Philosophy Commons^™

11. Dreamers: Adventures In Dreams And Dreams Of Adventures ... By David Kennedy, David Kennedy

Middle School Curriculum

Dreamersis a philosophical adventure novel for ages 12 and beyond, told through the eyes of four pre-adolescent children of varying ethnic and racial backgrounds living in a small town in the American Southwest, who embark together on a school inquiry project centered on the phenomenon of dreaming. Not only do they record and share their dreams with each other, they inquire together into the role and status of dreaming in cultures past and present, the interpretation of dreams, the scientific analysis of dreaming, and the role of dreams in mythology and religion. The dramatic events of the novel are …

(2023) The Dead Bird (1965/2016) By Margaret Wise Brown, Peter Shea

Collected Papers of Peter Shea

Children come upon a bird that has just died. It is still warm. They bury it, sing a song they have made up, and plant flowers. They visit the grave every day to put fresh flowers on it and to sing to the bird, until they forget. Margaret Wise Brown’s The Dead Bird is a story about how a new ritual happens, spontaneously, out of a shared experience of grief, expressing a shared reverence for one kind of life. The children are thinking, in a way: they are keeping something in mind for a long time, in a beautiful form. …

(2023) Owl Moon (1987) By Jane Yolen, Peter Shea

Collected Papers of Peter Shea

A father and daughter go out together at night to visit an owl. This simple story opens discussions about what fathers owe their children, about what humans owe to wild creatures, and about going outside our comfort zones – what we owe ourselves, as multi-dimensional beings enclosed in just one small life. The pictures take the reader along on this simple and astonishing adventure, a model perhaps for how adults can sometimes be helpful to children.

(2023) Alexander Von Humboldt: Explorer, Naturalist, And Environmental Pioneer (2019) By Danica Novgorodoff, Peter Shea

Collected Papers of Peter Shea

As a young boy, Alexander Von Humboldt came up with divergent questions about the birds and mountains and animals he saw, and brought all those questions together under two big questions that stayed important for him over a long life: “How are these things different?” and “How are they nevertheless connected?” As the reader watches Humboldt looking at a hawk and a mouse, volcanoes and farmland, palm trees and pine trees, Europe and Ecuador, Europeans and Indigenous people, one comes to expect what he will say: “They are different, and yet they are connected.” This idea is much bigger than …

(2023) Charles Peirce And The Community Of Inquiry, Maughn Rollins Gregory

Collected Papers of Maughn Rollins Gregory

This article reconstructs and clarifies Charles S. Peirce’s conception of the relationship between inquiry and community, responding to the widespread use of the phrase “community of inquiry” in educational, philosophical, and civic contexts. After tracing the genealogy of the phrase, the essay offers a systematic account of Peirce’s theory of inquiry by identifying five central elements—anti-intuitionism, fallibilism, the belief–doubt–inquiry cycle, the logic of inquiry, and self-correction—and by explicating three indispensable roles that community plays within that theory: semiosis, corroboration, and mutual criticism. The article then examines the first educational adaptation of this idea in the work of Matthew Lipman, Ann …

(2023) Dreamers: Adventures In Dreams And Dreams Of Adventures ..., David K. Kennedy

Collected Papers of David Kennedy

Dreamers is a philosophical adventure novel for ages 12 and beyond, told through the eyes of four pre-adolescent children of varying ethnic and racial backgrounds living in a small town in the American Southwest, who embark together on a school inquiry project centered on the phenomenon of dreaming. Not only do they record and share their dreams with each other, they inquire together into the role and status of dreaming in cultures past and present, the interpretation of dreams, the scientific analysis of dreaming, and the role of dreams in mythology and religion. The dramatic events of the novel are …

Lorax (1971) By Dr. Seuss, Megan Jane Laverty

Picture Books

Megan Jane Laverty interprets Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax (the 1971 book, the 1972 television cartoon, and the 2012 feature film) as a multi-layered philosophical fable. First, she examines how the story reveals the dangers of our enthusiastic but short-sighted pursuit of innovation, success, and wealth—ambitions that can lead to far-reaching and often tragic consequences. Secondly, she explores how the narrative vividly illustrates the environmental devastation that results when commercial enterprises treat nature as an inexhaustible resource for production and progress. Laverty proposes several ways for students to engage with the story’s philosophical themes, including the aesthetic exploration of their local …

Boy Named Isamu (2021) By James Yang, Maughn Rollins Gregory

Picture Books

Author-illustrator James Yang imagines a day in the life of the artist Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) as a young child whose curiosity and sensitivity lead him to appreciate the aesthetic qualities of his surroundings.

