15 November 2022
Tilda, Upper Sixth
As Academic Ribbon, I want to encourage my fellow students to pursue their passion for learning. One of the ways I have been doing this is through the Go Beyond club, which I started this year.
Aimed at curious-minded students from all year groups, Go Beyond provides academic enrichment in the form of talks, debates and wider reading recommendations. This will be very helpful to students when they come to making subject choices.
I aim to tailor each session to members' feedback and interests. At our last meeting, we discussed what makes a cohesive argument before holding a debate of our own about artificial intelligence and consciousness.
Thank you to all the students who have already joined. If any other students are interested, I invite them to email me at school. As it’s a new initiative, I'm happy for people to come along and try it out. We meet once every half term on a Friday lunchtime in a history classroom.
It will be great to see lots of students at our next session, when I will be giving a talk about several inspirational women from history and why they have been so influential. Their achievements span the fields of art, journalism and maths, so there’s something for everyone to enjoy.
I’m always delighted to receive feedback and suggestions for Go Beyond. Here are some thoughts from current members:
Freya, Year 9 “In the first Go Beyond session, Tilda shared useful tips on structured debate and allowed us to practise arguments for or against topics, giving us feedback afterwards. My main suggestion for change is for the club to take place more frequently!”
Isobel, Year 9 "I find Go Beyond an excellent stretch, alongside Kritikos. In our first session, I enjoyed the discussion on whether AI could ever reach consciousness and what the concept of emotions are and I developed my debating skills. I definitely recommend Go Beyond to everyone.”
Laura, Year 9 “I really liked how everyone in the room was involved, expressing their own ideas in the debate about AI and consciousness, and I enjoyed the evaluation debate at the end by really stretching the questions and digging into them. This really did allow us to ‘Go Beyond’."