Wondering Aloud: Philosophy With Young People
Recently I have been starting my philosophy sessions in the 5th grade with the students raising questions they want to discuss that have come up since I’ve last visited. This afternoon, the students mentioned that they wanted to discuss an event that had happened in the classroom. One boy’s iPod touch was stolen this week […]
In a conversation about Plato’s Allegory of the Cave with eighth grade students last week, we spent a lot of time talking about Descartes’ dream argument and whether we can know whether we’re dreaming or not at any particular moment. A couple of students contended that even if our whole lives are a dream, it […]
I recently reread The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, one of my favorite books in elementary school. Published in 1961, with marvelous line drawings by Jules Feiffer, the book tells the story of Milo, a bored young boy who sees thinks that everything is a waste of time. He is given a gift of a […]
When I was in a fifth grade classroom last week, the students told me that they had been puzzling a little together about the meaning of “normal,” and wanted to ask me about it. What is normal? The dictionary says being normal is being “an average person,” the students told me. “But no one is […]
Jana Mohr Lone is the director and founder of the University of Washington Center for Philosophy for Children, an academic research center dedicated to research and practice in philosophy for children and philosophy of childhood, and she is an Affiliate Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington. Jana is the author of Seen and Not Heard (2021) and The Philosophical Child (2012). She co-authored the textbook Philosophy in Education: Questioning and Dialogue in Schools (2016) and co-edited the collection of essays Philosophy and Education: Introducing Philosophy to Young People (2012). Since 1995 she has taught philosophy in classrooms from preschool to college and beyond. A frequent writer and speaker about precollege philosophy, Jana is the founding president of PLATO (Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization) and the founding editor-in-chief of the journal Questions: Philosophy for Young People. Follow her on Twitter: @JanaMohrLone