Owl Moon (1987) By Jane Yolen, Peter Shea

Picture Books

A father and daughter go out together at night to visit an owl. This simple story opens discussions about what fathers owe their children, about what humans owe to wild creatures, and about going outside our comfort zones – what we owe ourselves, as multi-dimensional beings enclosed in just one small life. The pictures take the reader along on this simple and astonishing adventure, a model perhaps for how adults can sometimes be helpful to children.

Alexander Von Humboldt: Explorer, Naturalist, And Environmental Pioneer (2019) By Danica Novgorodoff, Peter Shea

Picture Books

As a young boy, Alexander Von Humboldt came up with divergent questions about the birds and mountains and animals he saw, and brought all those questions together under two big questions that stayed important for him over a long life: “How are these things different?” and “How are they nevertheless connected?” As the reader watches Humboldt looking at a hawk and a mouse, volcanoes and farmland, palm trees and pine trees, Europe and Ecuador, Europeans and Indigenous people, one comes to expect what he will say: “They are different, and yet they are connected.” This idea is much bigger than …

Snail With The Right Heart (2021) By Maria Popova, Maughn Rollins Gregory

Picture Books

When a London scientist found a garden snail whose shell that spiraled left to right—opposite from others of its species—he sent it to the University of Nottingham for study. The snail’s internal organs were also arranged on the opposite side from other snails, including a heart on the right side of its body—a one-in-a-million condition known as situs inversus, which also occurs in humans. In explaining the snail’s story in terms of genetic evolution and biological reproduction, The Snail with the Right Heart also raises philosophical questions about the role of genetics, education, and personal choice in determining who …

Dead Bird (1965/2016) By Margaret Wise Brown, Peter Shea

Picture Books

Children come upon a bird that has just died. It is still warm. They bury it, sing a song they have made up, and plant flowers. They visit the grave every day to put fresh flowers on it and to sing to the bird, until they forget. Margaret Wise Brown’s The Dead Bird is a story about how a new ritual happens, spontaneously, out of a shared experience of grief, expressing a shared reverence for one kind of life. The children are thinking, in a way: they are keeping something in mind for a long time, in a beautiful form. …

Mis Dos Pueblos Fronterizos / My Two Border Towns (2021) By David Bowles, Amy Reed-Sandoval

Picture Books

When children talk about migration and displacement, they generally speak and inquire about people. Why are some people forced to leave their homes—or why was I forced to leave my home? Why won’t other countries let them in—or why won’t other countries let my family and me in? What does it feel like to live in a shelter, or in a refugee camp, or on a bridge between two countries—or why must my family live this way, while others do not? This picture book shows how philosophical questions about migration can be inspired by, and embedded in, communities and characters …

Charles Peirce And The Community Of Philosophical Inquiry, Maughn Rollins Gregory

Department of Educational Foundations Scholarship and Creative Works

Introduction: "We individually cannot reasonably hope to attain the ultimate philosophy which we pursue; we can only seek it, therefore, for the community of philosophers." Charles S.Peirce, 1868 (5.265).

Since the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) originated the idea of a ‘community of inquiry’ to describe and promote the norms of scientific inquiry, that idea has been used to characterize a wide variety of educational programs, academic disciplines, and institutional, governmental, and political practices. The first purpose of this essay is to establish that the precise phrase ‘community of inquiry’—which does not occur in Peirce’s writings—was coined in 1978 …

Philosophizing With Children’S Literature: A Response To Turgeon And Wartenberg, Darren Chetty, Maughn Rollins Gregory, Megan Jane Laverty

Department of Educational Foundations Scholarship and Creative Works

Introduction: With the maturation of a field comes the opportunity and the responsibility to reflect on its sources, its areas and directions of development, debates among its proponents, and critiques originating from inside and outside the field. While early proponents of philosophy for children supported each other in the face of misunderstanding and misapprehension, differences inevitably arose among them, not only concerning materials and methods, but also concerning the very meanings of philosophy, childhood and education. These differences remain among contemporary scholars, educators and practitioners, who continue to engage in robust debates about how to research and practice philosophy with …

