Wondering Aloud: Philosophy With Young People
This delightful picture book by Judy Varga, written in 1961, tells the story of Darius, a little dragon, and the friendship he develops with young prince Frederic. Can Darius be himself, a dragon who likes nothing more than to spit fire (in many colors), and still be friends with Frederic? Darius decides to move to Frederic’s […]
For the past month I’ve been working on the chapter of my book that examines what I’m calling the “philosophical self.” This part of us, that is naturally inclined to ponder the deeper questions raised by the strangeness of finding ourselves alive in the world, fails to develop for many (most?) young people because cultivating […]
The young adult novel Frindle by Andrew Clements is the story of a clever fifth grade student, Nick Allen, who decides to invent a new word, and the consequences of what he does and the way he does it. It is a wonderful, engaging novel that captivated all three of my sons in elementary school. […]
The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Manus Pinkwater is a picture book that tells the story of Mr. Plumbean, who lives on a street where the houses are all the same, painted red with olive-colored roofs and windows with green trim. He and his neighbors all like this, characterizing their street as a “neat street.” […]
The classic nineteenth century fairy tale The Ugly Duckling tells the story of a duckling who, when hatched along with his brothers and sisters, is ridiculed and ostracized because they perceive him as ugly. He wanders alone through the fall and winter, and suffers from fear, loneliness, and sadness. In the spring he flies away […]
You can now listen to the Philosophy Talk radio show on pre-college philosophy, taped at the University of Washington in November: http://depts.washington.edu/nwcenter/resourcestalkradio.html
The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner is 1996 novel for young adults, the first of the series The Queen’s Thief. The story’s main character, Gen, is a thief who boasts about being able to steal anything, ends up in jail, and is recruited to steal a mythic spiritual object by the king. The novel tells […]
Recently the fourth grade students at John Muir with whom I’ve been doing philosophy and I taped a segment for the radio show Philosophy Talk. We talked about personal identity, the mind-body problem, and the nature of happiness. The students were so impressive! We all had a great time. Here is a recent University of […]
One of my favorite works of children’s literature, The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden, first published in 1960, is moving, funny and philosophically suggestive. In particular, the book can inspire discussion about a variety of ethical questions. The story involves Chester, a cricket, who arrives in Times Square in an accidental way from […]
On Friday the 4th graders at John Muir and I had a long conversation about personal identity. We also had some visitors from Nova High School, as well as one of the graduate students at UW working with us this year. We read Philip Cam’s story, “Double Trouble,” about a robot, Algernon, who, one by […]
On Friday I talked about happiness with the fourth grade students with whom I’ve been working at John Muir Elementary in Seattle. One of the things that’s always so interesting to me about discussing philosophy with children is that the conversations frequently parallel in many aspects the discussions I have with college students. They unfold […]
Since our seminar session at UW last Thursday, I’ve been thinking about meaning in education. We spent the first part of the session talking about Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and enlightenment, the relationship between appearance and reality, knowledge, and human development, and then moved into examining the nature of thinking and thoughts. It was […]
I taught my first couple of elementary school classes in the last week, both with fourth grade students in Seattle. It is always amazing to me the level of philosophical interest and understanding shown by children. Yesterday I had a discussion with about 30 fourth graders about Plato’s “Ring of Gyges.” In our conversation, the […]
The first day of fall and it’s a beautiful clear day in northeast Washington State. I am returning to this blog after spending much of the summer working on the book I am writing for parents about ways to inspire philosophical conversations with one’s children. One of the ideas on which I’ve been spending a […]
In my last class of the school year with the 5th grade public school students with whom I’ve been doing philosophy this year, we held a “Philosophy Cafe” with juice, cookies and conversation. I’m going to miss this class. The students had requested last time that we spend some time discussing whether homework is a […]
