How To Teach Philosophy To Pre-College Kids with Stephen Kekoa Miller

PJ is joined by philosophy advocate Stephen Kekoa Miller. Together, they discuss how to engage younger students with philosophical ideas.

Show Notes

In this episode, PJ and Stephen Kekoa Miller discuss how to teach philosophy to kids and why it's important. Topics range from the purpose of education to critical race theory to Plato's Republic.

For a deep dive into Stephen's thought, check out the book, Intentional Disruption: Expanding Access To Philosophy, which you can find here 👉 https://amzn.to/35PwIzQ

For more resources about teaching philosophy to kids, check out PLATO (Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization) here 👉 https://www.philosophyforchildren.org/plato/

Or check out our blog on www.candidgoatproductions.com

Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. When it rises up, the mighty are terrified. Nothing on earth is its equal. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud.

These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop.

Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.

What is Chasing Leviathan?

Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.

[Unknown7]: hello and welcome to chasing leviathan i'm your host pj weary and i'm here today

[Unknown7]: with dr stephen miller dr stephen miller teaches philosophy part time at mes

[Unknown7]: college and he also teaches at oakwood friends school and today we're going to be

[Unknown7]: talking about how do we do philosophy with pre college students this is a topic

[Unknown7]: near and dear to my heart as i home school my four and six year old

[Unknown7]: doctor miller doctor stephen cocoa miller

[Unknown8]: yeah i'm not actually i'm not actually

[Unknown8]: doctor it's just just stephen is fine yeah that's fine

[Unknown7]: oh my apologies i thought i saw

[Unknown7]: um

[Unknown7]: wonderful to have you today

[Unknown7]: that

[Unknown8]: good to be here

[Unknown7]: so talk to us a little bit how did you get interested in this topic um

[Unknown7]: what was your path uh into philosophy and then from there into the pedagogical

[Unknown7]: side of it

[Unknown8]: so i i was originally an international relations major an undergraduate and then

[Unknown8]: depending

[Unknown7]: what

[Unknown8]: on my perspective or my parents' perspective made the

[Unknown8]: terrible choice of taking a philosophy class and then from that moment on it was

[Unknown8]: all like i changed majors late and late in college and so it was like six or seven

[Unknown8]: philosophy classes a term for the rest of the time out and i just loved it so then

[Unknown8]: did graduate work in philosophy

[Unknown8]: what i really was liked and what i found kind of on the flip side disheartening

[Unknown8]: about a lot of graduate education and philosophy here is that

[Unknown7]: mm

[Unknown8]: really what at its heart philosophy is about you know

[Unknown8]: i really did a lot with the

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: greeks especially how to live well the meaning of life what a good life looks like

[Unknown8]: what kind of person to be

[Unknown8]: and then a lot of graduate education is much more about

[Unknown8]: i mean as an adult now i see that there's a reason for it but it's about careers

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: and and kind of kind of the technical side of things which is important

[Unknown8]: and i've come to appreciate that side of things however it misses often that you

[Unknown8]: know plato and aristotle both talk about philosophy beginning and wonder and you

[Unknown8]: know

[Unknown8]: i think a lot of the professional organization of philosophy has left that part

[Unknown8]: out

[Unknown8]: which

[Unknown8]: partly also then when i was

[Unknown8]: in graduate school and then also i've been teaching in maris for close to twenty

[Unknown8]: years now

[Unknown8]: and both of those departments

[Unknown7]: color

[Unknown8]: pre college philosophy and philosophy for children or with children the different

[Unknown8]: terms for it were completely

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: absent i'd never heard

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: of it um and then i i was doing a i think it was seven years ago maybe doing a

[Unknown8]: summer program with tom wharton burg who's now an emeritus professor from

[Unknown8]: holyoak and i was i was working with him on existentialism i got a national

[Unknown7]: that

[Unknown8]: development for humanity grant to to do that and then

[Unknown7]: h

[Unknown8]: he mentioned

[Unknown7]: what

[Unknown8]: working with second graders and i had a kid who was in second grade at the time

[Unknown8]: and it just blew my mind and then started look into it just turned out that i'd

[Unknown8]: been teaching kids

[Unknown7]: that's

[Unknown8]: like high school kids philosophy for many

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: years but had no idea that there was a movement of it and i felt kind of sheepish

[Unknown8]: that you know other people were doing this and they had this expertise and i been

[Unknown8]: so since then it's been one of the main areas of my research and

[Unknown8]: shortly after that summer

[Unknown8]: i did

[Unknown7]: what

[Unknown8]: using pick a lot of with when it's really young kids they use picture

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: books and in particular frog and toad is one of the most popular ones so i did the

[Unknown8]: went to my kids' um second grade class and we did frog and toad the the one about

[Unknown8]: bravery where they're chased by snakes and various things and it was just amazing

[Unknown8]: that

[Unknown8]: then kind of related to that from that point on i started trying to push the

[Unknown8]: philosophy education to younger and

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: younger students at at the quicker um high school and and middle school that i

[Unknown8]: teach at so i now do middle school philosophy class

[Unknown8]: it's very much not you know like let's see what content to

[Unknown7]: right right

[Unknown8]: say on this but but much more

[Unknown8]: inspiring them

[Unknown7]: what

[Unknown8]: to well i with middle schoolers we

[Unknown8]: to well i with middle schoolers we

[Unknown8]: a couple of years ago i was doing

[Unknown8]: a frog and toad story again the one on friendship

[Unknown8]: and the conversation afterwards just blew my mind that they they pretty much got

[Unknown8]: to all the main points that aristotle gets to in the mi

[Unknown8]: nikki ethics and when i mentioned that to them then they said please bring some

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: aristotle in until the next week we looked at aristotle and it's you start to

[Unknown8]: realize that how short changed children are by how we understand

[Unknown8]: what they're capable of and what they're interested in

[Unknown8]: um

[Unknown8]: and to a degree i've come to think that you know kind of overall pedagogy in this

[Unknown8]: country is exactly

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: upside town in which we barrage them with details of information

[Unknown8]: and only

[Unknown8]: later for most people not until college if then do they get kind of a conceptual

[Unknown8]: understanding of why the details might may matter and kind of like how they relate

[Unknown8]: to each other whereas

[Unknown7]: yeah i

[Unknown8]: letting like i i love in class if a student were to say you know why should i care

[Unknown8]: letting like i i love in class if a student were to say you know why should i care

[Unknown8]: about this

[Unknown8]: about this

[Unknown8]: but those moments are erased generally for kids from class the answer is usually

[Unknown8]: that is you're mentioning the

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: test

[Unknown7]: yes because in a lot of ways we don't equip teachers to answer that question

[Unknown7]: and for some teachers it's even seen as a threatening question

[Unknown8]: it is yeah they often see it as rude i think that if you can't answer that

[Unknown8]: question then you shouldn't be teaching the material that day

[Unknown8]: but but i think even some of the

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: most prosaic lessons do have there's a reason for

[Unknown7]: right right

[Unknown8]: them and and and if the students know that

[Unknown8]: and if it fits into their sense of what matters and the problems in their

[Unknown8]: community the way do we would have us

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: understand it then you don't have to do we call it strain when

[Unknown7]: um

[Unknown8]: in a class when

[Unknown7]: what

[Unknown8]: you when you're forced to kind of kind of lean on them to make them learn

[Unknown8]: something and he sees that as the opposite of what real education is about whereas

[Unknown8]: if you frame things as being about the things that they already care about and the

[Unknown8]: problems in their community

[Unknown8]: you don't have to work to get them

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: interested

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: and i i found with philosophy you definitely don't have to work because the

