Philosophy for Children?

1) My six year old nephew who lives in Argentina recently realized that old people die. That is, he still doesn’t think he will ever die. And he doesn’t think his mother, or his little sister will ever die. But he does realize that people “with wrinkles” die. To this, he has called my mother long distance from Argentina, asking her if she is going to die, and demanding she tell him in advance when. My mother calls her grandson a modernist. And I think I agree with mom: my niece is such a modernist. Yet, what I find interesting about this child is that he has begun to ask an ultimately philosophical question. Good for him.

2) This is my third week working as a substitute Spanish teacher for seventh grade. My seventh graders are petty difficult according to the other teachers, but I have come to the conclusion that they are just modernists, like my nephew is. “What is the point in all of this?” they ask me various times throughout the day. “I don’t think Josie is a person, she is weird” I overheard one of the girls say, and “Guys let’s all act reasonable at least for a while!” A Friday class question tends to be something such as: “Ms. Drake can I throw a desk at Babe? He is bullying me and I want to get even!” I find it interesting that ultimately, these utterances could also be developed into really interesting philosophical discussions. Part of me wants to use these questions for a more engaging class debate about ethics, existentialism, and maybe even death. Instead, I have to stick to the lesson plan, and tell them to go sit back down and finish their Spanish grammar. But boy am I dying to start a philosophical discussion instead.

3) I attended high school in Argentina and there, same as in Europe, philosophy is part of the curriculum in public and private schools. Why not in the United States? Is it because the educational curriculum is already too full with science and math requirements? Is it because we are scared our children will turn to skepticism too soon in their young lives? Is it because we think that philosophy can only be done by a few “bright” students in small groups? These might be valid issues, but what happens to those children who show strong potential to be good philosophers? Those children who like asking questions and are dying to understand, but have to wait until they get into college to discover philosophy? And anyways, I noticed that even the kids who don’t do well in academics, really like engaging in philosophical debates, and are good at it. Teaching philosophy to children earlier in their academic life seems like a great idea. And although I met people who have been exposed to this discipline since they were young and are now sick of it, I also know people who regret not having been introduced to philosophy earlier in life, so what do we have to lose?

Today I read an article on “Times Online” Magazine about a new trend in France were children as young as six years of age attend tea parties where the main subject is philosophy. Apparently, the parties are held in cafés, public libraries and at home and involve food, drink ... and debate. The article mentions how, although some may dismiss it as further proof of their pretentiousness, the French see it as an attempt to give children a handle on an increasingly complex world. “Proponents of les goûters philos argue that the subject needs to be broached at an early age when children start asking existential questions.” (For a full view of the article go to: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7138713.ece)
Could we use this idea and take it further, allowing teachers to implement these debates in U.S classrooms? This would also prepare kids for the future confusion that awaits them in our complex world.

For example, children with parents who introduce them to philosophy at an early age engage in critical thinking that can make them stronger problem solvers in the future but, ultimately, makes their life more fun. Last semester, my job as a graduate assistant allowed me to have closer relationships with Philosophy professors to the point where they began asking me if I could baby sit their children, on the side. And I noticed that the kids of my two respective employers had strong critical thinking skills that distinguished them from other children I knew. Here I think, their parents played an important role introducing them to philosophy. And these kids acted like kids. But I’ll give you an example of a conversation I recall going on between two sisters one Saturday night, as we finished watching “Wall-E:”
“Robots are nicer than people”
“Wall-E acts like a person but is a robot”
“No. You can’t be a person and a robot at the same time. But Wall-E is a Robot with a soul”
“No, he doesn’t have a soul; he is just really nice and remembers everything in his mind.”
Fine, maybe you guys don’t think this is smart, but here we have the philosophical problem of personal identity, and consciousness, all in the questions of a five year old and a six year old. I think it proves my point.

Interestingly, the school I work for is one of those “progressive” private schools funded by the new NYC creatives (a bunch of rich film and advertising parents.) The “progressive” part of the school, among other things, requires the students to take an Ethics class every year beginning in second grade. This is another great idea. Not only because children can be exposed to philosophy at an earlier age than college, but also because we future philosophy PhD’s who will be in the market finding a job at some near future, are limited to teaching college level philosophy. But if more high schools could implement an Ethics or a Philosophy class in their curriculum, plenty of unemployed- but eager to teach (and make a living out of it) philosophers could actually improve their options and chances for work. For what I know, Columbia University has an outreach program at the moment where graduate students teach philosophy in high schools. These Philosophy outreach programs have shown themselves to be remarkably successful in drawing virtually all students in the classroom together in inquiry. And the teachers are often surprised, and pleased, to see many of their most reticent, “underachieving” students actively join in the discussion of philosophical ideas in inner city high schools. So imagine if philosophers could get a job teaching high school ethics, and get paid for it? As a matter of fact, I don’t think that the difference between a high school senior and a college freshman is that huge, and a lot of private high schools pay higher salaries to their teachers than colleges do. Further, I don’t think that philosophy PhDs would mind teaching high school classes if these schools where willing to employ them.