Anne Frank: The Diary Of A Young Girl (1947/1991) By Anne Frank, Alona Kharina

Young Adult Books

We can take Anne Frank’s book as an example of the accumulation and release of the trauma caused by adverse events, through conversation with ourselves, our shadow side. We can also take it as an example of forgiveness. It is possible for us, as readers, to witness life in a meager room during the war, without any external contacts. We observe Anne’s mental maturation and hear testimonies of unfriendly love for her mother and painful love for her father. Her memoir is an opportunity to explore issues of morality, faith, hope, and freedom, through the prism of the tragic experiences …

I Am David (Jeg Er David) (1965) By Anne Holm, Lena Green

Middle Grades Books

David, who seems to have been the only child in a men’s prison camp, grew up without family or history and knows nothing about any other kind of human society, except what he learns from the adult prisoners and what he observes after he escapes. His experiences, and the questions he wonders about, encourage exploration of concepts such as family, belonging, identity, freedom, goodness, evil, resilience, language, and education. This book can be considered a philosophical novel for children. Though somewhat dated, it remains a gripping account of a child on the verge of adolescence responding to adversity with courage …

Vovchyk Who Rode A Bomb (2019) By Yuri Nikitinsky, Hanna Klymenko-Syniook

Middle Grades Books

Today some people have been denied the feeling of safety; others have lost their families, homes, and even the towns, and villages of their local homeland. Many now find themselves in occupied towns, and many more have been forced to move into the unknown, in search of the refuge provided by relatively safe regions, or abroad. And how many have been compelled to escape a second time to save their children? In the humorous and tragic story “Vovchyk who rode a bomb” and the philosophical adventure story “If Bodya were here,” Nikitinsky depicts war as it is seen by children, …

(2022) ​​Philosophy For Children As A Form Of Spiritual Education, Olivier Michaud

Collected Papers of Maughn Rollins Gregory

In the last two decades, some authors in the philosophy for children movement have theorized that the community of philosophical inquiry can be a form of spiritual practice, of the care of the self, or a wisdom practice (De Marzio, 2009; Gregory, 2009, 2013, 2014;Gregory & Laverty, 2009). Yet, it is unclear if philosophy for children is, by itself, a form of spiritual education, or if it requires some sorts of modification to be one. And, if it is or can be a form of spiritual education, we can interrogate in what ways and to what extent is it one. …

(2022) Philosophizing With Children’S Literature: A Response To Turgeon And Wartenberg, Darren Chetty, Maughn Rollins Gregory, Megan Jane Laverty

Collected Papers of Maughn Rollins Gregory

With the maturation of a field comes the opportunity and the responsibility to reflect on its sources, its areas and directions of development, debates among its proponents, and critiques originating from inside and outside the field. While early proponents of philosophy for children supported each other in the face of misunderstanding and misapprehension, differences inevitably arose among them, not only concerning materials and methods, but also concerning the very meanings of philosophy, childhood and education. These differences remain among contemporary scholars, educators and practitioners, who continue to engage in robust debates about how to research and practice philosophy with children …

(2022) Frog And Toad At The Academy: Gareth B. Matthews On How Children’S Literature Goes Philosophical, Maughn Rollins Gregory, Megan Jane Laverty

Collected Papers of Maughn Rollins Gregory

Gareth B. Matthews (1929–2011) inaugurated the study of philosophy in children’s literature by simultaneously arguing (1) that philosophy is essentially an encounter with certain kinds of perplexities, (2) that genuine philosophical perplexities are readily found in many children’s stories, and (3) that many children are capable of appreciating and enjoying them. He wrote 58 reviews of philosophical children’s stories and co-authored a series of teacher guides for using such stories. Following Matthews’ example, others have produced resources recommending children’s stories as stimuli for intergenerational philosophical dialog. In our research, we study and systematize the different ways that Matthews understood children’s …

You Are An Explorer (2020) By Shahrzad Shahrjerdi, Farzaneh Shahrtash

Picture Books

This beautifully illustrated book, with exaggerated pictures of two unprotected children, deals with the issue of post-war displacement of children and their families. While the parents of these two explorers are absent for an unknown reason, the older brother is taking care of the younger sister by his creative thinking. He is trying to use the power of his imagination based on care, as a technique to face seemingly unendurable and oppressive situations. The children who discuss You Are an Explorer may not have experienced a real war, may not have been in any post-war situations, and may not have …