[Unknown8]: younger the kids are the more that's where their minds are anyway

[Unknown8]: they they they love those questions

[Unknown7]: yeah absolutely uh one comment that i think

[Unknown7]: kind of ties in some what you're talking about

[Unknown7]: you mentioned that this has been go american this failure in american pedagogy has

[Unknown7]: been going on for a while and i mean that might be part of why we we have teachers

[Unknown7]: struggling with it right because those questions weren't answered for them and so

[Unknown7]: then they're frustrated because

[Unknown8]: it's a good point yeah

[Unknown7]: they're like why do you need this answered i didn't get this answered and that's

[Unknown7]: just

[Unknown7]: i mean depressing

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: i i could see the two

[Unknown7]: points converging

[Unknown8]: whether it's

[Unknown8]: absolutely the

[Unknown8]: one of the major organizations working on this in the country

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: is called plato stands for the philosophy learning and teaching organization i'm

[Unknown8]: on the the board of

[Unknown8]: and

[Unknown8]: one of the directions that we're looking to try and look at more now is teacher

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: training because

[Unknown8]: and part of this ties to some of the new things that teachers are asked to do with

[Unknown8]: common core but not trained to do

[Unknown8]: which it asks them to do

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: critical reasoning but as you would tell your story about the ap test most

[Unknown8]: teachers don't really spend time learning it themselves in education

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: school

[Unknown8]: so it is the challenge

[Unknown8]: but it's not challenging i've found to get kids to start doing philosophical

[Unknown8]: thinking and conversing

[Unknown7]: yeah oh i mean why questions are infamous in the three to four year old stage

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown7]: you mentioned earlier and it is a little bit further back but it did intrigue me

[Unknown7]: and i think this might take us uh kind of some of the main points you make even in

[Unknown7]: your book which by the way that's how i found you was intentional disruption so if

[Unknown7]: you can read that backwards whoever's watching this intentional disruption

[Unknown7]: expanding access to philosophy

[Unknown7]: which you edited it's a series of essays um but you mentioned

[Unknown7]: that as you got into graduate school they emphasized the technical side of things

[Unknown7]: over the wonder

[Unknown7]: can you

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: explain a little bit what you mean by the technical side of things

[Unknown8]: yeah so and i think that's why when people first hear

[Unknown8]: that there's even such a thing as philosophy with children or

[Unknown8]: it sounds

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: insane to them because most people's encounter with philosophy would have been

[Unknown8]: with for most of them a single college class

[Unknown8]: that they've often found to be the hardest class they took in college and it if

[Unknown8]: you're trying to recant or aristotle it is really hard

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: and that's part of philosophy and it's an important

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: part of it but

[Unknown8]: it's not the reason that people initially want to go into it they initially want

[Unknown8]: to go into it because they're having these thoughts about the kind of questions

[Unknown8]: that everyone cares about you can't help but to care about you know how should i

[Unknown8]: live

[Unknown8]: what's a meaningful life look like you know what what type of person should i be

[Unknown8]: how much do i owe to my neighbors and these kinds of really key questions that

[Unknown8]: then initially philosophy is intriguing because it addresses them but the further

[Unknown8]: up in philosophy you go the more it starts to kind of be

[Unknown7]: what

[Unknown8]: there's a lot of jargon and the technical aspects again which are important

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: but but in graduate school classes you don't often have moments where you stop and

[Unknown8]: say wow

[Unknown8]: think about this idea that's just such an

[Unknown8]: interesting idea

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: which

[Unknown8]: you need to have more of i think

[Unknown7]: well i mean and that's what keeps it alive and that's what i had an interview with

[Unknown7]: dr lee braver from

[Unknown7]: usf

[Unknown7]: earlier

[Unknown7]: last year now and uh he talked about when he does philosophy it's like eating

[Unknown7]: fireworks while riding a roller coaster but of course to everyone else just

[Unknown7]: watching which i was like that's a great description kind of graphic but

[Unknown8]: he

[Unknown7]: ah great description and

[Unknown7]: it was interesting because he said if you were watching me all you'd see is me

[Unknown7]: sitting there reading and going hm

[Unknown7]: right and it's not it's not

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: uh very exciting from the outside but once you ignite that on the inside and once

[Unknown7]: you understand the questions of the technical points the technical points become

[Unknown7]: valuable something that i've

[Unknown8]: yep

[Unknown7]: noticed with my own conversations you know people be like oh you did philosophy

[Unknown7]: and then they'll ask me a question and it's normally a really terrible way to

[Unknown7]: phrase the question right because asking questions well is a one of the hardest

[Unknown7]: things to do in philosophy and it's really i found it really easy for myself to

[Unknown7]: brush them aside or immediately jump to things that would i could tell make their

[Unknown7]: eyes glaze over

[Unknown7]: and even

[Unknown8]: yep

[Unknown7]: as you're talking about it here and what works for children and all honesty works

[Unknown7]: for adults we're three or four steps away from a great conversation and that's

[Unknown7]: normally because there are these distinctions why did the children want to read

[Unknown7]: aristotle and they ended up enjoying reading aristotle because you guided them to

[Unknown7]: the point where they started to understand the distinctions he was making

[Unknown7]: and so

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: a lot of what we're talking about with aristotle and kant seems to be this lack of

[Unknown7]: context we jump all the way to these distinctions and they don't understand why

[Unknown7]: they're important yet by the time they do

[Unknown8]: yes

[Unknown7]: start to understand it it's exactly what you're saying it's flipped upside down by

[Unknown7]: the time they do understand the context

[Unknown7]: uh they're they're disinterested

[Unknown8]: yeah and i think often they've turned off their interests to history

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: to science tell us i mean the example i like to give that i find is to be such a

[Unknown8]: sad testament to how we approach things is that and when i do asian religions and

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: philosophies in classes i mention it to them but the the picture of the world that

[Unknown8]: you're ever that like modern chemistry gives is mind

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: blowing right it suggests that all of our senses are wrong that the world is made

[Unknown8]: up of small things that are empty space but that's nothing to do with our actual

[Unknown8]: sensory experience of the world so it's but in your average chemistry class they

[Unknown8]: spend no time whatsoever about how freaky that is whereas if if you could really

[Unknown8]: like you can use those kind of moments to get to them to then care

[Unknown7]: hmm

[Unknown8]: about doing like figuring out the math around you know atomic numbers and moles

[Unknown8]: and various things like that

[Unknown8]: or like the chapter one and the science text books that

[Unknown8]: classes always skip because they're like we don't have time for chapter one that's

[Unknown8]: always the one that talks about how can we know about this how have we come to the

[Unknown8]: method that they got and

[Unknown8]: another thing that we like with

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: science it tends to be this like march of triumph that you only look in a textbook

[Unknown8]: at what they think is true now

[Unknown8]: but it has nothing to do with how real science is done science is all about false

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: moves and so there's never any emphasis on the history of science in which you see

[Unknown8]: how at some point in the past it was quite reasonable to believe things that now

[Unknown8]: we think of are as unreasonable but there were good reasons to believe them then

[Unknown8]: and then

[Unknown8]: in doing that it comes to

[Unknown8]: hopefully cause us to have

[Unknown8]: epistemic modesty

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: to see like oh the things that i believe now there might be really good reasons in

[Unknown8]: the future why people would think that it's ridiculous to believe that

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: and so to and the less certain we are in our beliefs the more likely we are to be

[Unknown8]: able to hear other people too which socially we've been pretty bad at lately i

[Unknown8]: think

[Unknown7]: and i love that you make that point because the opposite of epistemic modesty

[Unknown7]: would i be assume epistemic arrogance

[Unknown7]: and

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: when you skip the historical context in the whole trail of mistakes it took to get

