November

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 neat
And the garden gay;
And they build a shady seat....
Ah, no; the years, the years;
See, the white stormbirds wing across!

They are blithely breakfasting all--
Men and maidens--yea,
Under the summer tree,
With a glimpse of the bay,
While pet fowl come to the knee....
Ah, no; the years O!
And the rotten rose is ripped from the wall.

They change to a high new house,
He, she, all of them--aye,
Clocks and carpets and chairs
On the lawn all day,
And brightest things that are theirs....
Ah, no; the years, the years;
Down their carved names the raindrop plows.

-- Thomas Hardy

November Birthdays

See November 2008 post

World Philosophy Day

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 world to explore a wide variety of issues.

This year the global celebration is taking place in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The theme is “Philosophy in the Dialogue of Cultures,” and the day is devoted to exploring issues related to dialogue between cultures. Many countries around the world actively promote and are engaged in this worldwide observance. World Philosophy Day is a recognition of the role of philosophy in establishing the conceptual foundation for the principles of justice, democracy, human rights and equality. People all around the world are encouraged to engage in philosophical reflection and dialogue. What a great day!

Women in Philosophy

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’ assumptions, etc.) puts off women who tend to be less aggressive and competitive; (2) the perceived impracticability of philosophy and the lack of a clear path to a non-academic job; (3) the lack of female role models; and (4) the lack of a serious effort by the profession to reach out to women.

It continues to puzzle me why more women don’t study philosophy, though I tend to believe that the final two reasons above offer far more promising explanations than the first two. I’ve been thinking, though, about my own experience teaching pre-college students. Over the past ten years I’ve probably had a dozen or so experiences in which a student (anywhere from age 10-17) has told me, “I think I’d like to be a philosopher when I grow up.” And they have all, 100% of them, been girls. I’m not sure what that experience adds to this discussion, but it does at least give some weight to the idea that female role models make a difference.

Listening to Our Children

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 them philosophy and looking for opportunities to do so (as we do with, say, teaching kids to read or learn math facts). It is really much more about listening and developing an ear for recognizing kids' philosophical questions.

As parents, we are often quick to answer our kids' questions. (That's a big part of the job of parenting, after all!) And I think that really that’s the most significant impediment to talking about philosophy with our children. Parents are often uncomfortable having conversations with our kids in which we don’t have the answers, and not very skilled at picking up on those questions for which an answer from us is not really what is sought.

You don’t need to have taken any philosophy classes to start these conversations with your children. We all have philosophical questions. Who am I? Why is there something rather than nothing? What does it mean to live a good life? Why am I alive? What is time? And kids have these questions too. In my experience, when you open the door to a discussion about questions like this with your child, he will be eager to explore them with you.

Your child might ask, for example, “Why are people so mean?” Instead of talking about the reasons you think people can be mean, whatever they are, you might instead respond by saying, “What were you thinking about when you asked that?” or “Why do you think people are mean?” or “Do you think some people are mean people, or do they just do mean things? Why?” Now it might be that in this case, what your child really does want is an explanation from you about why some of the kids at school are picking on her. But maybe not.

Being open to picking up on when a question might be philosophical creates the possibility of talking about these larger, fundamental questions. It can add a new dimension to your relationship with your child to examine together questions for which neither of you have the answers, questions that continue to be profoundly mysterious. In these kinds of conversations you can inquire together in a way that allows for a kind of equal give-and-take that is not present in most aspects of the parent-child relationship, deepening your relationships with your children. I have found that years of these kinds of discussions with my own children, now all teenagers, have really helped to develop a strong foundation for what these days are often more personally challenging conversations.

Dreams and sleep

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. We started by talking about the ways in which sleeping is different from being awake.

One student suggested that perhaps sleep is closer to death than being awake.

“Well,” another student responded, “I think that sleeping is more like unconsciousness than death. Sleeping is really not close to death. I mean, you have to sleep to live. If you don’t sleep, then you will be dead.”

“When you’re sleeping you dream, and when you’re unconscious you dream, but when you die you don’t dream,” offered a third student.

“How do we know that?” asked another. “Nobody knows unless they’re dead whether dead people dream or not. No one comes back after they’re dead and tells us that they dream or they don’t.”

“Whenever I have dreams,” one girl described, “my parents ask me what happened. They tell me that when you dream, your subconscious mind is telling you things that when you’re awake you don’t consider. I don’t think that when you sleep you’re close to being dead. Sleep is part of being alive.”

“I think that a part of your mind takes notes on everything you do, and these come out in your dreams. Dreams get you to deal with things in your life that maybe you are trying not to deal with.”

“So then you have to be thinking when you dream because your mind is working. Without thinking there would be no dreams,” declared a student.

We talked about whether the mind stops working at death, and whether you can ever stop your mind from working when you’re alive. We discussed why we dream, and why some dreams are nightmares, and whether we can ever control our dreams.