How War Changed Rondo (2021) By Romana Romanyshyn And Andriy Lesiv, Maughn Rollins Gregory

Picture Books

In this evocative picture book, ‘War’ is a proper name, referring not to an event but to a malevolent being, depicted as a gigantic, shape-shifting amalgamation of buildings, war machines, and a mechanical human arm from which emerge tanks with eyes and jagged mouths, mosquito-like helicopters, and other “terrible clinking and hissing machines.” Nor does War seem to have any goal or intention other than indiscriminate destruction. These images raise a number of important questions about the nature of large- and small-scale violence. Who-all is responsible? If war requires the participation of many people, how does that happen? Have you …

Bear Outside (2021) By Jane Yolen, Maughn Gregory

Picture Books

“Some folks have a lion inside, or a tiger. Not me. I wear my bear on the outside.” The young protagonist of Jane Yolen’s 400^th book for children is able to take risks and ignore bullies, not by putting on a ferocious countenance, but by summoning the persona of a giant, friendly bear, that might be an imaginary playmate or a representation of her inner courage. If I wore a bear outside today, what would I do differently? But this story also shows that even young children experience disagreement among their inner selves with different, sometimes conflicting tendencies, needs, …

Enemy: A Book About Peace (2007) By Davide Cali;, Maria Zbroy

Picture Books

Every person, society, and ethnic community builds its worldview on the basis of comparing in-group and out-group, the boundaries of which are variable. The one who seems closest to us may be a complete stranger. And someone who comes from afar, who belongs to a completely different community or nation, can become the closest person. Only we determine who is our friend and who is our enemy. In Davide Cali’s allegory about modern warfare and other kinds of conflict, two soldiers who have never seen each other shoot at each other from inside their trenches until one decides to take …

Story Boat (2020) By Kyo Maclear, Samantha Piede

Picture Books

When the protagonist in Kyo Maclear’s Story Boat (2020) opens the book with “Here we are,” it is unclear to readers where exactly “here” might be. When safety must take precedence over familiarity, one develops a fleeting relationship with place. It is tempting, in stories like these, to emphasize the pain of the refugee experience: the uncertainty, the loss of one’s ‘heres’. But Maclear takes a different tack, giving readers the tools to focus on hope and wonder. Teachers may prompt students, in light of the book, to reflect on what they think a ‘home’ or a ‘here’ feels like …

Silan’S Box [Το Κουτί Του Σιλάν] (2017) By Άλκηστη Χαλικιά [Alkistis Chalikia], Maria Papathanasiou

Picture Books

Silan is an eight-year-old boy who was forced to leave his country and live in a new homeland, in Greece. He lives in a refugee center where he goes to a new school but does not speak the same language as the other children. He carries a little box with him—so precious that he keeps it with him constantly and does not share its contents with anyone. The children ask him every day about the contents of the box and try to guess what his hidden treasure might be. They think of what they would shield in their own box …

Being-With Smartphones, Tiger C. Roholt

Department of Philosophy Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

In a social situation, why is it sometimes off-putting when a person reaches for his smartphone? In small-group contexts such as a college seminar, a business meeting, a family meal, or a small musical performance, when a person begins texting or interacting with social media on a smartphone he may disengage from the group. When we do find this off-putting, we typically consider it to be just impolite or inappropriate. In this essay, I argue that something more profound is at stake. One significant way in which individuals shape their self-identities is through interactions with others in small groups. Much …

(2025) Curriculum Vitae Of Leonard Harris, Leonard Harris

Collected Papers of Leonard Harris

No abstract provided.

The Story Circle As A Practice Of Democratic, Critical Inquiry, Natalie M. Fletcher, Maughn Rollins Gregory, Peter Shea, Ariel Sykes

Collected Papers of Peter Shea

The authors of this essay have been committed practitioners and teachers of Philosophy for Children in a variety of educational settings, from pre-schools through university doctoral programs and in adult community and religious education programs. The promotion of critical thinking has always been a primary goal of this movement. But communal practices of critical thinking need to include other kinds of democratic conversation that prompt us to see others as full-fledged persons and to be curious about how our being in community with them makes growth and self-correction possible. As we continue to experiment and innovate in new contexts we …