164. CHALLENGING UNIFORM - The Unwarranted Assumption Behind What Children Wear at School

October 02, 2023 by DaN McKee in Education, Identity, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, School, Work

“We realised that there was a big, and unjustifiable, leap that has been made to get from the starting assumption of needing a uniform to the end conclusion that children need to be dressing up everyday like businesspeople from a bygone age. That even if you wanted to justify the idea of enforcing a uniform, you needed to go a long way further from that to justify the bizarre uniforms most schools actually make their poor students wear.“

161. THE GREAT CONSPIRACY - On Philosophy Classes and Dangerous Thought

September 11, 2023 by DaN McKee in Authentic Democracy, Communication, Culture, Education, Epistemology, Ethics, Meaning, Mental Health, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Perception, Politics, School, Technology

“conspiracy thinking - the initial pathway that leads to conspiracy answers - trades on many of the motivating assumptions of philosophy as an activity: a desire to get to some underlying hidden truth beyond the superficial understanding of everyday life.“

159. TAKING STUDENT SILLINESS SERIOUSLY - Lightning McQueen and the Importance of Battling Deepities

June 24, 2023 by DaN McKee in Culture, Economics, Education, Logic, Movies, Obligation, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Pop Culture, School

“Like garbage washing up on the shore of a polluted sea, the Philosophy classroom is often where a lot of these deepities come to rest as students, impressed by their apparent wisdom, share them with the one person they think will be equally impressed: their Philosophy teacher. Often those students are soon disappointed, even angry, when that teacher is not impressed at all and, instead, pops the bubble of the illusion and exposes its emptiness.“

154. DISRUPTION - Its Importance and its Impotence

May 15, 2023 by DaN McKee in Authentic Democracy, Communication, Education, Free Speech, Free, Justice, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, School, Punishment

“I’ve been thinking a lot about protest and rebellion the last week….“

131. UNWELCOME VISITORS - When Jordan Peterson Came to Michaela

October 03, 2022 by DaN McKee in Anarchism, Communication, Culture, Education, Ethics, Free Speech, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, Q&A, School, Academic Freedom

“We should have more unwelcome visitors to our schools, not fewer. More opportunities for students to ask questions and poke holes. More academic freedom to develop an enduring culture of critique and scrutiny so that ideas are never accepted without a fight. If we are worried about the young and impressionable minds of our students, it’s time that we stopped them being so impressionable.“

126. EDUCATED ABOUT EDUCATION - Anarchist Pedagogies and Learning From My Students

July 18, 2022 by DaN McKee in Anarchism, Education, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, School

“If I had planned an ideal last lesson for you (an actual lesson aimed at teaching you something new) what would we be doing and how would we be doing it?“

109. QUITTING MY JOB - The Thought Behind Making A Change

February 14, 2022 by DaN McKee in Education, Ethics, Free, Mental Health, Obligation, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, School, Work

“I told my form on Friday that this would be my last year at the school. I hadn’t been keeping it a secret, but there also hadn’t really been a relevant opportunity to bring it up.“

86. I'VE TOLD YOU BEFORE - On the Potential Deception of Knowledge Transfer

June 14, 2021 by DaN McKee in Education, Epistemology, Justice, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, School

“If the relationship of knower to supposed transferee is asymmetrical and hierarchical, abuses can happen.“

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.“

57. IT’S HARD TO FOLLOW THE LOGIC ON COVID 19 - Though It's A Little Easier If You Follow The Money

September 21, 2020 by DaN McKee in COVID19, Culture, Economics, Education, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, School, Work

“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

July 13, 2020 by DaN McKee in Education, Philosophy Unleashed, Philosophy, Student Writing, School

“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

July 06, 2020 by DaN McKee in COVID19, Death, Education, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, School, Work

“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.”

45b. THE COVID-SECURE CLASSROOM IS A CLASSROOM UNFIT FOR PURPOSE - Further analysis in light of the DfE announcement

May 12, 2020 by DaN McKee in COVID19, Education, Philosophy Unleashed, Philosophy, Politics, School, Work

“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? “

45a. THERE IS NO ARGUMENT FOR RE-OPENING UK SCHOOLS YET - To Warrant Change, Something Significant Needs To Have Changed

May 11, 2020 by DaN McKee in COVID19, Data, Economics, Education, Epistemology, Ethics, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, Work

“When the stakes are this high (life and death) we need to be able to separate nostalgia and sentiment for what is sensible and what is necessary. “

37. ELEMENTARY LOGIC - Why UK Schools Must Close Now

March 17, 2020 by DaN McKee in Education, Ethics, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, School, Work, COVID19

“In the name of public health, but also sense and logic, we must close all UK schools now.”

29. THE VALUE AND LIMITS OF DEMANDING SILENCE - On Remembering Power’s Roots and Reasons in the Classroom

January 20, 2020 by DaN McKee in Education, Ethics, Free, Militarisation, Philosophy, Philosophy Unleashed, Politics, School, Work

“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”.

January 13, 2020 by DaN McKee in Education, Ethics, Identity, Philosophy Unleashed, Philosophy, Politics, School, Work

“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

December 16, 2019 by DaN McKee in Economics, Ethics, Free, Gifts, Philosophy Unleashed, Philosophy, School, Charity, Pop Culture

“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? “

3. DO THE RIGHT THING - The Logic of Using Non-specialists to Deal with Mental Health

May 13, 2019 by DaN McKee in Ethics, School, Mental Health, Philosophy Unleashed

“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.”