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Children need to know there is this subject and they need to know what it is.

There’s no reason why philosophy as a subject in itself can’t be taught in

schools, and I think it should be.

Thinking for the city

JOSEPH CHANDLER ON THE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS WHO ARE GOING BACK TO SCHOOL

punishment for murder? “It

What is the appropriate

depends on what type of

murder it is,” says a 12-year

old school kid. “You could have murder where

you go out and shoot someone or you could have

a crime of passion.”

I’m in Sheffield, and the discussion is taking

place in a class which is part of the university’s

Philosophy in the City project. We’ve heard a lot

about philosophy in schools over recent years, but

this scheme is different, in that it is run entirely

by students.

Philosophy in the City is the brainchild of

undergraduate Alexis Artaud de la Ferriere.

Artaud de la Ferriere is clearly something of a

renaissance man, who has contributed to the

British Journal of Undergraduate Philosophy (an

intriguing sounding paper called “How to be

David Copperfield: a critique of Locke's personal

identity model”) and is also one of the poetry

editors of Route 57, the School of English’s online

writing magazine. However, Artaud de la

Ferriere is not one to take advantage of the

opportunities he has been given without worrying

about the justice of it all. He realises that he is

privileged to be able to do all of these things,

“especially when you’re doing philosophy,” he

says, “which isn’t something which is obviously

contributing to society.” He talks of the

responsibilities students have “through brute

facts and brute numbers, that we get this

subsidised degree that’s probably going to get us

good jobs, and it’s not obvious how we’re giving

back to society.”

Philosophy classes may not appear to be the

most obvious way to contribute to the common

good, but Artaud de la Ferriere makes a

convincing case that philosophy for all is a matter

of social justice. “In Britain or America, you have

a system where abstract knowledge is reserved

for a certain community: you have to go to certain

schools to get it and live in certain

neighbourhoods, and it’s assumed that lower

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Home of Sheffield University’s philosophy department

income communities only need to learn skills.”

Not sharing that assumption, he set out to

organise some of his fellow students to spread the

word.

It helped that Sheffield University has one of

the most developed student volunteering

services in the country, and also that the

philosophy department head, Robert Stern, was

on side.

“We were a bit nervous at the beginning

about how this would come across to the kids,

and whether we’d get a hostile reaction or not,”

says Stern, “but we did have people on the inside

in schools who could say that’s inappropriate, or

they’ll really like that.”

Indeed, Stern thought Artaud de la Ferriere’s

idea was better than an alternative they’d been

toying with, which was to send out some of its

staff to local schools.

“I thought the advantage of having

undergrads do it is partly that they’re closer to

the school experience. Having us come in, from a

different generation and rather formal, we’d

probably have gone into normal lecturing mode

and that probably wouldn’t be the right level. As

long as we had the right support, which we did, I

was pretty confident that it would work, and it

did.”

The class I witnessed backs up the claim.

Under the guidance of postgraduates Alison

Patrick and Rebecca Waters, the 11- to 12-year

old children were discussing the ethics of

punishment. One questioned the wisdom of life

sentences instead of capital punishment by

asking, “If they’re going to die in prison, why not

just kill them?” Another believed firmly in the

death penalty, saying with Old Testament logic

that “how they killed someone, they should be

killed too.”

Others were more lenient. “If you punish

someone, you could make them mad, so they’ll

do something worse,” warned one. Another,

responding to the utilitarian argument that

sometimes even the innocent should be punished

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