[Unknown7]: where we are today

[Unknown7]: you do get people looking into the past and saying wow they're just stupid and i'm

[Unknown7]: really smart cause i know this and it's like

[Unknown8]: yep

[Unknown7]: i mean what what would aristotle or galileo

[Unknown7]: or a lovelace you know like these people what would they understand and be able to

[Unknown7]: push us forward with if they were here today right and it's just it's so

[Unknown7]: no i think that's a great point

[Unknown8]: and it's it's kind of analogous too in how we view the past in how we view

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: children and one of my favorite people in the field gary matthews who was a

[Unknown8]: philosopher from eas

[Unknown8]: he was a specialist in ancient philosophy but then was one of the real inventors

[Unknown8]: of the new movement in the mid twentieth century

[Unknown8]: he made that that point of connecting them in that in the same way that we would

[Unknown8]: see you know it's laughable now to look at aristotle's science for instance but

[Unknown8]: there are really good reasons why he

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: believed that then we also then look at kids ideas and see them either being kind

[Unknown8]: of from a patronizing sense of like you know how cute or pi's notion of children

[Unknown8]: as being kind of deficit and development meant filling in where you

[Unknown8]: you weren't

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: as good at but matthews' point was to say in fact it's not just that you can do

[Unknown8]: philosophy with kids but they're better at some things than we are because

[Unknown8]: the more years you live the more you come to know how things are the worse you get

[Unknown8]: at being able to think counterfactual and like to think about how things could be

[Unknown8]: and so he makes this wonderful suggestion about that that's really informed how i

[Unknown8]: think about things how important it is to have

[Unknown8]: philosophical dialogues involving people of different ages

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: because

[Unknown8]: it's it's not that we develop and get better at things but we have at different

[Unknown8]: ages

[Unknown8]: we're able to do certain things

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: better and we lose some of those things and so

[Unknown8]: once i started thinking in those terms then it actually made me a much better

[Unknown8]: teacher as well to be able to really hear what my students were saying and it and

[Unknown8]: every now and then someone'll say something and i'll say i never thought about

[Unknown8]: that before and you can see how powerful it is to them to be taken seriously with

[Unknown8]: these important philosophical questions because their ideas are just as

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: good and that matthews' point which i think is a

[Unknown8]: an important one is that not only can you do philosophy with children they can

[Unknown8]: actually forward the field

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: they can raise questions and bring things up that no one the adults in the field

[Unknown8]: haven't thought of and can actually

[Unknown7]: mm

[Unknown8]: progress can be made by having conversations with them

[Unknown7]: yeah it's really interesting you bring that up

[Unknown7]: i did most of my work in philosophical hermits and han

[Unknown8]: hm

[Unknown7]: zord gomer uh

[Unknown8]: yeah i like it

[Unknown7]: writes a good

[Unknown7]: like a pretty long section about ja batista vik

[Unknown8]: hmm

[Unknown7]: criticizing dec and probably the biggest criticism we had and i found this to be

[Unknown7]: criticizing dec and probably the biggest criticism we had and i found this to be

[Unknown7]: true and i didn't follow the intuition through to the end that i should have is

[Unknown7]: true and i didn't follow the intuition through to the end that i should have is

[Unknown7]: that day carts the cartesian method doesn't work for kids

[Unknown7]: that day carts the cartesian method doesn't work for kids

[Unknown7]: it doesn't because the

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: idea of like building from little blocks up to where we need to be takes too long

[Unknown7]: right it doesn't work for like

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: kids need to be told ethical things right now and i've often found myself

[Unknown7]: uh ma

[Unknown7]: working in philosophy from the point as a as parent and being like well what if i

[Unknown7]: talk this way to my kids with this work

[Unknown7]: and what i should have been saying is i should have actually talked to them right

[Unknown7]: instead of

[Unknown8]: like

[Unknown7]: like arm chairing it and i think that's a really interesting point in terms of

[Unknown7]: they don't have a lot of the same structure as we do right they are better at some

[Unknown7]: things what's your

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: favorite example i'm assuming you do this personally quite a bit right

[Unknown8]: yep

[Unknown7]: what are some of your favorite examples of what if thinking that caught you off

[Unknown7]: guard

[Unknown7]: a lot of

[Unknown8]: a lot of when i do middle school philosophy um

[Unknown8]: essentially we the sixth grade we look at questions involving um the self in the

[Unknown8]: world seventh grade it's more the social and political and ethical in the eighth

[Unknown8]: grade is like personal identity kind of

[Unknown7]: mm hm

[Unknown7]: what

[Unknown8]: and i think where you often find the most

[Unknown8]: really interesting jumps is is with the social and political philosophy that i

[Unknown8]: think

[Unknown8]: and in some ways it's you could see like someone like socrates is almost like a

[Unknown8]: child in how he positions himself in that what with children because they don't

[Unknown8]: have the background they're not able to know oh these are the things that people

[Unknown8]: have said for these various reasons they can think more creatively and often when

[Unknown8]: it comes to questions of fairness we'll come up with insights that

[Unknown8]: i would certainly never have thought

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: of um

[Unknown8]: because

[Unknown8]: as you as you learn more you conceptualize everything into the language that

[Unknown8]: you've already that you've

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: trained in and and there's value in that but there's also value in having them

[Unknown8]: be able to phrase things often very awkwardly but that the point that they're

[Unknown8]: making is can be stunning i mean

[Unknown8]: when it comes to children and philosophy it was it must have been about six but

[Unknown8]: one morning at the breakfast table my younger son essentially came up with the

[Unknown8]: cosmological proof just in

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: talking about like you know how could the universe and it start and

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: how could it have how to start and

[Unknown8]: when it works

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: well is when i'm not prompting it if i try prompting it at home i get i get eye

[Unknown8]: rolls and like you know start doing philosophy to that it's so so cringe

[Unknown7]: oh yeah

[Unknown8]: you know those kinds of things but

[Unknown8]: and and then

[Unknown8]: one time he was probably about the same age my older son

[Unknown7]: what

[Unknown8]: was walking around on on

[Unknown8]: and in his field with him and he's looked up at a squirrel and he and he said you

[Unknown8]: know dad how comes dogs i'll have names but squirrels don't and i realized that he

[Unknown8]: was making like a

[Unknown7]: what

[Unknown8]: really important conceptual distinction

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: there about you know what counts as individuals whereas some things are just part

[Unknown8]: of categories and

[Unknown7]: s

[Unknown8]: questions in the philosophy of language that it was phrased in a much more direct

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: way but really really important kinds of

[Unknown8]: answer questions

[Unknown7]: besides the frog and toad series which you've mentioned a couple times and who

[Unknown7]: writes that

[Unknown8]: arnold lobell

[Unknown8]: yeah those are my favorites

[Unknown7]: i think you also mentioned pictures to start uh conversations or

[Unknown8]: mm hm

[Unknown7]: those picture books or pictures

[Unknown8]: those are picture

[Unknown7]: got you

[Unknown8]: books yeah

[Unknown8]: so yeah so i mean i i have some friends who have done this philosophy with

[Unknown8]: children

[Unknown8]: with kids is as early as

[Unknown8]: prek

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: they're definitely using picture

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: books

[Unknown7]: i would

[Unknown8]: but

[Unknown7]: assume so yes

[Unknown8]: but the idea is that you can use anything to prompt the discussion whether it be a

[Unknown8]: picture book it could be a

[Unknown8]: my friend tom morton burg put together a whole program of using paintings from an

[Unknown8]: art museum at the

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: i think somewhere up near him in in massachusetts um

[Unknown8]: you can use clips from films or pieces of text

[Unknown8]: but that the idea the kind of the classic move

[Unknown7]: but

[Unknown8]: with younger philosophers is to have the the thing

[Unknown8]: sometimes you can just have them generate questions and you don't need to prompt

