It was the last day of term for a Year 6 (aged 11) philosophy class at St Winifred’s Junior School in south-east London, writes Peter Worley. They had done philosophy for one hour a week, and for six weeks each year, since Year 1. Philosophy is normally conducted by providing a story, picture, poem or puzzle and then exploring a philosophical question through dialogue.

Unusually, this time I had decided to finish with a little teaching. I explained that philosophy has three main subjects: ethics – thinking about how we should live and what we should do; epistemology – thinking about knowledge, not just how do we know stuff, but how do we know that we know it; and finally metaphysics – thinking about reality, or what there is.

Someone asked if philosophy is about God. I said yes, it could be, and asked if they could guess which subject it would fall under. They debated whether it would fall under epistemology (how do you know about God?) or metaphysics (does God exist?). Then someone said, “God didn’t start the universe, it was the Big Bang.”