The Philosophy Foundation's Holiday Club at Republic Island at Rathfern Primary School
Day 1 - Survival
The children are sitting on the edge of their seats as they listen to the story told in the Year 3 classroom at Rathfern Primary School. We were sailing across the sea when a bad storm hits. Waves crash into our old wooden ship and send us overboard.
“You flail around the cold dark water and find a plank from the ship which you hold onto for dear life”
I know how the story goes. I have read the plans for the four-day club (Tuesday and Friday’s over the two week Easter Break) and have made preparations for the games and philosophical enquires we will run, but I am sitting on the edge of my seat too. Mr Hoggins is really good storyteller.
“Eventually you feel something rough against your cheek and the churning around in the waves has stopped. You realise you are lying in sand. You are on land.”
The children’s eyes widen with excitement as they realise what sort of day will lie ahead of them. I feel it too. Although I have the plans, most of the details and decisions will be left in the hands of the year 3 class, and it is up to Mr Hoggins, Mr Walker, and myself to guide them through this journey.
“You manage to stand up in the sand. You can feel your hands are cold and stiff from gripping so hard onto the plank. You look around.”
We are on a long sandy beach with the sea behind us and a jungle in front of us. There is the sound of wildlife, but certainly no signs of human life. We have been stranded on a deserted island.
“What do you do?”
Find food! Coconuts and fish. Find shelter! A tent or a cabin? Collect resources! Together or alone? Make tools! Axes and fishing rods. Make more tools! Guns and flying fish (yes, lots of guns and flying fish…as a tool).
Through the first day we guide the children as they work out how to survive on the desert island. Individually, they make tools and shelters out of the paper, straws, glue and sticky tape we have brought for them. The shelters are put to a very real wind test as Mr Hoggin’s tries to blow them over by flapping a clipboard. Together, they discuss and make decisions about what resources and tools will best help them survive. They have to consider how they would share their resources, or even if they would share their resources with others in the group.
As the first day comes to an end the Year 3s have decided to focus their energies on building animal traps and shelters because it is important to have protection and food for survival. They will share the workload because they will have more time and energy for other things. There is also an overall agreement (enforced my Mr Hoggins) that you cannot make guns from the material you will find on a desert island, but they are going to use flying fish! This last one I never quite understood why or how, but the class came to an agreement none the less. I think I simply lack the imagination of a 7-year-old.
Day 2 - Community
Today the children have spent the morning designing their characters with jobs and skills useful for life on a deserted island. Amongst them is a doctor, a gymnast, a builder and a scientist. Great.
But all the characters are also given a card from the ‘unlucky dip’: ‘Broke an arm in the shipwreck’. ‘Blind’. ‘Has a little brother to care for’. ‘Allergic to coconuts. ‘Misses their dog’. Not so great.
Now they must decide how to share the resources they started to collect on Day 1 and obviously not everyone has the time or capacity to help with the chores.
“People who work hard should get all of the cards because they deserve it. The people who don’t work should get no cards or just a few” some of the children say (the resources, by the way, are represented by playing cards which the children are asked to give to and take from their characters).
“We should share them equally between everyone. It’s not their fault that they cannot help, and they shouldn’t be left with nothing,” say some others.
“But what if there is not enough to go around for everyone, who should miss out?” Mr Hoggin’s asks as he takes some resources away.
Initially the class seem quite harsh on the unlucky characters who lacked the capacity to put in the work, but after some discussion most of the children seem to come round to this argument: “If we share equally now and try to help those who can’t, it might pay off later and be better for everyone in the long run”. I thought this was poignant because this whole program exists because of the ‘free school meal funding’ and the 'catch up curriculum' where the government gave some extra resources to those who may have been needing a little extra help in schools following the situation with Covid. There was something quite fitting about the children seeing the dilemmas of this very idea played out in a class that existed because of this approach to sharing resources.