“I have a dream about Voldemort from Harry Potter,” one student said. “He’s wearing a t-shirt and shorts, and he rides a bike. He tries to get into our house. He climbs up the outside of the house and starts slamming on the doors, trying to find a way in. I’ve had this dream a few times. It scares me.”

“You can think about things during the day and keep yourself from dreaming about them at night,” suggested another student.

“I wonder if we are really a dream right now,” a boy asked.

“Sometimes,” a girl responded, “I think that maybe we’re all dolls being played with, like my sister playing with dolls. Like maybe there are people much bigger than us just playing with us, like we’re their dolls.”

Comments from Memphis High School Students

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 in the class and an enhanced ability to write and reason well. We talked about the relative invisibility of philosophy in the United States, and the difference it would make if philosophy were a subject (like history) that all high school students studied, the way they do in many European and Latin American countries.

Soon after this discussion, students in a philosophy class taught by Michael Burroughs at Booker T. Washington High School in Memphis sent the following comments on to me, reminding me again of the value of philosophy from the students' points of view.

Aysahn Roach: "What is philosophy? To me philosophy is a class to have group discussions on different philosophers such as Aristotle and Socrates. Not only does this class cause debates, but it also helps us really get into the subjects that we are talking about, such as forgiveness. I would offer this class to anyone who is willing to learn or likes to debate about different subjects."

Robert Coats: "We discuss key points about life that I would never have thought of. This class allows me to think outside the box. Some topics we have discussed are: the good life, forgiveness, and destiny. We have discussed more but these topics really stick out to me. Other classmates seem to be really interested in these topics and engage in conversation on them. Listening to the thoughts of others and how they perceive a question really gets me thinking. I believe philosophy is not only beneficial to me, but also to the whole class."

October

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 shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats



October Birthdays

See October 2008 post

College Students in Seattle Schools

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 pre-college philosophy. This past week two students led our discussions of Arnold Lobel's story, "Dragons and Giants" (in Frog and Toad Together), and Plato's Ring of Gyges. Topics in our seminar range from ethics to aesthetics to philosophy of mind and language.

One of the things we talked about last week is the importance of letting the classroom discussions flow organically, and not trying to push an agenda. Our seminar discussion of the Ring of Gyges ranged widely, and was a good example of letting a philosophy conversation take its course in its own way. One of the most challenging aspects of doing pre-college philosophy, in my view, is letting go and not trying to control where the students take the discussion. Helping to keep it philosophically focused and making connections between what the students say is crucial, but it is equally crucial to allow the questions and topics of inquiry emerge from the students and not be imposed upon them.

Fifth Grade Questions

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 and thinking, but this was one of those classes where flexibility was key! As we talked about philosophy generally, one student raised her hand and declared: "I have a question. Why do we work hard and worry about money and what we're going to do for work and food and shelter, when one day we're going to die? What's the point?" This set off a wealth of questions from the students, which included:

Why do we need money? Why don't we barter anymore?
What is time? Why do we measure it?
How did everything begin?
How is the earth so perfect for humans?
Why do we communicate by writing?
How did all these words get invented? Where did names come from?

I suggested that we vote on which question to begin discussing, and the far majority of votes went to, "How did everything begin?" We decided to start by reading part of chapter 13 of Harry Stottlemeier's Discovery, which raises this question and related issues nicely. After we read a few pages, the students started wondering about whether something can come from nothing. If the world began, there had to be nothing at some point, and so how could something have come from nothing? And yet, as several students noted, imagining it not beginning is really hard. Although, as one student pointed out, numbers don’t begin and end. Some students suggested that God created the world, but we observed that this still doesn’t solve the problem, because where did God come from?

We then circled back when another student commented, “I have two questions that I have thought about my whole life. What happens when you die? And what’s the point of living when one day you’re going to die?” One student responded that she thought that you live in order to have memories after you’re dead, in whatever place and form that occurs after death. Then a student who had been quiet raised his hand and said, “I think that we are an experiment for God. That God created humans to see what we would do, if we end up destroying the planet and ourselves or not. And if we do, God will create some other beings in some other place and see if they can do better.”

At this point we were out of time, and we agreed that we would begin next time with the question, “If all we know is that we live and then die, what’s the point?”

Justice at Harvard

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 Sanders Theater, using several cameras to include the student discussions that are central to Sandel's classes, the course explores questions about justice and the good life, as well as many difficult contemporary ethical issues.

Each hour-long segment includes two 30-minute classes. I think the classes would be helpful resources for talking about these questions with middle and high school students. Topics include "The Moral Side of Murder," "How to Measure Pleasure," "For Sale: Motherhood," and "A Lesson in Lying." The website devoted to the course offers episode summaries and discussion guides, as well as related readings for some of the episodes: http://justiceharvard.org/