By Iona, Year 9

On 5th of May, Year 9 participated in a Philosophy day workshop run by The Philosophy Man. They are the UK’s leading independent provider of Philosophy for Children training and workshops. Year 9 enjoyed many activities during the day, including the ‘Evilometer’ activity. This activity was focused on the basis of evil and determining how evil certain acts were. Groups had to arrange them in most evil to least evil for example, running out of a restaurant without paying. Some teams also had the chance to redeem the evil acts by adding ‘IF’ post-it notes to them.

There was also a workshop about ‘The Future of AI in Society’, where students were discussing their opinions on AI, what it could lead to, and if it should continue to grow or be banned. Many students believed that AI should be banned, and should never have been created. Some people spoke about AI robots, such as Tesco using robots to deliver food, and the positives and negatives of that.

Another activity was solving riddles. Students had 200 pounds to spend, they won £50 for a correct answer and lost £1 for every incorrect guess. Certain riddles were priced higher than others, and students could also ask for clues, for which they had to pay for. The workshop helped students work together, manage money, and think about how to save money. At the end of the workshop, everyone added up the money they made and the money they had left on the sheet to see who had won.

The final workshop was a debate workshop. Students got into groups and stood on opposite sides of a mat. Teams were given a debate topic and each team would pick a side to argue. Teams would have one person at a time on the mat, debating against the other person and when a teammate had finished their point, they held out their hand and swapped with another person. Groups swapped around and at the end, groups thought of their own argument. Year 9 enjoyed the day, learning many new skills about philosophy, its role in economics and many philosophical arguments around the world.