When You Reach Me, a young adult novel that was a winner of the 2010 Newbery Medal, was written by Rebecca Stead. Set in New York City in the late 1970s, it’s an engrossing story about a young girl, her relationships with her friends, her single mother and her mother’s boyfriend, and a mystery. Miranda is […]
Leo Lionni wrote, who died in 1999, wrote and illustrated many classic children’s books. I’ve used several of his books to inspire pre-college philosophy discussions. One that is particularly helpful for introducing questions of political and social philosophy is Frederick, the story of a family of five field mice who are gathering food for the winter. […]
I’m working on a review article for the journal Teaching Philosophy, writing about five books that have been written in the past few years about pre-college philosophy. In the course of reading these books, it’s been interesting to me to observe the range of views about the level of training necessary for a competent pre-college […]
I read an interesting article this week by Tamar Schapiro on “What Is a Child?” In a discussion about the possible justifications for what we generally believe are adults’ special obligations to children, for “treating someone like a child,” Schapiro (looking to Kant) suggests an understanding of the word ‘child’ as a status concept. The […]
Center for Philosophy for Children just received a three-year grant from the Squire Family Foundation! The grant funds a summer workshop for teachers that will take place this June, and also provides money for graduate student involvement in the program, materials and website support, and three years of transportation for UW students to get to and from […]
I am living it up in Italy at the moment, but thought I would write this post to note that the New York Times published an article last week about philosophy in elementary school classrooms: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/education/edlife/18philosophy-t.html
As part of the book I’m working on, I’ve been thinking a lot about the development of our philosophical selves. In my experience, most children begin to exhibit a “philosophical self” around age 5, when all of the questions that demonstrate “wonder at the world” often start to emerge. This curiosity about and exploration of […]
After almost two years of work, the new national organization for pre-college philosophy in the US, PLATO (Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization), has been born! PLATO is a national support, advocacy and resource-sharing organization for teachers, parents, philosophers and others involved in teaching philosophy to pre-college students. Launched by the Committee on Pre-College Instruction in […]
Another marvelous conversation last week with the 5th grade students with whom I’ve been working all year. At the beginning of the school year, one of the questions in which the students were interested was, “What is time?” We began this session with that question. One student suggested that time is the way “we measure […]
Hotel Rwanda As part of the “Moral Philosophy and Genocide” unit I am doing with eighth grade students, last week we watched the film Hotel Rwanda and then discussed it. We talked about the reasons the international community did not intervene in Rwanda, and what obligations the Western countries had to Rwanda during this period. […]
The picture book Really, Really BIG Questions by British philosophy professor Stephen Law is an engaging introduction to philosophy for anyone from elementary school age through middle school. With drawings and information about science, history, literature and the history of philosophy, the book explores questions such as: How can something come from nothing? What is […]
I read a review of cognitive psychologist Alison Gopnik’s book The Philosophical Baby in the New York Review of Books recently. Gopnik suggests that the relationship between an infant and his or her caregiver constitutes the beginning of morality for us, the first ethical relationship. Carol Gilligan and others have emphasized the role of relationships […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
I had an interesting discussion today about happiness with the fifth grade students with whom I’ve been doing philosophy this year. We started with an exercise I adapted from David White’s book Philosophy for Kids. I gave the students a list of 8 activities — having fun with a friend, reading a book, sitting in […]
The short novel My Friend the Monster by Clyde Roberta Bulla is about the young Prince Hal, whose parents, the king and queen, think he is “ordinary” and have no time for him. They will not let him spend time with the children he sees playing in the courtyard because these children are the children […]
Just Now In the morning as the storm begins to blow awaythe clear sky appears for a moment and it seems to methat there has been something simpler than I could ever believesimpler than I could have begun to find words fornot patient not even waiting no more hiddenthan the air itself that became part […]
