Digging for depth - the art of philosophical debate

When is a question philosophical?

• using words to make sense of life
• when there's another answer, not the answer
• open and creative - no closed answer that only the teacher knows

Creating a Socratic community of enquiry

1. First you need a puzzling topic:  God, Truth, Beauty, War, Death
2. Get the students to generate their own open questions: Is God real? Why does God kill us? Why did God make the Devil? Can you be beautiful and ugly? Is beauty on the inside and outside?
3. Think about what is strange, puzzling and interesting.
4. Get the students to devise their own rules for good discussion - always 7. Make the "difficult" pupil the "rules referee" who reminds the group of the rules.
5. See "Being a Groupie" post for suggested rules.
6. Use the plenary to discuss success of rule-following.
7. Use Bloom's to get a wide range of creative and critical questions - give everyone a "fan" of question openings?
8. Ask them to use metaphor: is philosophical discussion like a ladder? A space rocket? A maze?

Practical organisation in the classroom

1. All sit in a horse-shoe or circle - all equal, everyone sees everyone else.
2. Agree rules & focus.
3. Share a stimulus - You-tube clip/ recent news item/ story.
4. Thinking time: think, pair& share.
5. Thought-shower all questions - one is chosen.
6. Discussion, with teacher as participator. Emphasise listening skills (will be another post!)
7. Review - reflect on discussion's success, who showed good listening skill...

How to "dig for depth" in talk

1. Bloom's question "fans" (must get round to making some...)
2. Use the question of "truth" for characters in a book: who is honest? Who is a liar? 
3. Give statements relating to the question and get students to rank or sort into (eg) bullying/ not bullying; true/ not true...
4. Thinking chain or talk tennis in pairs to generate creative ideas:  each says a line of a story, stopping whenever they want to, the next continues etc.
5. Creating categories: classify statements into 2 groups and come up with rules for each group. Eg sentences and non-sentences, good or evil characters...

Philosophical Questions to Discuss:

• How do you know you're not dreaming at this moment?
• Is it right to eat animals?
• What are the most important rights of young people?
• Is it ever right to steal?
• What is the difference between a real person and a robot?
• If technology continues to advance at its current rate, will people become robots?
• How can many religions be true?
• If you fail, does it make you a failure?
• Is an apple dead or alive?
• Is there such a thing as the American Dream?
• Who or what is the Inspector?
• Is life better or worse for young people today than in the past?
• "Reading is not a matter of life or death. It is much more important than that."  Discuss!

What if..?

• What if, like Ewan Mcgregor's new film "Perfect Sense", all human-kind lost one sense at a time in a global pandemic, starting with the sense of taste..?  http://blog.starsinmyeyes.tv/wordpress/?p=1263
• What if all homework was abolished?
• What if all marking was abolished?
• What if dogs doubled in size and grew superior intelligence?
• What if apes grew superior intelligence?  See trailer for "The Rise of the Planet of the Apes" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbCoDf44oCE
• What if we never had to sleep?
• What if a group of school-boys got stranded on a desert island?
• What if in the blink of an eye, all grown-ups disappeared? http://www.trailerspy.com/trailer/1185/Gone-by-Michael-Grant-Trailer
• What if we could read people's minds...and they could read ours?
• What if you were in the middle of a party and a police inspector just walks in and knows your deepest, darkest secrets..?
• What if you found out you were a wizard?

Can you pare back any book/ film to a single "what if" line?

• What if you found out the reason you were in a wheel-chair is because you are a mer-boy?
• What if everybody looked almost exactly alike?
• What if the whole world ran out of petrol?

And finally, the last word from George Bernard Shaw...

"You see things and say "Why?" But I dream things and say, "Why not?""