The Thunks Origin Story

I was determined never to become a teacher.

However after watching the BBC’s seminal programme about Matthew Lipman and Philosophy for Children (here on YouTube – worth a watch despite the poor quality video), I remember thinking to myself, ‘If ever I wanted to become a teacher – which I don’t – I’d love to do this P4C stuff’.

Then the inevitable happened.

I became a teacher and I started doing P4C stuff.

Thinking Skills in Schools

Roll forward a few years and, after setting up Independent Thinking, I was part of a project designed to ‘light the blue touch paper’ as it were on getting thinking skills into schools and colleges of all phases across Northamptonshire.

From half hours in the library with years threes to a regular hour-long slot with a school’s ‘lost boys and girls’ to build their confidence, it was a busy time.

Now, to do P4C properly you’re supposed to have a shared resource that you read around as a group sitting in a circle and spend time eliciting questions the text provokes.

That meant me I had to choose between spending a great deal of time in the evenings and weekends sourcing, copying, printing and preparing or not.

I chose not.

What I did instead to maintain my sanity and my family life as much as possible, was to come up with little questions that would get children thinking from the off.

Questions to make your brain go 'ouch!'

Not so much preamble as in P4C proper – I could hit the ground running with any group I was thrown into – and very little by way of prep.

If you read a paper in a shop without paying, is it stealing?

Is a broken-down car parked?

Is there more future than past?

That sort of thing.

Questions that came into my head, often on the way to a school, by simply looking at the world with a bit of a creative squint and asking, ‘I wonder what/why/how/when…?’

At some point, and I do not remember when, I started referring to these little questions as Thunks.

A Thunk is something we described in my original Little Book of Thunks as a “beguiling question about everyday things that stops you in your tracks and helps you start to look at the world in a whole new light”’.

The 2008 ALCS Educational Writers’ Award Winner

That book won the Society of Authors first ever education book award (#proudness) and something was born that teachers – and children – all around the world seem to love.

An idea that I can’t even remember having born out of professional laziness and a desire to help children use their brains by thinking more deeply that now has a life of its own.

‘Someone’s written a book of these,’ a delegate interupted me mid-way through a session in China a few years ago where I was talking about my Thunks.

‘Really?’ I replied. ‘Did you catch the name of the author. I might know him.’ [ITL]

Find out how people have been using Thunks by checking out some more resources pages on the topic here.

And you can buy various Thunks resources at the Independent Thinking Press website with 20% off and free UK p+p when you use the code 'ITL20' at checkout.