S1E13: Ian Gilbert on climate change, neoliberalism and making children’s brains hurt

Ian Gilbert is a globally renowned educational thinker, innovator, entrepreneur, speaker and award-winning editor and writer, who was listed by the IB magazine as one of their top 15 ‘educational visionaries’. Ian has authored many brilliant books including the Little Book of Thunks, Independent Thinking and Why do I need a teacher when I’ve got Google? - all three of which we discuss in this conversation. He is also a skilled editor and has curated and edited many more excellent tomes, including notably The Working Class: Poverty, Education and Alternative Voices. This is a fascinating conversation in which we discuss thunks - Ian’s brilliant invention for making children’s brains hurt; neoliberalism, the ideology that underpins so many of our educational woes; and our shared love of philosophy for children, an approach that has been in the headlines this week for all the wrong reasons. To name just a few juicy morsels. Here are some of the books we talked about in this podcast: The Little Book of Thunks - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005R25LKK/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0 A tin of thunks - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/A-Tin-of-Thunks-by-Ian-Gilbert-/164501869061?mkevt=1&mkcid=1&mkrid=710-53481-19255-0&campid=5337839255&customid=&toolid=10001 Independent thinking - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00GY5781Y/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p2_i5 Why do I need a teacher when I've got Google? - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00LC9DHT4/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p2_i3 The Working Class: Poverty, Education and Alternative Voices - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07BB8GP3F/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2 The Rethinking Education podcast is hosted and produced by Dr James Mannion. You can contact him at rethinking-ed.org/contact, or via @RethinkingJames on Twitter.