[Unknown8]: them at all

[Unknown8]: that's one popular way or to give them something to prompt them and the term that

[Unknown8]: is usually used as community of inquiry and it's there's a

[Unknown8]: when people who do pre college philosophy or getting dogmatic that's where they

[Unknown8]: get dogmatic or sometimes arguing over exactly how it has to be

[Unknown7]: m

[Unknown8]: done and

[Unknown8]: i think it can be multiply realized can be looked in lots of different

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: ways but the the the it's the term that perse used to describe scientific

[Unknown8]: community and then do we repurpose that term to say actually you know at any real

[Unknown8]: teaching any real good classroom is going to be a community

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: of inquiry and the

[Unknown7]: m h

[Unknown8]: the premise of it

[Unknown7]: but

[Unknown8]: is that

[Unknown7]: quite a bit

[Unknown8]: we inquire best when we're doing it together that that learning is a

[Unknown7]: e

[Unknown8]: social thing that is not where a lot of the metaphors in the our contemporary

[Unknown8]: understanding of education

[Unknown8]: especially with the testing regime

[Unknown8]: view

[Unknown8]: information and like learning and knowledge as being akin to like a capitalist ais

[Unknown8]: music like a thing that you

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: possess not a thing that we share

[Unknown8]: and so i it's a

[Unknown8]: as a method

[Unknown8]: it usually shares with it the sense that there isn't a set outcome that you're

[Unknown8]: aiming for

[Unknown8]: um

[Unknown8]: and so at the end of a session you might not have

[Unknown8]: so the the

[Unknown8]: the paradox that my mentor and undergraduate gave me which i like is to say at the

[Unknown8]: end of the session you might not be any closer to the the truth or to the end but

[Unknown8]: you'll be further from the beginning and that every everyone will have felt those

[Unknown8]: progress that's been

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: made but you're not at the end there and often when i've had classes where it's

[Unknown8]: most uncertain or the term lato would use is like perplexity opera

[Unknown8]: that's when the students were most thankful they're like oh that was great thank

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: you so much are they

[Unknown8]: the the sense that it's open and that the conversation can go in a number of

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: ways

[Unknown7]: i mean and because it's something they even look forward to and they continue

[Unknown7]: afterwards right it's like yeah

[Unknown8]: yes

[Unknown7]: have you ever come uh into a lunch room and heard them still discussing it

[Unknown8]: very

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: often or i frequently run into their parents who will say that philosophy class

[Unknown8]: has become their main dinner table conversation piece where you know whatever

[Unknown8]: topic that we're talking about in philosophy class goes home

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: and

[Unknown8]: which i love to hear because

[Unknown7]: i was just about saying yeah that must bring you so much joy that's got as a

[Unknown7]: teacher that's gotta be one of the best feelings

[Unknown8]: largely because i think

[Unknown8]: before covid

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: times and hopefully after covid times again i've been doing these um

[Unknown7]: what about

[Unknown8]: evening philosophy sessions where i tried to get

[Unknown8]: um students parents teachers board members there was many different people

[Unknown8]: especially of different

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: ages together to talk about you know and it would be a theme but like it might

[Unknown8]: start off on you know epistemology or philosophy of education but who knows where

[Unknown8]: it would end up going

[Unknown7]: what else i

[Unknown8]: and uh what i found often that would be so beautiful to see is that

[Unknown7]: my

[Unknown8]: i think sometimes that in abstracting that philosophy gives often gave parents and

[Unknown8]: their kids a chance to meet each other in a place where the emotions were able to

[Unknown8]: not be especially when

[Unknown7]: mm

[Unknown8]: you're a teenager it's hard to talk to your parents but at the end of those

[Unknown8]: sessions often you felt like the they had learned

[Unknown7]: mm

[Unknown8]: a lot about each other by what they had said in those sessions that they wouldn't

[Unknown8]: have talked about

[Unknown8]: without the kind of the

[Unknown8]: i guess the formal structure of a community of inquiry

[Unknown7]: yeah um you're creating a safe place for discussion correct if if that makes sense

[Unknown7]: yeah the

[Unknown7]: yeah you mentioned in your uh essay that you've received some pushback on teaching

[Unknown7]: philosophy at such young age talk a little bit about that what kind of pushback do

[Unknown7]: you receive and what's your response to that

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown8]: so i mean that i think i directly talk about that in the essay that one of the

[Unknown8]: long standing push backs against philosophy in general

[Unknown8]: it's viewed as being kind of a trouble

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: maker and you know plato actually addresses that in the republic there's a line

[Unknown8]: that i always love about

[Unknown8]: the dangers of exposing kids to philosophy too young this idea that they

[Unknown7]: mm

[Unknown8]: become like puppies where they're just like ripping at everything that they get

[Unknown8]: good at like being able to ask critical questions and then they're going to be

[Unknown8]: like the concern of either they be these snots that they're going to go to other

[Unknown8]: other classes and be like yeah oh yeah how do you know that

[Unknown8]: demanding an epistemological justification from their science teachers and you

[Unknown8]: know storo graphical justification from their history teachers

[Unknown8]: and there's

[Unknown8]: a little bit of truth to that i definitely when i you know teach philosophy of

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: science classes those students then go and then demand to know like you know how

[Unknown8]: do you know this you know talk to me about the status of scientific law on these

[Unknown8]: kinds of things but i mean i think again

[Unknown8]: teachers that really enjoy teaching should love those moments

[Unknown8]: you can't always give class time over to them but

[Unknown8]: if a student were to say to a math teacher like oh yeah prove it the math teacher

[Unknown8]: should be happy to say okay i will let me show you how i can prove that um so

[Unknown8]: that's that's one i think that's less that these days the biggest concern

[Unknown8]: is is its

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: efficiency or lack thereof good philosophy is really inefficient in fact it's the

[Unknown8]: opposite efficient in as much as

[Unknown7]: mm

[Unknown8]: what it often will do is take questions that seem to have been settled and caused

[Unknown8]: people to reopen things that like oh we already moved on from that question it's

[Unknown8]: already established but we come and i i think they the value of socrates again

[Unknown8]: this figure it's always reminding people how important it is to unlearn things

[Unknown8]: and you know if you believe something that's false

[Unknown8]: it can harm you

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: devastatingly harm me

[Unknown8]: problem is

[Unknown8]: in a testing regime like there can't really be a tests about effective unlearn

[Unknown8]: which things that you to believe that are bad and false do you no longer believe

[Unknown8]: being because of your schooling like the

[Unknown8]: and so it's

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: i think so some of us who work in this field in trying to change the conversation

[Unknown8]: around education

[Unknown8]: again it's

[Unknown7]: like

[Unknown8]: unlike in a lot of countries

[Unknown8]: there seems very little likelihood that

[Unknown7]: one

[Unknown8]: philosophy is going to become a

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: standard class in most schools

[Unknown7]: hmm

[Unknown8]: curriculum but rethinking

[Unknown8]: how we approach other classes so again and the idea would be

[Unknown8]: in a chemistry class to have some moments where you're framing like the picture of

[Unknown8]: the world and allow them kind of the moment of wonder of saying wow that's so

[Unknown8]: freaky that's so amazing this idea that because when you frame it

[Unknown7]: what

[Unknown8]: in that way it's easy to get excited about because we've all wondered those kinds

[Unknown8]: of things

[Unknown8]: and that you know in biology classes to to raise the bioethics

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: parts

[Unknown8]: rather than just the facts of course it would mean fewer facts but if they're tied

[Unknown8]: to interesting concepts not only is it more fun to learn you tend to remember

