Philosophy lounge is a group that meets every week at Monday lunchtime.  Each week students suggest questions for discussion – we often get five or more big, open-ended inquiry questions written on the whiteboard.  These questions cover almost any topic – from “What is the most successful species on Earth, and why?”  to “Are children slaves?” to “Have aliens not contacted us because they are not evolved enough, or because we are not evolved enough?” We then vote on one question to discuss, and have a full group discussion, sharing ideas, facts and opinions, questioning our own and others ideas, and using logic and reasoning to inquire deeply into the topic.

Questions that we have discussed so far this year include: “Do superpowers create supervillains?”; “Is communism effective?” and “If we created Artificial Intelligence robots that looked like humans, thought like humans and acted like humans, should we treat them like humans?”.  The students share a fantastic range of ideas, showing real depth of understanding of the topic; consideration of the issues and respect for ideas other than their own.  I have no doubt that everyone walks away each week having heard something that they hadn’t thought of before.