2021 ACT Philosothon
By Stuart Mitchell, Teacher / IBDP TOK Coordinator
On Thursday, 14 October, Radford College hosted the 2021 ACT Philosothon. Given the ACT’s lockdown we had to run the event virtually through Teams. The pandemic meant only a modest amount of interest from local schools, however the six teams from Radford College, Telopea Park School/Narrabundah College, and St Francis Xavier College proved to be an engaging and competitive group.
A Philosothon is an opportunity to engage in a range of interesting philosophical questions with depth and rigour. This is done through a process called a community of inquiry.
Students gather in a circle (or a rectangular grid of streamed video faces) to critically engage and collaborate with each other, sharing ideas and weighing perspectives on philosophical problems. Students are awarded points by a judge based on:
- Critical thinking: how well they grasped the problem, crafted an argument, and evaluated others’ arguments.
- Creative thinking: how well they contributed original ideas, made interesting links between ideas, and provided examples, analogies or thought experiments.
- Collaborative thinking: how well they showed intellectual humility, support and/or developed others’ reasons or views, showed intellectual courage, and asked thought-provoking questions.
Students are given a score out of 5 for each category, for a total of 15.
On the night, students engaged in four circles of inquiry on the following questions:
- Is civil disobedience ever morally justified, and if so, under what conditions?
- Can a robot be conscious?
- With lives on the line in a global pandemic, how much detail and nuance should persuasive health campaigns insist upon in promoting public health?
- Do states have a moral right to exclude people from their territory?
As a silent observer for each of the sessions, I was very impressed with the level of depth and rigour in the thought of our local young people. The quality of thought was not limited to the older participants either, with students from Years 8 or 9 being amongst the higher scorers in each round.
The winning team was a hybrid of students from Radford College: Emma Morey (Year 8), Pippa Humphries (Year 9), and Terry Yang (Year 10), and a student reserve in Year 11 from Narrabundah College. In second place was a team from St Francis Xavier College, and in third a team of students from Telopea Park School/Narrabundah College.
I would like to thank Nick Ewbank for helping me to organise the event and SOPHY for organising local academics to judge.