[Unknown8]: things more

[Unknown7]: well say you tend to stick more yes

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown8]: but i mean that those are i would say that's with philosophy in general with

[Unknown8]: ethics interestingly like you know one of the most commonly

[Unknown8]: said things that schools and people who work in schools are we saying is a desire

[Unknown8]: to have you know

[Unknown8]: be able to teach their students to be more moral

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: right that that it could be that said there's often a real

[Unknown8]: pushback about ethics classes because the concern would be like who's ethics

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: which picture of what's right and what's wrong and ethics has also traditionally

[Unknown8]: had

[Unknown8]: been inflected through religion and so you know public schools society have like

[Unknown8]: we can't even talk about any of this stuff because their approach often even in

[Unknown8]: history classes is you know if it has to have church state separation we just

[Unknown8]: won't do any religious education at all we'll just ignore

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: these questions and ethics questions are sometimes seen as as tied to that

[Unknown8]: i think it's a it's a loss in that

[Unknown8]: those are real concerns however

[Unknown8]: there are areas where there's almost complete consensus where you can use to build

[Unknown8]: interesting ethics discussion something like in a school cheating schools all have

[Unknown8]: moral codes where they suggest you why is cheating wrong it's an interesting

[Unknown8]: question yeah there was a moment in the cultural revolution in china where some of

[Unknown8]: the students petitioned that it was somehow capitalist and counter revolutionary

[Unknown8]: this idea that you give tests where everyone could only like you know appear into

[Unknown8]: their own soul for the answers whereas they should be able to ask their at

[Unknown8]: everyone because the answers were communally owned

[Unknown8]: and that so i mean the idea is

[Unknown7]: yeah yeah

[Unknown8]: why why why cheating is

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: bad because most kids don't think it necessarily is but schools say it is

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: and so you can dress codes and you bullying and there there are lots of things

[Unknown8]: that the schools themselves take moral stances on and so they're not morally

[Unknown8]: neutral even if

[Unknown8]: i think it's schools should even you know be talking about abortion and capital

[Unknown8]: punishment and things like that not to again provide a conclusion that's not the

[Unknown8]: role of a school but one of the things that philosophy can do that's really useful

[Unknown8]: is to give

[Unknown8]: conceptual clarity so the idea to help people

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: understand

[Unknown8]: so if you're going to have an atheist and a theist to have an argument about god

[Unknown8]: you can't have that conversation until you agree what does that word mean once

[Unknown8]: everyone agrees what the word means then you can have an interesting conversation

[Unknown8]: and so

[Unknown8]: i think that's a place where schools can be doing that

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: kind of thing it's you know up to families and churches and communities and those

[Unknown8]: kind of things to decide which of the possible answers is the right one

[Unknown8]: but schools should be in the business of clarifying

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: so that you know there's been this whole debate about i think ridiculous debate

[Unknown8]: about

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: critical race theory for instance

[Unknown7]: i was gonna ask you yeah go ahead yeah

[Unknown8]: which of the things critical race i actually teach a class that has that in the

[Unknown8]: title

[Unknown8]: which i've found hilarious watching this

[Unknown7]: yeah yeah

[Unknown8]: debate because i've been teaching it for like fifteen years but um

[Unknown8]: one of the major things that that field does is just to try and understand

[Unknown8]: what is race what kind of a thing is it you know to do conceptual clarity and then

[Unknown8]: once you do that to figure out if it's this kind of thing these

[Unknown7]: mm i

[Unknown8]: are some of the implications if it's this other kind of thing there'd be different

[Unknown8]: implications and you know again the job of a good teacher with those kinds of

[Unknown8]: topics isn't to say here's the answer

[Unknown8]: you

[Unknown7]: so

[Unknown8]: know in the same way that know in

[Unknown7]: okay

[Unknown8]: a in a traditional ethics class

[Unknown7]: cancel timer

[Unknown8]: you wouldn't study a bunch of different perspectives and it you know the last

[Unknown8]: class have the teachers say okay

[Unknown7]: i can

[Unknown8]: so let me tell you now who was right and

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: who was wrong that would be a that'd be terrible teaching

[Unknown8]: and so but you would ask them to be able to understand what the claims were

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: right

[Unknown8]: and so critical race theory that's hardly what it's doing is also asking us to

[Unknown8]: rethink certain his historical

[Unknown8]: assumptions we make

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: but it's not a dogmatic field

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: but again i guess you could say

[Unknown8]: tied to the first concern about philosophy that i had said

[Unknown8]: really tragically i think for some people that they would see the danger of

[Unknown8]: philosophy with younger people in that it would cause them to become independent

[Unknown8]: thinkers

[Unknown7]: just some

[Unknown8]: which that's my goal for my students but for some some schools they would see that

[Unknown8]: as being terrible that they don't you don't want people thinking for themselves

[Unknown8]: you want them to like do what they're told and

[Unknown7]: yes yes

[Unknown8]: put answer the questions in the way that the test is designed them to

[Unknown7]: yes uh and i think that's uh such an interesting thing you know as as we talk

[Unknown7]: about this

[Unknown7]: that you know what is the purpose of teaching right and what's the purpose of

[Unknown7]: parenting as you look at these things

[Unknown7]: i don't think that people are even that worried of when i talk to parents it's not

[Unknown7]: that

[Unknown7]: these kind of questions um cause we talked about race quite a bit i taught

[Unknown7]: american history industry as well i mean you can't avoid it right now like it's

[Unknown7]: gonna come up yeah

[Unknown8]: that's what they want

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: to have happened now a lot of these districts

[Unknown7]: but

[Unknown7]: and what i found is the kids didn't even so much mind talking about it there were

[Unknown7]: a few kids perhaps um but really it's the parents who don't want to have these

[Unknown7]: conversations with their kids

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: because it's

[Unknown8]: and if they

[Unknown7]: uncomfortable because being faced with the truth uh whenever you're and and it

[Unknown7]: doesn't like or just being asked hard questions is uncomfortable because if you

[Unknown7]: can't answer it or you come up with a different answer than you had before then

[Unknown7]: you

[Unknown7]: are there is that moral obligation to change right and that's

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: that's scary

[Unknown8]: yeah i usually start off courses by wining out to the students that part of my job

[Unknown8]: is to make them uncomfortable they're different forms of

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: discomfort there's the kind of discomfort that causes similar to like you know

[Unknown8]: after you've exercised it causes you to grow and develop and become better that's

[Unknown8]: what i am is kind of discomfort that causes people to feel small and not hurd and

[Unknown8]: those kinds of things or is

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: not so discomfort isn't

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: always good but it but some amount

[Unknown8]: again the idea of a community of inquiry you start off by saying

[Unknown8]: the premise here is that someone if they've said something that's up for now

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: discussion and it's everyone else's job to say well i'm concerned about this one

[Unknown8]: thing i disagree for

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: these reasons and then the persons has to then respond to say like hm and actually

[Unknown8]: hear what the reasons were they don't have to change their

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: mind but they have but they can't take personally the idea that we're now talking

[Unknown8]: about an idea and the idea has to be if if if it's going to be worth holding it

[Unknown8]: should be worth investigating and

[Unknown8]: being called into question

[Unknown7]: which is important

[Unknown8]: and i think

[Unknown7]: oh i'm sorry go ahead

[Unknown8]: yeah i i think in some schools again that's seen as being

[Unknown8]: disrespectful

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown7]: uh it it's interesting you know uh as we talk about this that even as you've been

[Unknown7]: teaching critical race theory as part of you know he said it's part of the title

