Why Do I Need a Teacher When I’ve Got Google

with a way of doing things where I could go in, have an impact and be back in my car and onto the next one before anybody really knew what was happening. A sort of ‘shock and awe and wonder’ strategy. I didn’t have the luxury of the nine-step opening gambit and, to be frank, I’m too lazy to spend time sourcing documents and photocopying them unless I really have to. It was as a result of this that ‘Thunks’ were born, as I found that philosophically-contentious questions could cut out the middle seven steps above and I could cut straight to the chase, namely making children’s brains hurt.
    The way I do these sessions now involves the following process:
    1 Sit them in a circle, the ‘community of enquiry’.
    As King Arthur and the person behind kaizen know, a circle is a powerful, egalitarian, non-hierarchical, all-inclusive way of bringing a group together to work.
    2 Tell them that in this session they can’t be wrong.
    Although that may also imply that they can’t be right either … . Every time I say this to them they look at me like they don’t believe me, as if they know I’m still going to be playing the ‘guess what’s in the teacher’s head’ game, regardless of what I might be telling them, that I’m still going to try and catch them out and show them how clever I am and how not clever they are. This is why step four is so important.
    3 Tell them that my target for the session is to make their brains hurt. Can’t have a lesson without a target … .
    4 Warm up their brains with some Possibly Impossible Questions.
    These are creative thinking questions that serve the double purpose of warming up the brain for a bit of mental exercise and also reassuring them that, seriously, there are no right answers and so, honestly, you can’t be wrong. My favourite question is ‘What colour is Tuesday?’ although you could have ‘Which is heavier, rich or poor?’ or ‘What is there more of in the world, light or dark?’ or ‘Which is more like a bird – a dog or a tree?’ or ‘What would change if pigs ruled the world?’ You get the idea … .(I once heard the poet John Hegley describe how he asked a group of children similar sorts of questions. In response to the question, ‘What’s the difference between a dog and a deckchair?’ one child answered, ‘Deckchairs can’t fly!’ I also like the question from a year eight girl relayed to me by her teacher, ‘Can a cat climb higher than a dog can bark?’)
    For more possibly Impossible Questions have a look at the Independent Thinking website. 1
    5 Start with a ‘Thunk’.
    My three favourite ‘Thunks’ are ‘Is a broken down car parked?’, ‘Is black a colour?’ and ‘If you read a newspaper in the newsagents without paying for it, is it stealing?’. (For more ‘Thunks’ have a look, again, at the Independent Thinking website 2 ; at www.thunks.co.uk , where you can add your own or respond online to other people’s such as these that came in recently –‘If you send a slinky down an escalator will it ever reach the bottom?’ and ‘Is the Hokey Cokey
really
what it’s all about?’; or check outmy
Little Book of Thunks
, a book Amazon recommended to me when it first came out. You’ll be pleased to know I declined to review it.)
    One SEN teacher I met once referred to such questions as ‘thought hand grenades’, as she would sit her group in a circle and toss in such a question and then stand well back. ‘Thunks’ have even achieved notoriety in
The Observer
in an article entitled ‘Drop GCSEs. We should be teaching our children to think’ 3 and on BBC Radio 4’s
Today
programme during UNESCO’s
World Philosophy Day
4 where I was asked to write a few ‘Thunks’ especially for them and their website. These are what I suggested: 5
    1 Is certainty the same as truth?
    2 Do all Polos taste the same?
    3 Is the Hokey Cokey really what it’s all about?
    4 Can you photograph a wink?
    5 Is my God your God?
    6 Is there a difference between an ‘exit’ and a ‘way out’?
    7 Could God be an atheist?
    8 Is Monday not Tuesday as much as Wednesday isn’t?
    9 Are two all-you-can-eat breakfasts twice as big as one?
    10 Is it OK to let someone in the queue behind you?
    11 Does having plans help you become the sort of person you used to want to be?
    12 Can you be proud of someone you’ve never met?
    13 Just because we can, should we?
    14 Should you trust everyone once?
    15 Is a hole a thing?
    16 Does your house weigh