Awarded 2022

Since joining U3A Melbourne City in 2012, Darrell has challenged our members with philosophical questions and dilemmas though his weekly “Philosophers Cave” course. Bringing students together to form a Socratic “Community of Enquiry” each year, Darrell has encouraged members to grapple with wide ranging and contentious issues based on the thinking of key philosophers across the ages.  

 Well organised and inclusive, Darrel provides students with stimulus material in advance of each class, asking members to formulated their own philosophical questions in response, and to determine the direction of that week’s enquiry.  Students have found this approach stimulating and engaging. As one longstanding class member comments:  

“From the pre-Socratics, through the Enlightenment, to the Post Modernists and twenty-first century philosophers, anything goes in Philosopher’s Cave!   It’s always fascinating to realise what was being discussed two and a half centuries ago still has relevance for the problems we face today.  Everyone’s view is considered and the atmosphere in class is always entertainingly argumentative  –  a good work out for ageing brain cells!” 

In addition to his tutoring contribution, Darrell has enthusiastically participated in some of U3AMC’s key events- strutting the catwalk in the 2015 Fashion Show; giving voice to the poets in the 2018 Deakin Edge production ‘Remembering: the Pity of War’, and our recent ‘ Who Do We Think We Are?’ at the same theatre.