Choose the right parents?

An American professor called Bill Ayers says that children today need to choose the right parents!
What he really means is that if your parents are well off and know important people, then you have more choices and better chances than if your parents are not well off and don't know important people! And he thinks this is wrong, as we are supposed to live in a 'democratic' society where everyone has equal chances and choices in life.
He wants all children and students to ask more questions about who they are, where they are going, and what choices they have. He wants you to make judgements based on evidence and argument, and to think for yourselves.
Do you think that school encourages you to do these things, or holds you back? Does your school teach you to obey and conform, or to be imaginative and creative? Perhaps there's a mix - if so, is it a good one and does it work for you?
Bill wants an end to sorting people into winners and losers through standardised tests in schools.
He says we all need to think about, speak up and speak out about the life situations we find ourselves in.
What do you think about school testing, and about winner and loser labels for schools and individuals?
I'm going to ask my philosophy group if they would like to take on this debate next week!

This is fom the area of philosophy called political philosophy.
Source: The Times Educational Supplement (a newspaper about education) 20.03.09 'Comment' section. Written by Professor Bill Ayers, University of Illinois, Chicago USA

Kepler the Space Telescope

Kepler was a great German astronomer from the 17th century. Now a powerful space telescope has been named after him. It is called the Planet-Hunter. It was launched into space from Cape Canaveral in Florida USA on Saturday March 7th 2009.
Its mission? To keep its giant eye fixed on a patch of space 'equivalent to the size of a human hand held at arm's length'.
Now that is amazing. An ancient philosopher called Heraclitus measured the sun by putting his foot in the air and saying 'The Sun is as big as a foot'. Now here a patch of space is being described as the size of a human hand!
In fact that patch of space contains about 100,000 stars in the Cygnus and Lyra constellations.

The idea? To start looking for new Earths! To begin to answer the question, 'Are there other worlds like ours out there?'
Planets will be found by little 'winks' as they move around stars many light years away from us.
Then scientists will work out if any of them have the same sort of conditions as Earth- being 'just right' for life to evolve.

What do you think? Do you think there could be new Earths out there?
Scientists want to make Mars in our own solar system into a new Earth. But they will have to make huge changes to its atmosphere and landscape. This is known as terraforming.
Should humans colonise other planets? There are lots of arguments for and against. Different people have different points of view. For instance - we could mine other planets for minerals and rocks. Good or bad? We could have a new tourist industry - space tourism. Good or bad? What about little bacteria and microbes that may already be living on other planets? Do we put ourselves before their right to grow and evolve in their own ways?
Think of other reasons for and against. Reflect on your own opinions.

Sources: Express and Star and Shropshire Star newspapers 7.3.09.
Remember that newspaper sources are not always totally reliable. For more facts, or for images of Kepler, go to www.nasa.gov.uk

Children who are copies of their dad.

Somewhere in Eastern Europe there are three children. They are aged 9 and they are copies of their dad. That's because they are clones, grown from a skin cell from their own fathers in a laboratory.
This is the claim of Severino Antinori, an Italian scientist. He will not tell us about the children, because he says we must respect their privacy. Is he telling the truth? Cloning animals has been going on for a long time - the first animal cloned was Dolly the Sheep. Not all cloned animal experiments are successful. Dolly the Sheep was found to age too fast. Cloning human beings is not allowed by law, partly because scientists are not sure it is safe. In Italy the Catholic Church is very much against it for religious reasons.
Severino Antinori says his method is new and different. He likes to call it 'genetic recording' instead of cloning. He thinks that changing the name of what he is doing will make us more likely to accept it.

What do you think? What would you say to support your argument if you were Severino Antinori? Or one of the fathers, who was sterile and couldn't have children the normal way? Or one of the children? What could be religious reasons for saying 'no'? Could there be other reasons on moral grounds? And should cloning animals be allowed, if cloning humans is not?

Discuss this in your philosophy group.

This issue connects to the branches of philosophy called ethics and philosophy of science.

(Source: BT Yahoo News 4.3.09)

Would you like to be frozen?

Would you like to be frozen when you die and wait for medical science to cure whatever illness you died of? Would you take the gamble that the future world is going to be a good place to wake up in? Simon Cowell, X factor judge, intends to have just this done to his body. He doesn't want to live forever, he just wants to delay drawing that final curtain!
My philosophy group has just been discussing this. We had lots of reasons for agreeing with, and disagreeing with, Simon's point of view. In the end, after reflecting on what we had said, we put it to a vote. There were 33 of us. These were our results: 1 agreed with Simon, a massive 25 disagreed, and there were 7 don't knows.
This was surprising, as there had been a balance of arguments for and against. Then one of the group, who had voted against, said, 'I may change my mind later, I want to wait and get more evidence for this and see if it works in future.....'

Try this discussion in your own philosophy group.

This issue connects to the branch of philosophy called Philosophy of Science.


(Source: First News Newspaper for Kids issue 145 27 Feb-5th March 2009)