The Greatest Questions in Philosophy: Philosophy Lesson for Students Aged 8-16 [P4C]

This multi-use interactive learning session explores the greatest questions in philosophy.

This lesson is a great way to inspire a love of philosophy; we’ve carefully selected the most significant philosophical questions so that young learners can engage in fun philosophical discussions and debates. This session explores topics such as:

• The nature and significance of philosophical questions
• The importance of questioning skills, benefits of critical thinking and ‘questioning everything’
• How philosophers go about answering philosophical questions

The big question asked in this session is “What is the single most important philosophical question?”. Using a variety of engaging activities students will discuss and debate a wide range of other philosophical questions such as

• To what extent can we trust our senses?
• What is the size and location of the mind?
• To what extent is it possible to directly perceive reality?

Since the focus of this session is ‘ultimate philosophical questions’ we’ve aimed to provide a comprehensive range of deep philosophical questions so that students understand the scope of philosophy as a field of intellectual enquiry.

Students will also analyse and evaluate an eclectic mix of philosophical claims such as:

• “Human beings are not free and free-will is an illusion.”
• “Claims about ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are not claims about reality: they are just subjective opinions.”
• “It is better to be born into a remote tribe in a jungle than to be born into modern society.”

This session uses our unique format for philosophy teaching resources and features an integrated menu that allows teachers to select from a variety of starter, main, plenary, assessment and end-of-lesson reflection activities. With a massive selection of activities designed to trigger philosophical discussions, debates and reflections: you can re-use the resource numerous times with the same group.

Aside from a wide range of debate and discussion activities, teachers can also choose from a variety of more substantial activities such as essay writing, poetry writing, and speech writing tasks.

This resource is suitable for teachers of all school subjects who are looking to introduce philosophy, philosophical thinking and critical thinking. As with all our resources, this session will help students to develop vital communication, social and interpersonal skills: healthy debates will help learners to practice ‘disagreeing in an agreeable fashion’.

This resource is suitable for students aged 8-16; due to the flexible nature of the sessions design it can be used for multiple hour-long sessions or as a short stimulating tutor-group activity. The file is a PowerPoint Show: no planning or preparation is required, just run the file and the intuitive menu system will make delivering a powerful philosophy session very easy!