Sadly for us, the Ethics teacher of my school is actually a psychology PhD. So my school has an interesting project, but hiring a psychology professional entirely misses the point of their project (which is to get the children to think critically, and philosophically.) It seems to me that at the time of dealing with one of those “big metaphysical questions” a psychologist would probably end up turning to behaviorism, same way that a religious person would turn to God. Both psychology and religion are good fields, but why not just hire a philosopher to do what he/she is good at? Implementing philosophy classes in middle and high schools seems like a great idea, but a very long shot for now. And even the few private “progressive” schools in NYC that implement philosophy in their curriculum, and could be potential employers for philosophy PhD’s, don’t hire the adequately qualified people to do the job. They hire Psychology PhD’s instead. Boo.

Then again, the person who writes this entry is a philosophy graduate student who somehow got hired to teach middle school Spanish, and is probably not adequately qualified to do the job either. Mostly, because whenever her seventh graders ask her a question in Spanish, she wants to turn it to a philosophical debate, in Spanish. It all comes back full circle I suppose.

There is no House but there is Home/ Re-Thinking Home

I am leaving Charlotte in two weeks, to go work and attend graduate school in NYC. And because I don’t have relatives or family living in North Carolina, I probably won’t be back very often( except for frequent visits to my dear friends). And I found out today, that moving my things on a U-Haul truck will cost me at least six hundred dollars, which is money I don’t have. So the only other option I thought of, to solve this problem, is going for the “immigrant style” move. I am used to this style of moving and it consists on getting rid of as many things as possible (including my mattress) and limiting my baggage to three boxes of books, my bookshelves, and three bags of clothes which will fit in my car. That’s it, that’s all I’m taking with me to NYC. Exciting, huh? Here we have, embodied, the old idea of traveling free of burdens, and from material items from the past. This idea can sound pretty bohemian.
Yet as much as I keep trying to convince myself that “traveling free” is the best way to travel through life, and that half of my possessions I don’t even use anyway, and that my room will be smaller in Queens, I find it slightly difficult to have to say good bye to my room as it’s been for the past few years in Charlotte. Difficult to say good bye to the material structures that gave me a sense of stability I could perceptually label as “home.”

And I cannot help but do these stupid things were I compare myself. I compare myself to the people who get to move away with limited items, like me, but who still have the opportunity to “go back home” for the holidays. They go back home to the structures of stability, and there rests their childhood room with their old teddy bears, and their memories all stocked up, somewhere, anywhere. Yet I’ve lived by the old Tom Wolfe line, “You can’t go back home again” for years, because this is just how it is. We immigrants have to travel light. We get rid of things, we avoid accumulating, and when somebody we know shows us their boxes with baby clothes from when they were children: boxes full of childhood pictures, yearbooks, and items that have helped mold their identities, we turn away. We don’t want to turn away, but indifference is a better response than longing for what we lost through the cracks and leaks of so many moves. Forgetting allows us to travel free. A good friend of mine, who is also my Alanon sponsor, always comments on how she cannot think of the past or the future because sometimes memories are painful, and projections are scary. "All you have is today, and that is enough.” I never thought I would really buy into this whole “live the present” mentality, but I do, and it has allowed me to re-think the concept of “home,” by turning, not to philosophy, but to literature.

In her novel Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver describes an alternate way of thinking about “home.”
“The greatest honor you can give a house is to let it fall back down into the ground,” he said. “That’s where everything comes from in the first place.”
I looked at him, surprised. “But then you’ve lost your house.”
“Not if you know how to build another one. All those great pueblos like at Kinishba—people lived in them awhile, and then they’d move on. Just leave them standing. Maybe go to a place with better water, or something.”…
Loyd rubbed his hand thoughtfully over my palm. Finally he said, “The important thing isn’t the house. It’s the ability to make it. You carry that in your brain and in your hands, wherever you go. Anglos are like turtles, if they go someplace they have to carry the whole house along in their damn Winnesotas.” …
“We’re like coyotes,” he said. “Get to a good place, turn around three times in the grass, and you’re home. Once you know how, you can always do that, no matter what. You won’t forget.”

In this dialogue, Loyd, a Native American man, discusses his conception of home with a Latina named Codi. Loyd argues that he learned from his Pueblo ancestors that a house that rests on a solid foundation and resists destruction is not necessarily synonymous with a feeling of being at home. In his view, “home” means that you “have the ability to make” a structure in which you, family and friends can reside, and that you can re-build it when circumstances, or you, dictate. This structure need not be literal—just as a coyote builds a metaphorical home by turning “around three times in the grass” I can also build my home through this re-building, re-creating of my ability to make. But to do this, today, I can only stay in the present, and I can choose to stop looking back, I have made this choice a long time ago. This is another reason why I’m interested in the philosophical (metaphysical/ethical/political) problem of personal identity. For example, what might be the conception of the self that underlies such a conception of home? That is, if “home” means that one has the ability to make, then the self becomes a continuous project of becoming, of “shining through” (from the Latin Per-sona) and against the structures of this artificial stability, and what types of philosophy might one need in order to formalize that self-conception?