[Unknown7]: but for fifteen years

[Unknown8]: post colonial post colonial studies is the other part of the title

[Unknown7]: got you okay so pretty much yeah exactly what people are talking

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: about

[Unknown7]: and people don't even realize that when we talk about ignorance and bias

[Unknown7]: and prejudice that one of the

[Unknown7]: most important solutions to actually fixing our own blind spots is just the

[Unknown7]: knowledge that comes with it right like

[Unknown7]: yes there are multitude so for instance if you have an anger problem or some other

[Unknown7]: emotional problem

[Unknown7]: there is there are

[Unknown8]: let's see

[Unknown7]: different methods of dealing with that but one of the most important things is

[Unknown7]: just being able to recognize that one you have the problem and just the self

[Unknown8]: and

[Unknown7]: awareness will often mitigate that issue

[Unknown7]: and so if you talk about something like

[Unknown7]: you know what is race

[Unknown7]: it's it's an enormous blind spot most people would have no idea how they would

[Unknown7]: just point at specific examples right well this person's white

[Unknown8]: yep

[Unknown7]: and this person's black and it's an enormous blind spot where we aren't able to

[Unknown7]: deal with the issues

[Unknown8]: i think some one of the things that happens in that class that's useful is the

[Unknown8]: post colonial part

[Unknown7]: oh my

[Unknown8]: means that it's an international

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: perspective because we have a tendency to kind of universal and view as natural

[Unknown8]: the way we conceive of race in our society and it's viewed really differently in

[Unknown8]: other places and you know

[Unknown7]: in america that surprises me no i sorry i couldn't resist

[Unknown8]: yes

[Unknown8]: and i think i also i teach a class in greek philosophy and every now and then i

[Unknown8]: wonder to myself you know what's the value of of

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: learning this but but having a time when you see the world through the lens of

[Unknown8]: someone that in some ways shares so much with us but in other ways it's so alien

[Unknown8]: it's a really important thing to see the world through totally different

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: perspective you know for the most part like the students at the end don't buy much

[Unknown8]: of what plato says but they we we read the republic and this the whole book and

[Unknown8]: they after the first class which they they they hate it right at first 'cause it's

[Unknown8]: hard to

[Unknown7]: yep

[Unknown8]: start but then once they get a sense of what's going on they found it they find it

[Unknown8]: really powerful even though almost all of the major ideas they're like no way this

[Unknown7]: right right

[Unknown8]: is terrible like

[Unknown7]: i con

[Unknown8]: but but it's terrible in a way that forces them to like think about you know

[Unknown8]: so for instance like the term diversity is is presented as being universally good

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: plato forces us to think are there some forms of diversity that

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: aren't good so like diversity of like how morally good people are it's probably

[Unknown8]: bad that's something we want to aim for right

[Unknown7]: i would like to bring yeah i would like to bring in more murderers into my society

[Unknown7]: to balance things out it's like maybe not

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: um

[Unknown7]: yeah confession time i have to admit i think i've read the republic three or four

[Unknown7]: times and i've always stopped at the part where he has the long winded argument

[Unknown7]: about whether or not

[Unknown7]: men and women should wrestle naked i don't know

[Unknown8]: yes

[Unknown7]: every time i'm just like

[Unknown8]: yes

[Unknown7]: i don't care like it's so like it's so hard for you to get through um i think i

[Unknown7]: made

[Unknown8]: it certainly

[Unknown7]: it go ahead

[Unknown8]: i was gonna say certainly that the passage that when you're teaching a room full

[Unknown8]: of teenagers that sticks with them the whole idea of schooling being in naked

[Unknown7]: yeah yeah oh i'm sure i'm sure yes oh bet

[Unknown8]: that but but the part that's brilliant is that it's also the thing that the people

[Unknown8]: that socrates is talking to they're also a bunch of

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: teenagers and they also can't get past that he keeps trying to move on and they're

[Unknown8]: like no wait let's talk more about naked school and

[Unknown8]: and so i mean it's it's a good model because socrates is doing philosophy with

[Unknown8]: young

[Unknown7]: hy

[Unknown8]: young people of his philosophy is with young people

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown7]: you mentioned this earlier and i have to ask and if you don't have an example at

[Unknown7]: the top of your head that's fine but you talked about allowing students to

[Unknown7]: generate their own questions is that

[Unknown8]: hmm

[Unknown7]: something that you do

[Unknown8]: so i do

[Unknown8]: i would say when you're talking about pre college

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: philosophy one of the first questions

[Unknown8]: that determines what it's going to look like is whether or not it's a course that

[Unknown8]: has to have an evaluation at the end of it meaning

[Unknown7]: right right

[Unknown8]: a grade and so classes with grades look kind of different so i teach a class in

[Unknown8]: existentialism and you know one in philosophy of science philosophy religion those

[Unknown8]: kinds of ones those they have papers and tests which means that you know in the

[Unknown8]: philosophy of religion class they need to be able to explain the you know

[Unknown8]: cosmological proof or the

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: ontological proof those kinds of things which means there's a certain amount of

[Unknown8]: content that they

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: expected to master right and so it's delivered in a more open way than you know

[Unknown8]: i'm not just like throwing it at them but

[Unknown8]: i i would be

[Unknown7]: so

[Unknown8]: that's not a kind of class in which i i would tend to have them run because

[Unknown8]: there's there are certain number of topics that we need to cover by the end of the

[Unknown8]: term

[Unknown8]: whereas when i do the middle school philosophy it doesn't

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: have a grade it's it's purely just you know those are ones that the very first

[Unknown8]: class i

[Unknown8]: i asked them to generate they have to each tell me something that they're really

[Unknown8]: interested in that they don't they'd be curious to talk about and so you know it

[Unknown8]: varies widely but you know people ask questions about you know i would say

[Unknown7]: what

[Unknown8]: lately a lot of questions about you know can you choose your

[Unknown8]: emotions really

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: the big question in like stoic ethics and you know various things so so it's

[Unknown8]: really important one

[Unknown8]: some kids lately have been really interested in

[Unknown7]: else

[Unknown8]: ethics and video games so like is there anything morally wrong with like killing

[Unknown8]: ethics and video games so like is there anything morally wrong with like killing

[Unknown8]: people in a video game you know

[Unknown8]: people in a video game you know

[Unknown7]: okay that's not where i thought that was going okay yeah

[Unknown8]: so cause you haven't harmed

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: anyone right but ma maybe you've farms yourself and so you know those can be

[Unknown8]: really

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: interesting they love questions about so when i have them generate i would say

[Unknown8]: almost all always one person in the class wants to talk about whether it's more

[Unknown8]: the okay to eat animals

[Unknown7]: yep

[Unknown8]: and so

[Unknown8]: but yeah so the way it's often done with

[Unknown8]: of inquiry philosophy children type thing is you'll generate a bunch of questions

[Unknown8]: and then have them vote and then you pick up the question that the most one of

[Unknown8]: them wants to talk

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: about

[Unknown8]: and then

[Unknown8]: they have various models some there are programs in the world where you can get

[Unknown8]: like a special license to do kind of philosophical inquiry

[Unknown8]: the the the model that tom morten burg developed he was using undergraduate

[Unknown8]: students from a class that he designed for the first half of the term he would

[Unknown8]: train them in a couple of key philosophical areas

[Unknown8]: and then send them into elementary schools to run sessions with pit picture books

[Unknown8]: i sometimes have used high schoolers who have taken a bunch of philosophy as

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: tas and i find that having a high school in the room with the middle schoolers is

[Unknown8]: really great because it means that there's more of a mix of

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: age groups and

[Unknown8]: but

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: yeah that's that's really interesting and i i'm glad you kind of mentioned you

[Unknown7]: took that kind of detour because besides intentional disruption

[Unknown7]: i'd like to you know i i'm a digital marketer by day and along with a home

