Discuss, Debate and Interrogate the Nature of Politics, Power and Freedom
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🎯 168 political philosophy questions that put the onus on learners to think deeply.
🎯 Suitable for secondary (mainly KS4 and KS5).
🎯 Use the contents page to randomly select challenging questions or browse through at your leisure.
🎯 Facilitate political philosophy debates in your classroom with little or no planning required.
🎯 Engage learners with some of the biggest debates and most important thinkers in the history of political philosophy.
When I was developing The Political Philosophiser, I was teaching A Level politics.
The curriculum was a bit dry in places, with an emphasis on the minutiae of political systems.
I wanted a counterpoint to this for my learners.
Something we could use to focus on the core themes, concepts and ideas swirling around the foundations of political thinking.
So The Political Philosophiser was born.
A Simple Premise
Inside, you’ll find 168 questions, one per page, along with a contents page containing 168 buttons, each hyperlinked to a question.
Simply display the contents page and then you or a learner can select a question at random.
If you don’t like it, jump back to the contents page and go again.
All the questions are designed to stimulate learners’ thinking. And to get them focussing on the core ideas that animate political philosophy.
My class thoroughly enjoyed using it, and I hope yours will too.
The resource is FREE to download and FREE to use.
It is published by Gershon Learning Limited under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Creative Commons license.
That means you can download it, freely share it and redistribute it with attribution and a link to this site, but you cannot use it for commercial purposes or create any derivatives of it.
Download The Political Philosophiser Today
Here’s the PDF version for you to download FREE:
What’s Inside?
Here’s a sneak peek of some of the questions waiting for you and your learners inside The Political Philosophiser:
- ⚖️ What are the limits of government?
- ⚖️ What is the optimum relationship between the state and individuals?
- ⚖️ To what extent do social practices influence politics?
- ⚖️ To whom do rights belong and on what grounds?
- ⚖️ How ought the state to allocate resources?
- ⚖️ Is taxation just?
- ⚖️ Can any government ‘manage’ an economy?
- ⚖️ Do individuals behave in a rational manner?
- ⚖️ What methods should the political philosopher use?
- ⚖️ Does politics work?
- ⚖️ What is the fairest system of voting?
- ⚖️ Is freedom of speech a good idea?
- ⚖️ What is justice?
- ⚖️ Should anyone be above the law?
- ⚖️ Can the pursuit of self-interest lead to the general good?
In total, you’ll find 168 questions, focussing on concepts like freedom, justice, human rights, government and authority.
I’ve included a set of 20+ questions that are responses to quotes from famous figures in the history of political philosophy, and philosophy more genrally.
People like Hobbes, Bentham, Cicero, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hayek and Rawls.
If you want to jump straight into these, they start on page/slide 142.
Using The Political Philosophiser in Your Planning
The Political Philosophiser is non-directive and curriculum agnostic.
You can use the questions inside any way you like.
Here are three ideas to get you started.
✅ Divide the class in half. Bring up the contents page and select a question at random. Give one half of the class a specific position you want them to defend in relation to the question. Give the other half of the class a different position to defend.
Allow five minutes for teams to develop their ideas.
When the time is up, ask learners to pair up with someone from the other team and to debate each other. You can do this as a free-for-all, or you can set time limits that mean learners take it in turns to make their cases.
✅ Upend learner expectations by asking them to respond to one of the questions without using words. They’re not allowed to talk, and they’re not allowed to write anything. But they must try and communicate what they think about the question.
For example, through drawing, by building something, or by creating a piece of silent drama.
This technique tends to work best if you scroll through and pick out a question in advance. That way, you can ensure you choose one that has sufficient scope for non-verbal and non-written responses.
✅ If teaching longer lessons, like double or triple A Level Politics, use The Political Philosophiser to create a short intermission that gives learners a break.
Pause what you are doing, bring up the contents page and invite one of your learners to pick a question at random.
Have a five minute discussion about this with your class, and then go back to the main thrust of the lesson.
P.S. You can access all my resources in one place on the free resources hub page.
