In this bulletin, an idea developed last week when I was helping teachers at St. Catherine of Siena Primary School develop questions for their topics.
Also, if you work in a school in or within reach of Manchester or Glasgow, scroll down for your chance to book a half-day at very low-cost on particular dates in February.
The Philosophy of Cleverness
What might make an action clever? What’s the difference between a clever action, and a not so clever action?
Below is a set of real-life decisions taken during The Great Fire of London – some more questionable than others! This approach can be used for any topic or story where characters make choices. Important to note that when using the word clever, we’re talking about decisions, rather than the people!
If your students have learnt about the fire in the past, great, but you can boil it down to: Big fire in 1666 that began in small bakery, spread quickly through the tightly packed wooden buildings and destroyed large parts of London — as terrifying as it was devastating.
Challenge your students to rank the actions below from Most to Least Clever. Obviously hindsight helps enormously here, so I’ve included a bit of backstory for each action which you might want to reveal once an initial sort is done. It’s a great strategy to help them test their opinions in the face of new evidence.
You’re the Mayor of London. You’re woken up and alerted to the fire but you dismiss it and go back to bed.Â
Backstory: The Mayor, Sir Thomas Bloodworth, was widely criticised for his inaction. Although he didn’t have the authority to pull down houses, he remarked that the fire was so small someone could “pee it out.” The fire burned for 5 days, destroying over 13,000 tightly packed wooden houses, 87 churches and the iconic landmark, St Paul’s Cathedral, and leaving left 85% of London’s population homeless.
You’re in charge of precious books and papers. You get them moved to St. Paul’s Cathedral as it’s a stone building.
Backstory: This seemed a good plan, but people hadn’t realised the wooden scaffolding around the building would act as fuel for the fire, which helped it engulf the Cathedral and burn the books.
You own a boat and you’ve noticed people need to transport their possessions safely away. With such high demand, you increase your prices to extortionate levels.
Backstory: One of the earliest instances of “price-gouging” in a time of high demand. Boat owners (or Watermen) weren’t particularly well-paid, and so may have seen this as a good chance to make money off rich people trying to save their precious artworks.
You order buildings to be demolished with gunpowder to create a gap called a “firebreak” which you hope will prevent the fire’s spread.
Backstory: Although this destroyed many more buildings, it did seem to work (helped by the fact the wind died down on the fourth day of the blaze).
You’re a famous writer and you bury your finest wine and cheese in the ground, hoping the fire will pass over the top of it.
Backstory: Diariest Samuel Pepys did this, but his treasured wine and cheese was never found!
You put great faith in London’s smaller rivers acting as natural firebreaks, because fire cannot travel over water.
Backstory: A good idea in principle, but the fire has already spread due to high winds, and these help the fire jump over these rivers and continue to spread on the other side.
Your house may be soon caught in the fire, and so you choose to save the paperwork (or “the deeds”) to prove that this was your plot of land.
Backstory: The fire razed so many buildings to the ground so people had to prove they owned the land their house was built on (otherwise someone else might claim it!)
You’ve heard the Fire might have been started on purpose by French or Spanish Catholics who wanted to overthrow the King, so you start blaming anyone with an accent.
Backstory: Suspicion of Catholic treason was high at the time, and there were some horrible stories of people with foreign accents being beaten on the streets. This also led to the execution of an innocent Frenchman, Robert Hubert.
Other questions…
By ranking specific actions, you’re automatically getting students to think about what the term “clever decision” really means.
You might want to pause them during the discussion to ask for some factors they’re using when ranking the decisions. You might get answers like:
- It’s not clever you should have known better
- It’s not clever when you ignore key information
- It’s not clever an action is done without thinking
And even it had a bad outcome, can a decision be a clever one if it was based on a reasonable belief at the time?
What’s new in the Philosoverse?
I (Tom) have been working with teachers at St. Catherine’s, through an INSET day followed by a day of workshops with students. This approach is a great way of helping staff understand the principles behind children finding their voice, and then seeing these put into action immediately. I’d recommend it if you can find a couple of days to get us in!
Jason has been running INSET at Plume School in Essex, and continues at Colmore Junior School this week. And we’re both very busy taking bookings for the Spring Term across all our businesses, including another trip to the Far-East and Australia in March. More about this next week!
Special opportunity for two schools – one within reach of Manchester, one within reach of Glasgow!
We’re looking for two schools who’d be interested in a half-day of oracy/P4C/problem-solving workshops. We’ve two new staff members who we’d like to see us in action, so we’re eager to set up an opportunity near them.
Two dates are available:
6th February: A school in, or within easy reach of Manchester
9th or 10th February: A school in, or within easy reach of Glasgow (includes Edinburgh).
We’d ask the school to cover our travel expenses only, so a very steep discount off normal rates. We can chat much more once we’ve got your expression of interest.
These will be allocated on first-confirmed, first-served basis and we expect a fair bit of interest so please do express your interest ASAP for more information either by replying to this email, or sending something directly to tom@thephilosophyman.com.
PS: If you’re interested in this topic, or just history in general, I can’t recommend the podcast “Journey Through Time” highly enough — particularly the Great Fire of London episodes, which inspired much of this bulletin!