[Unknown7]: schooling dad coz i'm crazy

[Unknown7]: i look at you know i found you through your book intentional disruption

[Unknown7]: i spent hours googling and you and normally i'm pretty good at googling

[Unknown7]: or probably an hour googling and i did not find much on teaching philosophy to

[Unknown7]: young kids what if someone wants to understand this someone wants to do this what

[Unknown7]: are the best where are the best places to start

[Unknown8]: so

[Unknown8]: i would say the the

[Unknown7]: see

[Unknown8]: one of the things to look at is that i guess a couple of perspectives one is that

[Unknown8]: the earliest sources are the classical world there was a lot more of it done there

[Unknown8]: you have um dialogues that

[Unknown7]: what

[Unknown8]: augustine had with kids

[Unknown7]: oh

[Unknown8]: and you know socrates talking with kids

[Unknown8]: and you have versions of that in china and india also so all the earliest written

[Unknown8]: civilizations have versions of that

[Unknown8]: that's not really necessarily where

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: to start but

[Unknown8]: in this country in the english speaking world really they they're two

[Unknown8]: kind of centers i guess you could say li the one was a literal center that in new

[Unknown8]: jersey that um walter lipman and anne margaret sharp

[Unknown8]: started a program called the institute for the advancement for

[Unknown8]: children and i always forget exactly children

[Unknown7]: yeah i do

[Unknown8]: in philosophy it's a

[Unknown8]: and

[Unknown8]: matthew lipman in particular he wrote a whole series of books that were um

[Unknown8]: harry stottlemeyer is the first one that they were meant for kids of particular

[Unknown8]: age to be read to try and teach them the skills of

[Unknown7]: was

[Unknown8]: philosophy but their stories about kids in school and just like doing regular

[Unknown8]: things but they like end up talking to each other about you know oh how did you

[Unknown8]: know that you know and so it becomes a question about epistemology without ever

[Unknown8]: using the word epistemology

[Unknown8]: most of those books are out of print but are soon gonna be there was a grant given

[Unknown8]: they're gonna all be freely available online

[Unknown7]: oh awesome

[Unknown8]: basically their approach at that center was to community of inquiry kind of open

[Unknown8]: ended but to have these lessons in which you're teaching philosophical skills

[Unknown7]: my

[Unknown8]: my favorite approach is the one of gareth matthews

[Unknown8]: he's the one that was the classicist but

[Unknown8]: one of the things that he did that i really like is that he

[Unknown7]: that

[Unknown8]: he was writing about philosophy with children but also he

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: started realizing that in order to conceive of this we need a philosophy of

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: childhood and really understand what is what his childhood mean and so he had some

[Unknown8]: fascinating things about for instance the value of children's art wrote a really

[Unknown8]: interesting article in that

[Unknown8]: and he wrote at least two books that really are just kind of um discussing

[Unknown8]: dialogues he had with kids

[Unknown7]: but

[Unknown8]: largely to show professional philosophers how

[Unknown8]: it's not just cute but they're actually getting to the heart of some of these like

[Unknown8]: he would he would use pieces of of

[Unknown8]: the tradition so for instance the ring of gigi story from the the republic

[Unknown8]: he tells a story about being with a bunch of seventh graders at a um

[Unknown8]: an orthodox jewish school that they were studying the the vicas and he was asked

[Unknown8]: to do a guest election lecture so or not lecture lesson so he came in and had them

[Unknown8]: do the ring of js so the whole question of like why should you do the right thing

[Unknown8]: if no one

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: can see you if you can get away the consequences and

[Unknown8]: describes some insights that like he's more of a classicist than i am but that his

[Unknown8]: claim at least at the time he

[Unknown7]: what

[Unknown8]: was writing that that none of the people in the two thousand five hundred years

[Unknown8]: since that have been writing about the republic had

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: suggested sort of genuinely new insights so let's go with matthews he also for

[Unknown8]: suggested sort of genuinely new insights so let's go with matthews he also for

[Unknown8]: years did

[Unknown8]: years did

[Unknown8]: in a journal that's not in existence anymore but still available it's called

[Unknown8]: thinking but he had an an monthly

[Unknown8]: quarterly i don't remember how often it came out but a book review of

[Unknown7]: a

[Unknown8]: children's literature in which to talk about

[Unknown8]: and then a friend of mine wendy turgon just published a book on

[Unknown8]: fairy tales basically

[Unknown8]: it's a guide book for how you can take some of the classic fairy tales and turn

[Unknown8]: them into really interesting philosophical discussions it's designed for

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: parents to be able to to to do that with their kids

[Unknown7]: how do you spell her last name if you don't mind asking

[Unknown8]: t u r g e o n

[Unknown7]: oh i was so close i had just i missed the the o awesome

[Unknown8]: yeah it's a it's a great book so i would say there's a lot of it going

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: on but it's still

[Unknown8]: doesn't get much

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: attention and i would say even in as i was mentioning before in philosophy

[Unknown8]: departments

[Unknown7]: what do you like

[Unknown8]: a lot of philosophy departments for instance

[Unknown8]: view

[Unknown8]: that work with children as being

[Unknown8]: service work and not scholarship even if people are publishing scholarly

[Unknown8]: papers about working with children and like the questions that come up the

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: philosophy of childhood or questions about pedagogy and rethinking the meaning of

[Unknown8]: the word philosophy and all of this um that's slowly changing

[Unknown8]: and i think largely it's changing because philosophy departments are realizing

[Unknown8]: that

[Unknown8]: their days are numbered if they don't change how they

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: do business so there's there's also it's been called public philosophy so in to a

[Unknown8]: large degree working with kids outside the academy is often lumped in with

[Unknown7]: but

[Unknown8]: that but people who are trying to take philosophy into prisons and art

[Unknown7]: what

[Unknown8]: galleries and parks and museums and change where it happens and who gets access

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: to it and so

[Unknown8]: there's the the

[Unknown8]: brooklyn public philosophy network

[Unknown7]: so

[Unknown8]: hosts asa philosopher booths where literally is a table set up that has a bowl of

[Unknown8]: candy and then a bowl of like thought experiments and a bowl of questions and

[Unknown8]: people can just come up and it's really fun to do when i first

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: heard about it i was kind of like

[Unknown8]: it sounded like it was the philosophers being in the role of the

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: knows but it's much more a

[Unknown8]: discussion where when people come up you're kind of like yeah what's on your mind

[Unknown7]: oh good oh yeah

[Unknown8]: like what are you thinking about or or some of them will pick up read a few

[Unknown8]: thought experiments and then one of them will inspire them and so the

[Unknown8]: conversations are just wildly diverse

[Unknown8]: i i think so ian oso who runs most of those his book is called ask a philosopher

[Unknown8]: which is it's a really great picture into like the experiences he's had at the ask

[Unknown8]: of philosopher booth

[Unknown7]: awesome oh good

[Unknown8]: and then i i mentioned one of the other big sources that i think a lot of teachers

[Unknown8]: find useful is tom wharton beer's books because he does a lot of the work of like

[Unknown8]: explaining

[Unknown8]: his his main one on the in the field is called like

[Unknown8]: big ideas little philosophers something like but that

[Unknown8]: the discussion about the ways in which you can you can take a picture book and

[Unknown8]: turn it into a philosophy

[Unknown7]: h

[Unknown8]: session so it would be useful for both teachers and parents

[Unknown7]: yeah i and there's there's so much that you've mentioned there even with

[Unknown7]: to ask a philosopher booth i i feel like that's a whole another episode

[Unknown8]: yeah

[Unknown7]: dealing with the public uh from a even a professional standpoint but uh in

