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Society

Essays and videos on social issues, history, political life and the future
Many figures in traditional dress are gathered beneath a structure from which hang paper lists. In the foreground are horses. The colours are muted with age
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Education

The exam that broke society

Keju, China’s incredibly difficult civil service test, strengthened the state at the cost of freedom and creativity

Yasheng Huang

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Thinkers and theories

Wittgenstein in the classroom

The philosopher understood that learning – of a concept, of ourselves, of each other – is the undertaking of a whole life

Calum Jacobs

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Human rights and justice

Do not forget them

Thousands of Indigenous children suffered and died in residential ‘schools’ around the world. Their stories must be heard

Steve Minton

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Education

Unschooling

It takes nerve to go against the grain and take your child out of school. But, for some, that’s when learning really starts

Naomi Fisher & Heidi Steel

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Education

Hitozukuri

Japan’s Cold War education policy used religion to ‘make’ the ideal humans needed by its nascent economy. Did it work?

Jolyon Baraka Thomas

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Teaching and learning

Learning styles don’t exist

A teaching approach that is based on students’ preferences sounds laudable. But this misunderstands how learning happens

Carl Hendrick

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Philosophy of mind

Philosophy’s blindspot

Education has long been ignored by contemporary philosophers. That is a myopic view that must change

David Bakhurst

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Self-improvement

Many wisdoms

There are no transcendent insights that rise above human difference. Yet wisdom exists if we look in the right places

Avram Alpert

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History of ideas

Views from everywhere

Academic philosophy can indeed make sense of our interdependent world. But only if it transforms by becoming truly diverse

Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach & Leah Kalmanson

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Stories and literature

Great books are still great

Read with love, rather than critical distance, the classics can provide tools to subvert oppressive hierarchies

Roosevelt Montás

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Animals and humans

An unflinching look at a provocative public dissection of a ‘surplus’ zoo lion

13 minutes

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Education

Sex on the curriculum

Sex education is a battlefield over morals and young bodies, and has exposed fractures in American life for over a century

Kristy Slominski

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Education

Jefferson’s university

Thomas Jefferson founded a university believing it would safeguard republican freedom. Slavery was another matter altogether

Alan Taylor

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Childhood and adolescence

We’re all teenagers now

Adolescence isn’t a time of life so much as a frame of mind. Liberating yet damaging, it’s transformed the US and the world

Paul Howe

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Film and visual culture

Shoddy filmmaking meets the miracle of life in a police training film turned cult classic

11 minutes

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Thinkers and theories

Pause. Reflect. Think

Susan Stebbing’s little Pelican book on philosophy had a big aim: giving everybody tools to think clearly for themselves

Peter West

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Cognition and intelligence

How to be a genius

I travelled the world and trawled the archive to unearth the hidden lessons from history’s most brilliant people

Craig Wright

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Global history

The American Museum of Natural History grapples with its most controversial piece

16 minutes

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Education

Education, unchained

Rousseau’s child-centred ideals are now commonplace but his truly radical vision of educational freedom still eludes us

James Brooke-Smith

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Rituals and celebrations

We need highly formal rituals in order to make life more democratic

Antone Martinho-Truswell

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Teaching and learning

I was homeschooled for eight years: here’s what I recommend

Mordechai Levy-Eichel

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Education

The scholar’s vocation

A century ago, Weber both diagnosed the ills of the corporatised, modern university, and pointed out the path beyond it

Chad Wellmon

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Education

Why lifelong learning is the international passport to success

Pierre Vandergheynst & Isabelle Vonèche Cardia

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Teaching and learning

The school where children make the rules and learn what they want to learn

28 minutes