disciplinary complexity be mistaken as necessary components of philosophy. Navel-gazing is still just navel-gazing, even when it props up an entire job market. So too is self-interested gatekeeping intended to preserve a questionable system rather than make it accessible to the masses.“
176. BURN IT DOWN - Why Elitist Institutions Can Never Be Inclusive
Read More“those who cling on to the old ways things were need more than an appeal to their personally liking the old standards to maintain them. They need to explain why keeping the bias, and the inequality and lack of inclusion those biased standards cause, is more important to them than making things better.“
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…“