[Unknown7]: dealing with the public uh from a even a professional standpoint but uh in

[Unknown7]: philosophy

[Unknown7]: philosophy

[Unknown7]: obviously you teach a class on post colonial studies and critical race theory and

[Unknown7]: i realized this might be a contentious questions so don't feel any pressure to

[Unknown7]: answer

[Unknown7]: do you feel you you mentioned that they are feeling a pressure philosophy

[Unknown7]: departments to

[Unknown7]: expand the way they do things

[Unknown7]: even as you're mentioning doing philosophy for younger kids there's also this push

[Unknown7]: uh you know there there are like how to be an anti racist for kids that kind of

[Unknown7]: thing what

[Unknown8]: u

[Unknown7]: would you categorize that as kind of in that broader range of what might be called

[Unknown7]: philosophy

[Unknown8]: yeah absolutely and i i would say

[Unknown8]: for me some of the most exciting contemporary philosophy is often of the sort that

[Unknown8]: would be like philosophy of so the philosophy of race or philosophy of gender or

[Unknown8]: philosophy of sex

[Unknown8]: in which

[Unknown8]: trained philosophers are taking these kind of analytical skills that they

[Unknown8]: developed and this is what dewy had always said philosophy supposed to be doing

[Unknown8]: and applying them to the contemporary social issues that that we all

[Unknown8]: i mean clearly americans can care a lot

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: about race they don't know how to talk about it well and

[Unknown8]: every time some terrible thing happens the first thing everyone's like you know

[Unknown8]: maybe now is the time we can have this conversation but it's not going to happen

[Unknown8]: until we learn how to to conceive how like what like starting at the beginning

[Unknown8]: like what

[Unknown7]: yes

[Unknown8]: his race and like the history of it and some of these things i would say

[Unknown8]: philosophy came kind of late to the game at taking seriously equity and

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: inclusion questions

[Unknown8]: but it is really taken seriously now at the professional level

[Unknown7]: no

[Unknown8]: and as a result there's some great new work that's being done because

[Unknown7]: about that

[Unknown8]: part of it also had to do with what counts as scholarship that's worth like

[Unknown8]: getting a tenured position for

[Unknown8]: and previously something like a philosophy of race would have been considered to

[Unknown8]: be like a

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: marginal topic and not really

[Unknown8]: universal in this kind of way but it turns out that you know for instance the

[Unknown8]: charles mills book on the

[Unknown8]: what's it called black rights white wrongs

[Unknown8]: a really fascinating for instance is an example of this

[Unknown8]: book where he's investigating classical liberalism and showing the ways in which

[Unknown8]: certain

[Unknown8]: assumptions and classical liberalism were racist that the kind of the the

[Unknown8]: universal subject was inflected with whiteness in these kinds of ways at the same

[Unknown8]: time he's trying to defend the project of classical liberalism and to make it not

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: racist and so those kind

[Unknown8]: of using some of these newer skills and kind of perspectives but still applying

[Unknown8]: them to some of the classical problems

[Unknown8]: it's

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: exciting and i think if philosophy is going to continue it has to do that because

[Unknown8]: that's stuff that benefits

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: everyone when people are are writing analysis of the kinds of questions that all

[Unknown8]: of us need help on to understand as we're we're for instance it's really exciting

[Unknown8]: to teach

[Unknown8]: younger people

[Unknown8]: questions i taught a class in the fall that was called the ethics of embodiment

[Unknown8]: and so i was like okay i'm just going to wait into all the controversial things

[Unknown8]: and so we talked about race sex gender sexual orientation and the disability um

[Unknown8]: and the the especially when we're talking about gender so fascinating because the

[Unknown8]: kids now they live in a world in which

[Unknown8]: that means something so different

[Unknown8]: the the general social things that

[Unknown7]: well see

[Unknown8]: are happening the debate is very different for them they've accepted certain

[Unknown8]: things that older people are are just now trying to kind of come to terms with and

[Unknown8]: don't really understand and often because they don't know how to talk about them i

[Unknown8]: think causes them to be unwilling to engage with the topics

[Unknown8]: and very excitingly actually through plato we have a student advisory council i

[Unknown8]: think we yeah

[Unknown7]: this

[Unknown8]: so there are i think six or seven students from across the country who were trying

[Unknown8]: to get more and more opportunities for them to be content delivers rather than

[Unknown8]: have people talk

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: about young people to have and so in mid february they're going to be hosting a

[Unknown8]: webinar on the philosophy of gender in which they're giving kind of generation z

[Unknown8]: perspectives on the changing understanding of gender i'm very excited

[Unknown7]: two

[Unknown8]: about that because their audience will be largely professional philosophers it's

[Unknown8]: hosted by the american philosophical association but it will be they're the ones

[Unknown8]: that are gonna be doing the talking

[Unknown7]: what a fascinating idea yeah is that something that's publicly available or or

[Unknown7]: only for

[Unknown8]: it will be most of the a p a

[Unknown7]: w

[Unknown8]: webinars you have to be a member but they they're going to allow that one to be

[Unknown8]: publicly available

[Unknown8]: and so i'll be publicizing that mildly

[Unknown7]: yeah interesting

[Unknown7]: so

[Unknown7]: it has been absolute pleasure kind of as we draw to a close here

[Unknown7]: uh is there what's the one thing that you would leave our audience with

[Unknown8]: i would say the things that matter to me most in this field is

[Unknown8]: well first of all

[Unknown8]: the long term goal

[Unknown8]: is having us rethink what we think of as a good education

[Unknown7]: hey

[Unknown8]: i think as a country we've made some bad moves that have to be changed

[Unknown8]: and the reason is that not only from a pragmatic standpoint but from a moral

[Unknown8]: standpoint

[Unknown7]: one six

[Unknown8]: so all the research shows that barrage in kids with information means that they

[Unknown8]: can learn it for a test but then they don't

[Unknown7]: right

[Unknown8]: remember it so it's there's no use to that

[Unknown8]: that said it's also morally

[Unknown7]: what

[Unknown8]: bad to force them to be in a situation where they're essentially

[Unknown8]: made to memorize things but not given a context for why they should

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: care about it and what role it would play in their lives whereas when you change

[Unknown8]: the perspective the frame in which you present it to them

[Unknown8]: they're able to see you know so for instance a lot of science classes if they were

[Unknown8]: framed from the standpoint of how can our community solve these problems

[Unknown8]: rather than memorize these facts they they care about

[Unknown8]: kids are misrepresented frequently when they're presented as being kind of like

[Unknown8]: addicts on their phones and not really caring about things the moment you allow

[Unknown8]: them a chance to kind of weigh in on stuff that matters they love it

[Unknown7]: like

[Unknown8]: and tied to that um there's a it's a situation of epistemic injustice that i think

[Unknown8]: that really matters a lot that children are systematically denied the status of

[Unknown8]: being nos

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: and it diminishes their humanity to be constantly in a situation

[Unknown8]: in which their testimony doesn't count their perspective doesn't count how they

[Unknown8]: see things doesn't count and it has a devastating effect and i think by a certain

[Unknown8]: age means that kids start to kind of

[Unknown8]: even if they do the work to like not really buy into

[Unknown7]: hm

[Unknown8]: the project anymore they're kind of dis empowered from being part of the community

[Unknown8]: of knows

[Unknown8]: that matters to me

[Unknown7]: yeah

[Unknown8]: a lot that that the more children's testimony can be not only heard but taken

[Unknown8]: seriously

[Unknown8]: it does them

[Unknown8]: they have that as a right i think

[Unknown7]: well that is a tremendous point to end on thank you so much for joining us today

[Unknown8]: yeah thank you this has been really great it's nice talking to you