I was involved in founding the journal Questions: Philosophy for Young People ten years ago. The journal began as a project of the American Philosophical Association’s Committee on Pre-College Instruction in Philosophy. We conceived it as a way to illustrate the philosophical work that young people are capable of doing. The mission of Questions is […]
I found a wonderful website this week: The Galilean Library. The site is a resource for people interested in the sciences and humanities, and in particular philosophy, history, literature, and history and philosophy of science. It includes a library of essays and interviews aimed at all levels, along with a discussion forum on such subjects […]
I recently had a conversation with Christopher Wiley, whose num de plume is Mortimus Clay, the author of the young adult fantasy novel The Purloined Boy. The novel was a finalist in the Young Adult Fiction category of the National Best Books 2009 Awards from USA Book News. The plot of the book utlizes themes […]
Winter Solitude Winter solitude—in a world of one colorthe sound of wind. Matsuo BashoTranslated from the Japanese by Robert Hass December Birthdays See December 2008 post
On Tuesday afternoon we had a “philosophy cafe” in the 5th grade. I brought cider and cookies, and told the students that in parts of the world adults went to cafes and had something to eat and drink and talked about philosophy. It created a really different kind of environment for our conversation, very relaxed […]
William Steig’s The Real Thief is an appealing story for talking about ethics with young people. It’s a short chapter book, which can be read to a child over several nights or along with a child who is already a reader. I’ve also used this story to talk about ethics with middle and high school […]
Recently I’ve begun working on a book for parents and other adults about ways to inspire conversations about philosophy with young people. As part of this work, I’ve been thinking about the ways in which all of the philosophy discussions I’ve had over the years with my three children have contributed to creating an open […]
Yesterday I had a session with two fifth grade classes (about 40 or so students), in which a local pianist/composer came in and performed John Cage’s 4′ 33″ to inspire a conversation about the nature of music and art. In each of these classes, I had facilitated a session within the last couple of weeks […]
During Wind and Rain They sing their dearest songs–He, she, all of them–yea,Treble and tenor and bass.And one to play;With the candles mooning each face….Ah, no; the years O!How the sick leaves reel down in throngs! They clear the creeping moss–Elders and juniors–aye,Making the pathways neatAnd the garden gay;And they build a shady seat….Ah, no; […]
Introduced in 2002, World Philosophy Day, the third Thursday of November each year, is a celebration of philosophy that seeks to bring philosophy into the lives of people everywhere. The day is an initiative by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) that honors philosophical reflection internationally by bringing together people from around the […]
There has been an ongoing discussion on the Leiter Reports blog about the under-representation of women in academic philosophy. The speculations about the reasons for the dearth of female philosophers include the following possibilities: (1) that the way in which philosophers talk about our profession (using language about arguments, defending our positions, attacking our opponents’ […]
Somewhat frequently I receive email messages or other communications from parents asking me about how to introduce philosophy into their conversations with their children. The main advice I give people is to listen for the philosophical questions kids ask. I don’t believe that bringing philosophical dialogue into your relationships with your children is about teaching […]
This week the fifth grade students and I talked about dreams and sleep and the mysterious world of non-waking life. Our conversation, excerpted below, ranged from an exploration of dreams and nightmares and why they occur the way they do, to wondering about whether all of life is a dream or illusory in some way. […]
I had a conversation recently with a colleague about the difference it makes, in his view, when students who have had philosophy in high school enroll in his undergraduate philosophy classes. He said that he almost always recognizes students who have studied philosophy in high school — he observes deeper thinking about the questions explored […]
To Autumn Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel […]
We began our Philosophy for Children seminar at the University of Washington earlier this month, and this quarter we have 10 students going into 8 different classrooms, from 1st to 12th grade, in six different Seattle public schools. The students are facilitating philosophy sessions in our seminar to help them to get ready to do […]
