A philosopher at the University of Birmingham, Henry Taylor, has a new philosophy outreach program.

Philosophy Smash with Henry! aims to introduce children to philosophical questions.

In the following guest post, Professor Taylor explains the various aspects of the project, and invites other philosophers to take part.

Philosophy Smash with Henry!
by Henry Taylor

(art by Jen Elliot)

The Idea

While there are many brilliant resources available for learning about philosophy, there are relatively few aimed at a younger age group and designed for classrooms. I decided to record some short (6-9 minute) interviews with experts on philosophical topics, with schools in mind. The result is Philosophy Smash with Henry!

Each video is a conversation between me and an expert in the field, themed around a philosophical question, like ‘How should we treat animals?’  and ‘Are rocks conscious?’, aimed at a class of 9-13 year-olds.

The goal is to inform children about a philosophical question, and present one or two thoughts on the matter. The project also aims to spread the word about philosophy’s breadth. Rather than going for the ‘classic’ topics and thinkers, we aim for more contemporary issues that can capture the popular imagination. For example, we want people to know that philosophy has something to say about what animals are thinking?)

The project is generously supported by an Impact Acceleration Account Grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant number AH/X003388/1) and it’s in partnership with SAPERE P4C, a charity that provides philosophical resources to schools, colleges and communities.

The Videos

For several years, I have recorded video interviews with philosophers and used them in my teaching, both at undergrad and postgrad level. What I really love about this format is that, in an interview, philosophers will often talk about the background motivations for thinking about an issue in a certain way and sometimes explain the things in their own lives that led them to a certain idea.

This is what inspired a video-interview format. The project was also inspired by The Philosophy Garden, a set of free philosophy resources for kids, also based at the University of Birmingham (for more info on The Philosophy Garden, see this Daily Nous article).

Most of the interviewees are UK-based philosophers. I have also interviewed a journalist on whether robots should look after the elderly, and a computer scientist on whether robots can be cultured.

We always start with the interviewee answering the main question of the video within 45 seconds. This is always funny, and ludicrously hard (you try explaining whether today’s science will always be true, or why people think the world is flat in 45 seconds!). We then have a quick back and forth, and a ‘final thoughts’ section.

The biggest challenge faced by a project of this kind is attention span. It’s just too much to ask kids to pay attention to two people talking for seven minutes. We don’t have the budget for fancy animations, and so it’s hard to compete with the kind of explosive content that kids routinely watch on Tik Tok and Instagram. To address this, each video is chopped up into sections, with teaching activities written into the lesson plan (see below), to slot in between the different sections of the video. Chopping the videos up in this way also means that teachers can use whichever chunks best suit them.

Best of all, YouTube comments are turned off. Internet warriors are forced to leave their keyboards firmly in their scabbards.

Getting It Into Classrooms

One of the biggest challenges with getting philosophy resources for 9-13 year olds into classrooms is that schools usually do not teach philosophy at that age (at least in the UK), so teachers – already facing a heavy workload – may not be sure how best to implement them.

To help, each video comes with a full lesson plan, handouts, and other resources to make the transition to classrooms as seamless as possible. These lesson plans take teachers step by step through how to use the video to construct a lesson. Examples are here and here.

Each video also has handouts, to remind children of the core points of the video, to jog children’s memories, or if they naturally learn better with a mix of written and visual materials.

Here’s an example:

The lesson plans are each based around several learning activities that allow children to discuss the issues in a constructive and fun way. For example, for the video ‘Can robots be cultured?’ kids are asked to reflect on what culture means to them and are asked to design their own cultural robot. This makes the material fun and memorable.

The Topics

So far there are twelve videos, which have either been released, or will be in the next few weeks:

• How should we treat animals? Heather Browning.
• Why do people think the world is flat? Kathleen Murphy-Hollies.
• Will today’s science always be true? Peter Vickers.
• Should robots look after the elderly? Emily Kenway.
• Do I have a human right to the internet? Merten Reglitz
• How do we know what an animal is thinking? Ali Boyle.
• Are rocks conscious? Philip Goff
• How do you know what I’m doing? Chiara Brozzo.
• Is prayer useful? Martin Pickup.
• What is colour? Laura Gow.
• Is it okay to have someone else’s baby? Herjeet Marway.
• Can robots be cultured? Masoumeh ‘Iran’ Mansouri.

Feedback and Participation

I would love any feedback you have, including constructive criticism. If you are a professional philosopher, and would like to take part, then let me know by email ([email protected]). I’m particularly keen to include the voices of folks who are usually under-represented in philosophy.

The art is by Jen Elliot — huge thanks to her!