Recently, Year 11 Philosophy students held a ‘dialogue’ to share their ideas on political philosophy. In their current assignment, students are using philosophical material on utopias and dystopias to inquire into the characteristics of ‘good’ forms of government.

The current assignment offers students a choice of learning material on utopias, including Plato’s Republic and Thomas More’s Utopia. For the dystopic worlds, students are free to draw upon a range of the novels and films. Some sources include Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaiden’s Tale, George Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Brave New World, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and the films Metropolis by Fritz Lang and Elysium starring Matt Damon.

Our focus at Somerset College is on ‘doing philosophy” rather than simply learning about the ideas of philosophers. Therefore, in the second part of the assignment, students are designing a type of government for a futurist colony of 10,000 people on the planet Mars.

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