Why?

The picture book Why, written by Lindsay Camp and illustrated by Tony Ross, is one of those books that illuminates in many ways the whole point of doing philosophy with children. The story is about Lily, who, in response to virtually anything that happens, asks the question, "Why?" Her dad tries to respond to her questioning, but sometimes, "when he was a bit tired or too busy," he'd say only, "It just does, Lily. It just does."

One day a giant spaceship lands and the aliens that emerge from the ship announce that their mission is to destroy the planet. Terrified, no one responds, except Lily, who asks, of course, "Why?" After a series of "why" questions, the aliens realize that they don't know why, and they leave.

Can questions save the planet? Asking "why" all the time can be really irritating, but not asking it can be dangerous.

Happy holidays!

Music or food?

Last week fourth grade students at John Muir Elementary and I talked about the story Frederick by Leo Lionni. (I have written about this story in a previous post.) We began talking about why it's important to Frederick to collect words and colors, as opposed to foraging for the food the family will need for the winter. What is important to Frederick about poetry?

One student suggested that to Frederick, "poems are like keys to the universe." "Maybe," the student reflected, "Frederick thinks that he wouldn't survive without poems, the same way his family is worried they won't survive without food."

Several students wanted to know why Frederick couldn't gather food as well as work on his poems, and most wanted to say that if Frederick didn't help collect food he wasn't entitled to an equal share of the food. Others disagreed.

"Okay," I said. "Let's say you were on a desert island with a couple of family members, and you were really worried about having enough food to make it through the winter. All of you went about looking for and storing food, except one of your cousins, who was working on a story that she would be able to tell you when you were holed up for the winter. Would that be okay with you?"

"No," one student said, "because food makes me happier than a story."

"I'd say fine," responded another student. "But she wouldn't be entitled to any of the food."

Most students seemed to agree with this.

"What if your cousin was J.K. Rowling, and was writing a new Harry Potter story?" I asked. "Would that make a difference?"

Many of the students contended that then the contribution of writing a story would be more valuable and perhaps as valuable a contribution as collecting food, although, as one student put it, "You wouldn't know for sure that the story was going to be good, in the way you would know that the food would be."

We discussed the way in which Frederick’s poetry helps the family when they are cold and hungry. I asked the students whether they read much poetry, and most of them said they never did. I told them that I guessed they all knew a lot of poetry, and asked them to recite some of their favorite song lyrics. There were of course immediate responses from many of the students, reciting lyric after lyric. We then talked about what music meant to them and why they liked it. Was it as important as food?

This led to a robust conversation about what you would choose if you had to give up either music or food (but not water) for a couple of days. The students were quite divided about what they could more easily do without, and we talked about the different ways we are nourished in our lives. Are emotional, aesthetic and intellectual forms of nourishment as important as physical nourishment?

Fourth Graders and the Story Double Trouble

I had an interesting experience recently with the fourth grade students I'm teaching this year at John Muir Elementary.  I read them the story "Double Trouble" by Philip Cam. A kind of retelling of the "Ship of Theseus," the story is about a robot whose parts have been replaced, one after another, until he no longer has any of his original parts, and a new robot has been built using all of the old parts.  Which one is the "real" Algernon (the robot's name)?

I have used this story for years and it has virtually always inspired a discussion about the standard questions of personal identity and persistence over time.  (I wrote about such a conversation last year in this post.)  In this session, however, the students took the discussion in an entirely different direction.  They voted to start with one of their questions about whether in this story robots were only owned by rich people or whether everyone had robots.  This led to the question about whether robots were things, and a couple of students asserted that robots (or at least the ones in the story) were people.  How do we know what makes someone a person?  The students suggested that having names, or being able to talk and move independently, were possible criteria.  Then several students noted that while the robots seemed to have feelings, they were probably programmed to have them, and that this is what made them different from people.

Several of my undergraduate students were present that day, and one commented, "Sometimes I feel things I would like to choose not to feel, but I feel them anyway. Is it possible that I'm programmed?"

One of the most interesting features of the conversation that ensued in that fourth grade classroom was how closely it resembled a similar conversation I had with college students not too long ago.  The students went from being sure they were not programmed to speculating about the possibility that, as one child put it, "there are beings out there somewhere who are a lot bigger than us and they are totally controlling what we do."

