Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Articles

The Philosothon Phenomenon

Mark Smith reports on how philosophy is getting competitive in schools.

If you could become invisible at will, would you still be good? Is mathematics a divine language? These are the sort of questions that young people might discuss in a Philosothon – a friendly philosophy competition for schools. Students sit in a circle called a Community of Inquiry and discuss age old philosophical questions. The students are then scored by a judge; usually an invited philosopher from a university. Philosothons were first tried with great success in Australian schools and, in 2014, launched in the UK at King’s College, Taunton, Somerset, where I teach.

The Community of Inquiry teaching method was developed by Professor Matthew Lipman, the founder of the Philosophy for Children movement (P4C).

…