I have been a guest lecturer at GIFT, Europe's leading provider of residential and day courses for gifted children, for the last six years. Julian Whybra MBE has been providing residentials for gifted teens for over 30 years, and as he is retiring it's now gong to be my privilege to take on the leadership of a new partnership that will carry GIFT forward.
The two weeks and several weekends a year I spend as a guest lecturer on these courses are among the highlights of my calendar. I run courses on philosophy, improv, public speaking, writing and, most recently, the bible as literature. Others run courses on science, economics, animation, art, music - wherever the interests and expertise leads them. Each course runs for a full day, and most closely resembles a seminar or intensive workshop. Courses are held at a variety of venues across the country including the Tate Modern and Tate Britain.
I'm excited to be taking on the management of the organisation and to be stepping into the shoes of one of my teaching heroes.
As The Philosophy Man, I do conference keynotes, staff training and pupil workshop in Philosophy for Children (P4C) and connected pedagogies. Over 13,000 teachers receive my weekly bulletin of resources, and my Pocket P4C minibook is, within its small niche, the most popular title on the subject.
From traditional P4C, my work took the turn of engaging more children in discussions using physical Thinkers' Games, the title of my second book. From there, I've focused more and more on strategies to get the widest range of children involved in classroom talk, and Help Me Find My Voice is now my most popular keynote and short session. The minibook of that title is out in February.
The promotional video embedded here was filmed and edited by Neil Ben
My other main company is outdoor education provider, Outspark. This developed out of my work as a Duke of Edinburgh's Award Leader at Sutton Grammar School. We're now an Approved Activity Provider for the DofE Award, providing expeditions at Bronze, Silver and Gold level for a variety of schools.
A big part of our ethos is the leader development, particularly of young people. My fellow directors, Dan Biddle and Dave Smith, were both pupils at the school on the first expedition I ran. We'll be working with over 500 young people this year.
P4C.com is the website of The P4C Cooperative. It provides a curated website for resources for philosophy for children by a variety of authors. A percentage of the company's revenue is shared between all contributors on a points basis. My fellow directors at the P4C Cooperative are Steve Williams, Roger Sutcliffe and James Nottingham.
I've been... a gifted child, an encyclopaedia salesman, a voteswapper.
I've had businesses that have... vended condoms, sold fireworks, not sold Cuban art.
At the moment I... train teachers, run workshops, lead expeditions, live on a narrowboat.
And I'm always... a philosopher, a writer, a host.
I enjoy... improv, hillwalking, caving.
I wish I didn't enjoy... chess, arguing with my own shadow, cheese so much.
I'll probably never... have a dog, enjoy a beach holiday, retire.
But one day I might... go into politics and live in a house.
Two of my stories were adapted by Mosaic Films as part of a series of animations commissioned by the BBC. They are narrated by Robert Webb,read by Robert Webb (who was paid infinitely more than I was, whatever his fee was).
"Who Owns the Sky", is based on "The Water Catcher",
"What's Fair" is a looser adaptation of one of my "Unfinished Business" dialogues, "Sharing the Burden".
My home base is a narrowboat on Midsummer Common in Cambridge. It's a beautiful spot, and there's a pleasing rhythm to the year as the cygnets grow and the new intake of rowers learn how to steer. I enjoy using the boat as a large ventriloquist’s dummy when rowers scrape the paintwork, voicing its agony.
It's a reasonably green way to live, especially since the limited space militates against unnecessary possessions. In the warmer months, it's pleasant to cruise out to the Ely or the Cambridgeshire Lodes.
I’ve recently had the outside painted in a carnivalesque style with a “kingfisher-rabbit”, a narrowboat version of Escher’s waterfall and a couple of my riddles on the side, which I often see people snapping to take home and puzzle over.
I have a soft spot for my old college, which now sports this rather magnificent clock, topped with a "chronophage", a mechanical eater of time. Having taught myself A Levels, I hadn't quite got the grades usually required at the time. But Michael Tanner, a Nietzsche and Wagner specialist who was then director of studies, gave me credit for having done them solo and offered me a place.
I had three very stimulating years in Cambridge studying philosophy and dabbling in amateur dramatics. So it's nice to be back living in Cambridge, philosophising and treading the boards again.
I was the first member of my family to go to university, and I never encountered the smallest bit of snobbery (other than my own, over food and wine) in my undergraduate years. I get very irritated by the negative press that Oxbridge and in particular the selection process get: the dons I know go to inordinate lengths to get the best people, and one of the reasons they don't get the chance to select more candidates from state schools is because of the self-fulfilling prophecy from some teachers that, "Oxbridge isn't for our kids." If that's your attitude, keep it to yourself: you've no right to inflict it on the children you teach.
At the behest of The Economist Education Foundation, the non-profit sister organisation of the newspaper, Steve Williams my fellow-director at www.p4c.com and I devised a new program of resources for The Burnet News Club, an initiative to get primary school children more interested in current affairs.
We produced some flexible resources that have been brought together in an elegantly produced handbook, and guidance for Economist journalists to use in produce half-termly stimulus materials on an issue of the day. The children then contribute their thoughts to a blog, building up arguments online and off. We look forward to providing training for an expanded group of schools in September.
In May, I'm indulging my love of caving by heading to Vietnam on a trip through the largest cave in the world. It's more of a trek than a technical caving trip, but from the National Geographic documentary it looks spectacular. This may be the last year that access is limited to small groups, prior to the installation of a cable car that will turn it into a huge tourist attraction. Also looking forward to caving trips of escalating challenge with Sutton Grammar School, where we're building up a new tradition using the services of Andy Sparrow who literally wrote the book on caving (The UK Caving Manual).
P4HE was born out of a request from home-educating mother, Saila Halim, to run philosophy classes for her community. She organised 105 children into classes, and the first Zoom sessions began, by coincidence, within two weeks of the first lockdown.
Having my own classes to teach again after years of being nomadic would have been a joy at any time, but in these circumstances, as an extrovert deprived of travel and the bustle of the classroom, it made a world of difference to my experience of the pandemic.
We now provide over 300 student-seats each week across philosophy, improv, debate, writing, Shakespeare and Dungeons & Dragons! Over the next five years we will continue to grow to become a leading provider of online education for home-educators and others, with a goal of providing 10000 student-seats per week in 2027.
This super video was made for me by The Maydays as a thank-you for contributing to their kickstarter campaign for their Edinburgh show. It's thanks to The Maydays, the UKs finest troupe of improvisers, that I got into improv and met a great swathe of delightful people.
www.themaydays.co.uk
I'm enjoying my current combination of philosophy, outdoor education, improv and work with gifted children, but I'm always on the look out for new opportunities. 2015 is already going to be a busy year, with international bookings for The Philosophy Man, another minibook and a set of DVDs to publish, Outspark expanding rapidly and Fireflies and Mork and Mind to launch in the improv world.
There are three new directions I'm looking to explore this year. I'm planning to roll out Argumentag Wrestling through a series of cascade workshops. I'm also working on a children's picture book that has the theme of growth mindsets, with accompanying teaching materials. And I'm sitting on the domain name improv.co.uk for which I've got a few things in mind.
One way or another, I'll be looking to work directly with bigger audiences, and I'll also be developing teams of associates to provide workshops and training.
Email: jason@jasonbuckley.co.uk Phone: 07843 555355 Twitter: @philosophymanqs Facebook: Jason Buckley