In the afternoon Mr Walker got the class to think about, discuss and agree to any laws the survivors should follow. The children were split into groups to decide on what rules would be useful and then as a whole class they debated which ones were most important and why. Favourite laws included ‘no hurting others’, ‘no stealing’, and ‘be kind to other islanders’. ‘No cussing’ was also a law that some of the children liked. I was a bit shocked to hear this as surely 7-year-olds do not even know the type of swear words that requires a law against its use. Mr Walker, who also lives in South London, reassured me that in this part of the world ‘cussing’ doesn’t mean ‘swearing’, but ‘to insult others and use negative language’. They were being lovely after all.
To finish the day, I ran an enquiry on punishment and put the new laws to the test. We explored how we might punish survivors who broke the rules. The whole thing started with overly creative torture methods such as making a shark pit to throw criminals into. Unsavoury use of flying fish might have also been mentioned. However, it ended with the children agreeing that everyone deserves a second chance, especially if the culprit was willing to apologise and understood what they did wrong.
Day 3: Defence
By the morning of day 3 our shipwrecked survivors have reliable ways to gather food and water. They have built shelters and storehouses. They have rules for using the tools and keeping them in order. They have ways of resolving disputes (that do not involve torture) and there are plenty of games they play together to keep spirits high. All in all, there is peace on the deserted island.
In this time of peace there is time for exploration and play, and we have been persuaded to use a set of die to help us along with storytelling and decision making. Obviously, someone on the organising team is a massive Dungeons and Dragons nerd*, but after a little practice we find that the use of the die gives us some interesting results. The random role of the dice introduces an element of surprise that neither us nor the children have any control over, and so our storyline and games can go in any direction.
The year 3 class had a great time with this as Mr Hoggin’s took them on a daring adventure to search for more useful resources that might have be left on the shipwreck. Their characters swam out into the sea (dice roll for weather conditions!), where there might have been sharks (dice roll for chances of getting attacked!). The children became more cautious about their choices especially after seeing one person get attacked by the fickle hand of the dice. One girl, however, certainly went for it, risk be damned!
In the higher years (4-6) the die are used to play a fishing game where the children compete to design the best fishing equipment and the dice rolls helped to decide the likelihood of catching fish and the size of the yield. The children also played other critical thinking games based on the prisoner's dilemma which was followed by philosophical enquiries about trusting others and taking risks.
Before the day comes to an end the year 3 are called to put their laws to the test once again because some is stealing from the food stores. To resolve this Mr Worley takes them through an enquiry which involves building a police force to help deal with the problem. The class were split between having ‘violent officers’ or ‘kind officers’ to manage the situation. However, when the islanders are successful in catching the culprit and poor Mr Walker is marched into the middle of classroom looking ashamed the Year 3s quickly make a shift towards a need for the ‘kind officers’! In the end they opt for a balanced force – one violent officer, and one kind.
But things are still not right. Even after Mr Walker was caught, the police discover that there are thieves still stealing food from the stores. They are alerted to them in the night, but realise they are too outnumbered to confront them. They decide to follow the intruders deeper into the island and to a hole that goes underground….
Day 4: Identity
It’s my turn to tell a story, and of course the children agree to go down the hole.
“You quietly follow them down a long spiralling staircase that goes deep under the ground. Down and down you go”
I have a vague plan, but I am mostly making this up on the spot!
“As you spiral around and down you are amazed to see that isn’t dark but there are lights everywhere.”
I hope I am at least as little bit as engaging as Mr Hoggin’s is!
“You look out beyond the stairs a see huge city of tall buildings that are built into the rock and fill up this huge cavern.”
I think they look excited.
“You reach the bottom and see the culprits carrying the food toward their city. What do you do?”
