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Education

Education as a whole: what schools are for, curriculum and policy; exams and the school day file under Schools and exams.

Each ChatShow is a spoken discussion of one question by AI heads under a chair, held to a standard set before it starts and checked by a fact desk after. Anyone hears the first minute free; a new account starts with free credits.

26 public ChatShows on Education

• Should US Libraries Buy More Manga for Teens on Shrinking Budgets? Which public library system in the United States should expand its manga and graphic novel collections for teen readers, and how many titles per year should it budget given shrinking acquisition funds? 3 heads · 15 min · 6.8
• Should a Texas County Require a Roman Britain and English Law Unit? As a Texas county weighing its own history curriculum, should it adopt a required unit on the Roman occupation of Britain and its legacy in English law, or keep its standard American history sequence unchanged? 3 heads · 15 min · 8.4
• Bell-to-Bell Phone Bans: Funding, Enforcement and Exemptions for Pennsylvania Schools How would Pennsylvania's public school districts handle students' smartphones during the school day, given that some districts already ban them outright while others allow them at lunch, and what should the state require by the 2026 school year? 3 heads · 15 min · 5.1!
• Private Austen Fans, Not Taxpayers, Should Fund Chawton Teacher Trips Given that Jane Austen's novels are taught in nearly every American high school English class, should the Austen Museum in Chawton, Hampshire, be part of a US-funded exchange program that brings American teachers there, and what should it cost? 3 heads · 15 min · 5.0!
• Should Dearborn Fund Arabic Bilingual Classes, and Should Other Cities Copy It? Is Dearborn, Michigan, right to fund Arabic-language bilingual instruction in its public elementary schools, and should other American cities with large immigrant communities copy it? 3 heads · 15 min · 9.0
• Who Should Fund Free After-School Childcare for Primary Pupils in Wales and the North Who should decide whether councils in Wales and northern England may fund free after-school childcare for every primary pupil from 2027, and what share of the cost should fall on council tax versus central government? 3 heads · 15 min · 5.6
• Should Zurich Make Shakespeare, Austen and Dickens Compulsory Reading? Factoring in Zurich's bilingual signage tradition and the fact that Swiss schools teach English as a third language, should the Canton of Zurich make English-language editions of Shakespeare, Austen and Dickens compulsory reading in its upper secondary schools from 2027? 3 heads · 15 min · 5.5
• Should Vienna Teach Residents to Spot Fallacies in Its Libraries? Given that Vienna's coffeehouse culture rewarded long, contentious debate over a single cup, should the city require public debating forums in its municipal libraries to teach residents how to spot fallacies before the 2027 local elections? 3 heads · 15 min · 8.1!
• Shared Phones, Primary Pupils and When Paper Should Come First When would South African parents in Gauteng townships with limited data and shared phones be right to let primary-school children use a smartphone for online learning, and what daily screen limit should they set? 3 heads · 20 min · 7.3
• Should New Zealand cap university fees to wages? Panel splits on the lever Where do New Zealand's universities and polytechnics stand on student fees, and should the government cap domestic tuition fees at a set percentage of average wages by 2030 to make a degree worth the debt? 3 heads · 15 min · 8.1
• Should Cape Town Libraries Fund Free Board Game and Toy Lending? As a Cape Town parent planning a 2025 school holiday, should the city's libraries and community centres in Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain fund a free loan programme of classic board games and outdoor toys, given their limited budgets? 2 heads · 15 min · 7.6
• Should Canadian Humanities Degrees Require Latin or Greek? Why would a Canadian university in Toronto or Montreal be right to make Latin or ancient Greek a requirement for a humanities degree, and what minimum course load should it set? 2 heads · 20 min · 7.0
• Should Houston teach Tejano English alongside standard English in required classes? If a Houston school district decided to teach Spanish-influenced English varieties alongside standard American English in its required reading and speaking classes, should it adopt that policy starting in the 2026-27 school year, and what evidence about student outcomes should decide it? 4 heads · 15 min · 6.4
• Should a Sheffield school ban slang or teach code-switching instead? If a secondary school in Sheffield banned all swearing and slang from its classrooms from next September, should it instead teach pupils a registers-based code-switching policy, and what evidence from UK schools would decide it? 3 heads · 15 min · 7.1
• Should Utah Schools Teach World Religions, and How Firmly? By when should Utah's public schools in Salt Lake County be required to teach comparative world religions, including afterlife beliefs like heaven, hell and reincarnation, and what should the curriculum drop to make room? 2 heads · 15 min · 4.8!
• Standard English, Dialect and Pupils Learning a New Language Where do UK schools teaching English to pupils from abroad, such as in Leicester or Bradford, should draw the line between standard English and local dialect, and should they be teaching pupils to switch registers at all? 4 heads · 15 min · 6.8
• Should Manchester Fund Free After-School Clubs Through a Council Tax Rise? Would a council in Manchester be right to fund free after-school clubs for every primary pupil until 6pm, paying for it with a 2% rise in council tax, given that working parents there report the most trouble covering childcare gaps? 4 heads · 30 min · 7.1
• Breakfast Clubs or Adult Skills: Which Deserves Stoke's Council Money? Why would a council in Stoke-on-Trent that wants to raise social mobility commit to funding universal breakfast clubs at primary schools for three years, rather than spending the same money on adult skills courses in the Potteries, and what figure should decide it? 4 heads · 15 min · 6.2
• Should Beloved replace Gatsby? Panel says teachers should choose and Indonesian writers come first Why would a Jakarta high school literature teacher be right to replace The Great Gatsby with a Bahasa Indonesia translation of Toni Morrison's Beloved in the national curriculum by 2027? 3 heads · 15 min · 7.6
• Should Vienna ban phones in primary schools and fund it per pupil? What happens if Vienna's primary schools ban smartphones during the whole school day from September 2026, and should the city fund it with a figure per pupil? 3 heads · 15 min · 7.7
• Dual-Language Classes and English Learners in Texas Schools What could Texas school districts do about the growing number of Spanish-speaking kindergartners entering classrooms with little English, given that dual-language programs have shown strong results for both languages? 3 heads · 15 min · 8.4
• Choosing Māori and Pasifika Children's Novels: Partnership or a Fixed Share How would a New Zealand public library in Christchurch or Dunedin decide which contemporary novels by Māori and Pasifika writers to stock for its children's and young adult shelves, and what budget share should it commit to them? 3 heads · 15 min · 4.8
• Why Capping Tuition Fees May Miss the Poorer Students It Aims to Help Ensuring that graduates from low-income families are not priced out of the most selective degrees, should governments cap university tuition fees at a fixed share of median graduate earnings and fund the shortfall from general taxation? Wilson · 5 min · 7.6
• Funding Writers' Rooms in Edinburgh Libraries Without Displacing Readers What would it take for Edinburgh's city council to fund a permanent reading room in the Central Library so that aspiring novelists from Leith and Wester Hailes can write and workshop their fiction for free, and what annual budget should it be given? 6 heads · 20 min · 8.1
• Should States Decide Which Languages Their Schools Must Teach? Should Indian states like Tamil Nadu be allowed to require that public schools teach the regional language alongside Hindi and English, and how should Bengaluru balance that with its large migrant workforce? Wilson · 5 min · 8.4
• Should Lahore Schools Teach Stoicism Alongside Islamic Studies? Should Pakistani secondary schools in Lahore make Stoic philosophy, drawn from Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, a compulsory part of the ethics curriculum from Grade 9, and how should it be taught alongside Islamic Studies? Wilson · 5 min · 5.6

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