Four Week P4HE Course (September)

Online philosophy class for all ages and abilities from everywhere - with home educated children in mind.  The course runs in four-week blocks, with a new topic every week. These will combine fun dialogue games that help children connect to one another, with opportunities for deep thinking and disagreement about juicy, debatable questions. 

Week 1 - On Purposes

If I use a chair as a headcovering, does that make it a hat? If a couple raise a child in order that he keeps them constantly supplied with tea and cake, is that his purpose in life? In this purposeful session, we’ll explore the connections between purposes, uses and meanings of everything from a pasta-making machine to a human being.

Week 2 - No Harm Done

One way of looking at right and wrong is that the more harmful an action is, the worse it is. But does that mean that if no harm is done, an action can never be wrong? Via Tutankhamun’s tomb, a surgeon graffiti artist and a butler with a taste for the finer things in life, we’ll explore whether being bad for someone/something else is an essential ingredient of something being bad to do.

Week 3 - The Paradox Box

“This statement is false.” That simplest of paradoxes, self-contradictions that lead into a logical hall of mirrors, will be our starting point. We’ll take in time-travel, Zen and some arguments from philosophy and elsewhere that seem to contradict themselves but may reveal useful insights.

Week 4 - Meet the Professionals

Priests, lawyers, doctors, soldiers, teachers have their own rules of right and wrong that are rather different to those of everyday folk. How much does, “I was doing my job” excuse behaviour that would normally be unacceptable, and when should the rules of everyday right and wrong take over again?

Different times are available for 9-12s and for teens. For younger children, see Philosophy Explorers.

Times shown are UK time, which is GMT +1 until October 25th 2020, then GMT.