I had a marvelous class with some fifth grade students yesterday. The first class of the year, we began by talking about what philosophy is and why anyone might be interested in it. I had planned that we would read part of chapter three of Mat Lipman’s Harry Stottlemeier’s Discovery and probably talk about thoughts […]
What’s the right thing to do? Harvard professor Michael Sandel has been teaching a moral philosophy course at Harvard for almost 30 years, with 1,000 students at a time often taking his popular class. This class is now online and is also airing on many PBS stations for 12 weeks this fall. Taped in Harvard’s […]
I love this book. A science fiction young adult novel by Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time was first published in 1962 and has won all kinds of awards. In the engrossing story, packed with philosophical questions, three children travel through the universe by means of “tesseract,” a fifth-dimensional phenomenon explained as being the square […]
The Railway Children When we climbed the slopes of the cuttingWe were eye-level with the white cupsOf the telegraph poles and the sizzling wires. Like lovely freehand they curved for milesEast and miles west beyond us, saggingUnder their burden of swallows. We were small and thought we knew nothingWorth knowing. We thought words travelled the […]
Why do I do what I do? I’ve been doing philosophy in schools for almost 14 years now. At a conference in Memphis this past weekend about doing philosophy with young people, the participants suggested varied justifications for doing what we do. And I’ve been thinking since about the central reasons that I believe that […]
There is lots of exciting work in philosophy going on in high school classrooms around the country! Here are two public high school philosophy classes about which I’ve recently learned: In Memphis, Michael Burroughs, a graduate student in philosophy at the University of Memphis, is teaching a philosophy class at Booker T. Washington High School. […]
The Truman Show, by director Peter Weir, is a film about Truman Burbank, who is adopted at birth by a television network to be the star of a reality television show. Truman grows up unaware that his whole life is a staged television show, available 24 hours a day to viewers, and that everyone in […]
Over the past two weeks I’ve been re-reading the seven Harry Potter novels. A lovely way to spend long summer afternoons. I’ve been thinking how much fun it would be to teach a year-long course that involved reading and talking about all of the novels, perhaps to fifth or sixth grade students. The stories are […]
I dwell in Possibility – A fairer House than Prose – More numerous of Windows –Superior – for Doors – Of Chambers as the Cedars – Impregnable of Eye – And for an Everlasting RoofThe Gambrels of the Sky – Of Visitors – the fairest – For Occupation – This – The spreading wide my […]
Maira Kalman writes a wonderful illustrated New York Times blog, “And the Pursuit of Happiness,” about American democracy, with a new post on the last Friday of every month. In March she wrote “So Moved,” about tolerance, the democratic process, civility and compromise. It is a marvelous piece to use to broach these issues with […]
The Institute for the Advancement for Philosophy for Children, in Montclair, New Jersey, is offering a fall online class on “Teaching Children Philosophical Thinking.” Here is the description of the class: This innovative course prepares teachers and philosophers to facilitate philosophical dialogue with children and adolescents, in classroom settings and elsewhere. The course is suitable […]
Nothing there is beyond hope, nothing that can be sworn impossible, nothing wonderful, since Zeus, father of the Olympians, made night from mid-day, hiding the light of the shining Sun, and sore fear came upon men.Archilochus (description of the total solar eclipse of April 6, 648 BCE) A complete solar eclipse will take place Wednesday […]
Let Evening Come Let the light of late afternoonshine through chinks in the barn, movingup the bales as the sun moves down. Let the cricket take up chafingas a woman takes up her needlesand her yarn. Let evening come. Let dew collect on the hoe abandonedin long grass. Let the stars appearand the moon disclose […]
I have used Michele Lemieux’s book Stormy Night in elementary school philosophy classes. It’s a great resource for an introductory session to help the students start to recognize philosophical questions and to think about the questions they have. Stormy Night is wonderfully illustrated with black and white line drawings. It starts off with a young […]
This is a nice, accessible resource for high school students: http://onlinecollegedegree.org/2009/05/04/25-timeless-insightful-philosophers-for-your-personal-development/. It lists 25 philosophers, from Confucius through Descartes and Kant to Mary Midgley and Foucault, and gives a short synoposis about each of them.