There is some back and forth between ‘keeping quiet to see what they do’ and ‘attack them to get the food back’, but in the end the children decide to give the benefit of the doubt to these obviously civilised people. They find out the ‘undergrounders’ didn’t realise the ‘islanders’ were civilised too and apologise for stealing their food. So, the story continues and the two groups develop a friendship and regularly visit each other’s land. They get to know each other’s habits. The undergrounder’s favourite food is fish, but the islanders like coconuts. The islander’s favourite game is ‘Go, Stop, Clap, Jump’, whereas the undergrounders prefer ‘Bish Bash Bosh’ (we also play these games around the story and enquiry to keep things fresh and fun).
One day, an undergrounder decides they would like to join the islanders on the surface and an islander wants to join the undergrounders. I ask them questions like ‘does the undergrounder become an islander?’ and ‘which game should the islander play with the undergrounders?’. For most of the discussion the Year 3s only scratch the surface of what they think about identity and culture, but I struggle to get to the deeper problem.**
With younger children we often rely on contextualising the philosophical question so it is easier for them to grasp. That is why we tell engaging stories, and use actions and props. But sometimes it still helps to use a more concrete version of the question that applies to real-life to get the ball rolling. In this case, when I was prompted to ask ‘when you go to another country should you follow their rules?’ (thank you, Mr Hoggins!) then we heard a couple of really valid points from the students. Alas, this was toward the end of the time we had for this enquiry and it was time for lunch, so it will have to be a valuable lesson for me next time!
Then it’s the afternoon of the final day and the final task: Can you Escape (room) Desert Island?
We put the children into groups and give them a set of puzzles to solve. To start they have to find the x on a map, but first they have to figure out the grid reference and a riddle: ‘An X on the spot where a duck that's not a duck goes slow'. Then they find another clue alongside a morse code chart. Most of them have never heard of morse code before, but that’s ok - we learn something new and spend a little too much time spelling out our names in dots and dashes.
With various versions of a solved code we venture downstairs to the hall and try out on an invisible bridge over the sea (which is actually made of paper). After we lose some children to the sea we are successful in crossing it and finding the last puzzle, which Year 3s cannot work out because they cannot read backwards. With a little help we are left with the final clue: ‘Speak friend and enter’ (yes, there is also a Lord of the Rings nerd*** on the organising team).
The children try a variety of magic words. ‘Door!’, ‘Open Says me!’, ‘Speak!’, ‘Shark!’, ‘Flying Fish!’, ‘Coconut!’ before finally someone tries ‘Friend!’. The door unlocks and the children are free to leave! ‘Yeeeaaah!’ they yell, tempted to run out into the playground. Which we let them do after they have reorganised the desks in the classroom and filled in a feedback form.
Final Reflection
This was the first time I have worked with primary school students, but the experience was a delight. This age group is far harder to manage (I am more used to secondary school kids who are ‘cool’), but we were able to keep the motivation and focus high by playing lots of games and including other activities in the day. What I did love about them was that they were not worried about what they said in front of the class. Which, if you can quickly sort through the unnecessary tangents, allowed for very enriching and diverse discussion even between children so young. It was so worth taking them through 4 days’ worth of immersive story telling whilst also getting them to do the philosophy. This gave the children context they could really get their teeth into, but also allowed them to see how all of the major philosophical topics that we explored were connected. I remember hearing one child say something like ‘rules are different when you just have to survive’.
A big thank you for this experience goes out to the organisers at The Philosophy Foundation: Peter Worley, Emma Worley, and Steve Hoggins who put together the programme for the children at Rathfern Primary School. The storytelling and philosophical enquiries we used were based on Peter Worley’s ‘Republic Island’ that can be found in his book: ‘The If Machine’.
The Philosophy Foundation were able to run this programme with thanks to Lewisham Council, the Government's Catch-Up funding and all the help at Rathfern Primary School.
And what did the kids think? Click here to watch a video of their own thoughts!
*Harsh but true: step forward Peter Worley
**The higher years ran the ‘Here and Elsewhere’ enquiry by Peter Worley. This one was based on Steve Hoggin’s enquiry called ‘Blue hats and Yellow Hats’.
***See *
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