Cultural Perspectives

Cultural Perspectives courses are another unique aspect of the academic offer at Harris Westminster. In Year 12, alongside their 4 A level courses, students elect to study 2 further courses each term. These are 8 week courses which students attend for one lesson a week and they prove a rich and diverse intellectual and cultural seam. Cultural Perspectives courses encourage students to foster new skills and to explore new ideas, developing their ability to debate and argue; to form and communicate their own opinions; and to wrestle with thorny ethical issues to which there is no simple, widely accepted answer.

Students can choose from a huge variety of courses which offer them the opportunity to embrace learning opportunities beyond the narrow confines of the A level curriculum. These Cultural Perspectives courses provide them with an amazing array of knowledge and ideas both to inform their UCAS applications and to enliven any university interviews that they might be fortunate enough to be invited to. They are also interesting on their own terms and are often the intellectual and cultural highlights of many students’ weeks.

The following list is a selection of some of the remarkable courses that Harris Westminster students have been able to sign up to just this academic year:

Are Music Videos Important?	Introduction to French Cinema
Art for Scientists	Introduction to the Philosophy of Art
Art That Shocked the World	Introduction to Plasma Physics
Awesome American writers	Introduction to Origami
Chemistry for Non-chemists	The Man Box
Cornish History and Culture	Mr McKean Mansplains Feminisim
Drawing to Learn	Perspectives in Psychology
The English Legal System	Poisons of Agatha Christie
Fantasy Worldbuilding	The Psychology of Illness
Firing the Canon	Quantum Mechanics
Gender History in Africa	Race Relations in Britain
The History of Protest in the UK	Rocks, Minerals and Fossils
Ideologies	Serendipity
Indigenous Peoples of the World	UK Music Festivals
Introduction to Curating	Why Evolution is True