"That could be," another student responded. "But at the same time, I feel like what goes on inside me is really me, that it can't be controlled by anyone else. Maybe someone could be controlling what I do, but I don't think they could be controlling what I feel."

The discussion went on for over an hour and at the end we talked about how complex these questions were, and how sometimes in philosophy the questions seemed even more puzzling after talking about them than they had originally.

The Lorax

This morning I talked about Dr. Suess' The Lorax with a class of fourth grade students at John Stanford International School in Seattle. They have been having discussions about environmental issues, and we had a lovely conversation about the destruction of the truffula trees and the loss of Bar-ba-loots, Swomee-Swans and Humming-Fish in the story.

We began by talking about the Once-ler and his decision to chop down truffula trees and build a business of selling thneeds made from truffula tree tufts. Was he responsible for the environmental destruction that ensued as a result of his decisions? Does the fact that he ultimately regrets his actions make him a better person? We talked about the other members of the Once-ler family who worked in the business, and about all the people who bought thneeds. Were they all responsible for the destruction of the truffula trees and surrounding habitat? When we purchase something, are we obligated to ask how it was made? Were the thneeds "useful?" What is the balance between creating things that make human life easier or more enjoyable, and caring for the environment in which we live? What is our responsibility to the environment and to other species affected by human decisions?

Harold and the Purple Crayon

What can we know about the nature of reality? A wonderful story for motivating conversations about this question is Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson. First published in 1955, the story begins with Harold deciding, “after thinking it over for some time,” to take a walk in the moonlight. No moon is out, so Harold takes his purple crayon and draws one, and then he draws something to walk on.  Harold goes on to draw a forest in which he wanders, a dragon that ends up frightening him, an ocean in which he almost drowns and a boat which saves him, a beach, a lunch to eat, etc.

This story was a favorite of my children when they were younger, and I have read it with children in classrooms from first grade through middle school. It raises such questions as: Is Harold pretending? Is what he draws real? How can what he draws scare him? Is the moon we see more real than Harold’s moon – and, if so, why? Is Harold dreaming? Can we create our own reality?

Anno's Counting Book

Anno’s Counting Book by Mitsumasa Anno is one of those books that my kids and I looked at constantly when they were in elementary school. Starting with 0 and ending with 12, it’s the most complex and interesting counting book I’ve ever encountered.

The first page is an empty landscape, corresponding to 0. The wordless book adds objects to each consecutive page, corresponding to each number and reflecting the seasons, time of day, and other events in nature and human life. The number of objects in the landscape grows exponentially and symmetrically, and the detailed watercolor illustrations inspire careful examination.

Anno’s Counting Book is a helpful book for developing mathematical understanding of basic and, later, more complex concepts, but what makes it extraordinary is its evocation of the beauty of numbers. It inspires questions about beauty and what makes something beautiful, about whether beauty can tell us anything about truth, and about the relationship between mathematics and aesthetics.

Seeing ish-ly: what makes someone an artist?

Peter Reynolds' picture book ish tells the story of Ramon, who loves to draw and draws all the time. Then one day his older brother laughs at one of his drawings, and Ramon becomes preoccupied with making his drawings "look right." Finally he decides to stop drawing. His younger sister picks up one of his crumpled drawings and Ramon follows her into her room to retrieve it, where he sees many of his crumpled-up drawings hanging on her walls. She points out a drawing of a vase of flowers, which she declares is one of her favorites. Ramon tells her that the drawing was supposed to be a vase of flowers but he doesn't think it looks like one. "It looks vase-ISH!" she replies.

Looking at the world "ish-ly" opens up for Ramon his own way of seeing and gives him confidence that he can express what he feels and perceives, even if the finished products don't conform to a conventional view of the way things are supposed to look.

What makes someone an artist? How do we judge what is a work of art? What is creativity? Where does artistic expression come from? Is art worth creating even if it is not judged to be very good? I think this book can be used with students from elementary school on to ponder these questions. I'm going to try it this fall with fourth grade students as well as college undergraduates.