Oddly, very few books exist to help teachers foster philosophical enquiry among high schoolers. Of these few, David Birch’s Provocations is a standout, distinguished by the originality, breadth and richness of its material.

I witnessed one of the most impressive philosophical exchanges today between some 10-year-olds that I’ve ever witnessed.

By Andrew Taggart

In the middle of September, I left my desert home in Southern California in order to teach a weeklong course at Kaos Pilots, a social entrepreneurship school based in Aarhus, Denmark, on the way of cultivating discipline lightly. Penciled in on the schedule for Wednesday morning was a learning session which I had sheepishly, yet accurately, entitled, ‘Not to Be Announced.’

 

Can you kill a goat by staring at it? A critical look at minimally invasive education

In his renowned ‘Hole in the Wall’ experiments in developing countries, Dr Sugata Mitra gave children access to an internet-connected computer and left them to learn what they could, unsupervised, with apparently remarkable results.