Mrs Harrold (Head of Psychology)

In their Philosophy Higher lessons, the Upper Sixth IB cohort studied what it means to 'do Philosophy': they essentially philosophise about the nature of Philosophy!

Over the last few weeks, they have been using the cognitive skill of Intellectual Playfulness to explore ideas from a different perspective. Intellectual Playfulness is where you have an awareness of the conventions of an academic area or process, but deliberately don't follow them and instead take a more playful approach to the focus of study.

In this case, the girls wrote and delivered - in a delightfully 'reading hour' manner - some very well-realised children's books advising as to how and why young people shouldn't think philosophically. The girls had great fun with this - very challenging - task, and the results of their work were very entertaining.

Reflecting afterwards, they noted how the difficulties posed by the activity gave them a greater appreciation of how Philosophy is truly in everything, is a fundamentally important and unavoidable discipline and how they need to keep practising Intellectual Playfulness to reap the manifold benefits of being able to think differently to the norm.