ochikochi ni taki no otokiku wakaba kana fresh young leaves –the sound of a waterfallboth far and near Yosa Buson June Birthdays June 5 Charles Hartshorne (American, born 1897) and Adam Smith (Scottish, born 1723) June 6 Isaiah Berlin (British, born 1909) June 9 Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov (Russian, born 1829) June 14 Bernard Bosanquet (British, […]
Thunk: “a beguiling simple-looking question about everyday things that stops you in your tracks and helps you start to look at the world in a whole new light.”The Little Book of Thunks is a wonderful resource for talking about philosophy in a classroom or with your own children. About the first quarter of the book […]
Thursday was our last seminar session at UW for the spring. Through this class, twelve college students introduced philosophy into public school classrooms around Seattle over the quarter. The seminar included students majoring in philosophy and education. On Thursday the seminar students presented the lesson plans they had implemented in the classrooms in which they […]
From BlossomsFrom blossoms comesthis brown paper bag of peacheswe bought from the boyat the bend in the road where we turned towardsigns painted Peaches. From laden boughs, from hands,from sweet fellowship in the bins,comes nectar at the roadside, succulentpeaches we devour, dusty skin and all,comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat. O, to […]
This week and next students in our Philosophy for Children seminar at the University of Washington will be doing philosophy lessons in a variety of public school classrooms around Seattle, from 5th through 10th grade. We have been meeting for seven weeks now, and in the seminar we’ve discussed topics ranging from the nature of […]
Can one person make a difference? The last class for the Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust unit involves watching the film Not in Our Town, which describes a series of hate crimes that took place in Billings, Montana, in the 1990s, and the town’s reaction to these events. The people in the town really came […]
Why did some people become rescuers during the Holocaust? What makes some people, despite the risks, act to prevent moral wrongs? Is being a bystander morally wrong? In this class we see the film The Courage to Care, involving profiles of individuals during the Third Reich who helped protect Jews in France, Holland and Poland. […]
In this class we view the film Heil Hitler: Confessions of a Hitler Youth. The film is an interview with Alfons Heck, who describes his childhood experiences as a member of the Hitler Youth and his rise to prominence as a leader in the organization, and then his shame and revulsion as he realized after […]
The picture book Stellaluna, by Janell Cannon, is a wonderful book for inspiring discussions about what makes something what it is and about friendship. It tells the story of a young fruit bat who becomes separated from her mother and lands in a nest of baby birds, becoming an adoptive member of the bird family. […]
Why do people obey authority even when they sense that what they’re doing is wrong? Central to the conditions that allowed the Holocaust to occur was people’s tendencies to conform to the situations in which they find themselves. In this class we watch a clip from the film Obedience, which documents the Milgram experiments. In […]
When Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, Jane Elliott, a third grade teacher in Iowa, decided to implement an exercise in her classroom to help her students understand racism and discrimination. She divided the class into students with brown eyes and students with blue eyes, and spent one day discriminating against the brown-eyed students […]
This morning I taught the second class of the “Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust” unit to two eighth grade classes. This class is an introduction to moral philosophy, a way to give the students some background before we launch into the issues raised by the Holocaust. We began by talking about Plato’s Ring of Gyges […]
Created by 5th grade students Methow Valley Elementary School Winthrop, Washington I was reflecting this morning about a conversation I had last week, in which I was asked by an acquaintance about my work. Her response to what I do was, “Philosophy? I took one philosophy class in college, but it was so difficult!” I’ve […]
A Blessing Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.And the eyes of those two Indian poniesDarken with kindness.They have come gladly out of the willowsTo welcome my friend and me.We step over the barbed wire into the pastureWhere they have been grazing all day, alone.They ripple tensely, they can […]
Is science relevant to moral philosophy? In the marvelously clear and accessible Experiments in Ethics, Kwame Anthony Appiah explores the relationship between morality and the empirical research of science. Many philosophers have held that science in general, and moral psychology in particular, hold little relevance for moral philosophy (stemming in part from Hume’s distinction between […]
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