TY World Philosophy Day

Calasanctius College celebrated World Philosophy Day last week, an initiative of UNESCO that aims at promoting the teaching of Philosophy in schools. A group of Transition Years led by Fiona Galeas and Ruan O’Dowd volunteered to organise multiple events during the day. They designed and posted posters with quotations from famous philosophers all over the school, such as Socrates’ “The unexamined life is not worth living”.

Lukasz Kryzwon from Little Rainbow Ireland ran two workshops for the TY classes based on the Lego-Logo methodology: doing philosophy with Lego blocks!

Other classes besides TY also got involved in celebrations. Several 5th years (and a few younger students) had a philosophical enquiry about Tolerance and Resilience, on stage at the canteen during the lunch break. And the TY volunteers also ran a Riddle-for-a-Sweet competition during break which was very popular with 1st & 2nd years.

To bring the school’s staff into the spirit of World Philosophy Day, the TYs set up a laptop in the staff room with a continuous-running short documentary about philosophy in schools that was broadcast by RTE last summer.

Aisling Murphy, a Gate Theatre Productions award-winning TY student wrote articles for the local Galway press to generate even more awareness of World Philosophy Day and the benefits of having philosophy taught in schools.

Below are a number of pictures taken from the day.