Annually The Society of Heads publishes the Observations booklet which is a series of articles from our member schools celebrating a chosen theme. This year the theme matches our Annual Conference theme "Human Flourishing". In the run up to our conference we will publish three of the articles per week.
Intellectual Flourishing
Human beings are (the old philosophers used to say) rational animals. If so, human flourishing must also necessarily be rational flourishing. The shibboleth of ‘critical thinking’ became something of a modish fad in the 2000s, and as often happens with political initiatives, it too often proved to be seed fallen upon stony places, and has rather withered away.
Nevertheless, intellectual vigour (both dependent on and conducive to knowledge expansion) must not merely be a fashionable adjunct, but a core component of any effective education. And it must be remembered that human intellect has never functioned within some cerebral vacuum, but is itself the result of centuries of culture. Human rationality, as opposed to reductively sterile conceptions of logic, can never be purely mechanical, but must thrive on what has always been human: experience, language, art, mathematics, poetry, music, and scientific imagination.
The Food for Thought Programme at Denstone College is a set of super-curricular activities which support pupils to become broader, deeper and sharper thinkers. Teachers incorporate elements of the programme into their curriculum teaching, with additional sessions voluntary and aimed inclusively at any pupils interested in developing themselves mentally, culturally and (in a word) soulfully beyond the curriculum.
The programme aims to help pupils
- Think in more inter-disciplinary ways;
- Work through problems more logically;
- Have a wider cultural appreciation;
- Enjoy their ideas being challenged;
- Read widely and ambitiously;
- Think critically;
- Think more bravely;
- Care more about big issues;
- Use language precisely;
- Love detail;
- Hit harder in debate.
There are twelve strands:
- Devil’s Advocate helps pupils realise how humans can make rational arguments for opposing views;
- State of the Art encourages pupils to appreciate the wealth of visual beauty that various times and cultures have bequeathed;
- Idea Logical uses fun puzzles to develop rational resilience and determination;
- Idiom Attic stimulates greater awareness of the power and ubiquity of figurative language;
- Eye for Detail targets precision and the ability to solve problems on the micro-level;
- News to Me reinforces pupils’ awareness of their existence within current local, national and geo-political climates;
- Enigma Variations provokes lateral thinking and problem-solving through enjoyable riddles and similar challenges;
- Critical Moment leads pupils through a journey of understanding about how to build and to dissect rational argumentation;
- Word Up celebrates the fruitfulness of language, its ambiguity, diversity and interrelation;
- Purely Rhetorical explores the other side of argumentation, focusing on how the dialectical may be persuasively dressed;
- Face the Music rejoices in the tremendous range of musical culture pupils have inherited, beyond the merely ephemeral;
- Chapter and Verse nudges pupils off the literary diving board into a sea of narrative and poetic adventures.
The programme has proven immensely popular and is establishing an ethos, a tradition and, crucially, a community of intellectual ambition. Through it, we continue to shape a cohort of the curious within each year-group, feeding through to university aspiration and beyond.
For more on our Food for Thought Programme, please take a look at the introductory blog pages on our school website.