148. THINKING ABOUT WORLD BOOK DAY - How Reading Is More Than The The Fetishisation of Books

March 06, 2023 by DaN McKee in Book, Censorship, Communication, Culture, Education, Free Speech, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Pop Culture, School, Social Media

“Instead of asking what we are reading on World Book Day, we ought to raise the level of questioning: what are we reading and how is it changing us? What is it making us think? What questions are the book raising? Even if the answer is, to all these questions, not a lot (I am unchanged, not thinking about anything, and asking no questions), to ask them makes us perhaps realise that some books are like junk food while others are more nutritious.“

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.“