This week a short guide to the three must-have ingredients for a good stimulus — whether that’s in P4C, or just to promote any kind of classroom discussion: conflict, plausibility and incompleteness, with links to stimuli that demonstrate their importance.
Conflict
A stimulus needs to present conflicting ideas about a concept or question. These can be included in it, as when two characters in a story have different views in, “If you hire a donkey, do you hire its shadow?”. Or the conflict can come because the stimulus challenges conventional thinking, as in this episode of Alien Adventures in Philosophy.
Without conflict, a stimulus can be preachy, bland or predictable. This is a particular problem if you are dealing with an issue where there is a “line to take” on a subject such as climate change, bullying, sexism etc. The Ethics of Climate Change by Lukasz Krzywon, available in the free samples section of p4c.com, is especially good, finding conflicts in the possible responses to climate change.
Plausibility
It’s not enough for there to be conflicting ideas. Each of those ideas must be plausible, otherwise any discussion will quickly agree on the stronger side. See our Spot and Stripe videos.
Incompleteness
It’s not enough that a stimulus suggests there are conflicting, plausible views. It must leave the participants with a job to do – of finding more arguments and deciding for themselves. So, a stimulus should not go too far into an argument, and certainly not conclude one way or another, but rather float some initial ideas and leave it to the participants to thrash out their merits – or come up with other positions. See The Titanic dialogue, a Horrible Histories-style argument between crew members over who should get the lifeboats (no claim to historical accuracy).
There are plenty of other aspects that differentiate great stimuli from an OK one – the stakes, playfulness, ambiguity and so on. But when you’re looking for stimuli, check for conflict, plausibility and incompleteness and think again if you can’t see them.
What’s on in the Philosoverse?
Jason’s year started with a visit to small schools Hornsea and Skipsea primaries, who clubbed together for training. He’s also been sharing the principles of Help Me Find My Voice with facilitators of the Jack Petchey Speak Out Challenge at Speakers’ Trust. So whether you work with fewer than 70 children or over 30,000 each year, we’re keen to share our approaches with you! Get in touch here.
Tom has been busy moving to Newcastle, where he’s already working with schools. He’s keen on making some local links, so if you’re in Tyne and Wear in particular, email tom@thephilosophyman.com for details of discounted workshops for the first five schools he visits.
Best wishes,
Tom and Jason