Announcement: We have our winners! Winners, 2014 PLATO Essay Contest: First place: Jared Corbett – Oak Park River Forest High School, Oak Park IL “Probabilistic Chains” Second place: Sydney To – Valley Christian High School, San Jose, CA “Freedom in Degrees” Third place: James Drueckhammer – The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook NY “Free Will” … PLATO High School Essay Contest
I’ve written before about PLATO (Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization), a national organization that advocates and supports introducing philosophy to K-12 students. Two exciting new projects: a high school essay contest – see here – and annual awards for elementary, middle and high school teachers – see here. Lots of progress in the movement to … Two New PLATO Initiatives!
Benny and Penny in Just Pretend, by Geoffrey Hayes, is an early-reader graphic novel about two siblings and the efforts of the younger child, Penny, to join her brother in “playing pretend.” Constructing pretend worlds is part of many children’s childhoods – I remember when my children wouldn’t answer me unless I addressed them as … Just Pretend
PLATO (Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization) Announces it 2014-15 K-12 Philosophy Teaching Awards Nominations for the 2014-15 PLATO K-12 Philosophy Teaching Awards are now open. Summary: PLATO has established three awards to be given annually to K-12 classroom teachers in the U.S. for excellence in teaching philosophy in elementary, middle or high school: (1) … PLATO Awards for Teachers
Frog in Love by Max Velthuijs is the story of Frog, who has felt strange all week, and is trying to figure out what is wrong. He feels like crying and laughing at the same time, and that “there’s something going thump-thump” inside him. When he tells Hare about how he is feeling, Hare tells … Frog in Love
Arnold Lobel is probably my favorite children’s book author, and a master at generating philosophically suggestive narratives. The Frog and Toad books, in particular, are full of stories that raise many puzzles about life and experience. One of my favorites is the story “Shivers,” in Days With Frog and Toad. Frog tells Toad a ghost … “Shivers”
A Pair of Red Clogs is Masako Matsuno’s first book for children, written in 1960. A grandmother, looking for a box to send a new pair of clogs to her granddaughter, finds an old pair of cracked red wooden clogs in her storeroom. The grandmother remembers how excited she was when, as a child the … A Pair of Red Clogs
I have written in many places about the centrality of questions to the work we do, and the importance generally of children learning to ask good questions and trusting that their questions are valuable. Almost all very young children are alive with questions; they seem to naturally apprehend that this is the way to investigate … Asking Questions
Olivier Tallec’s 2012 wordless picture book, Waterloo & Trafalgar, portrays two men, one in blue and one in orange, who are separated by walls and watch each other suspiciously behind their telescopes throughout the seasons, embroiled in conflict. Not until they have a common cause do they stop fighting. At the end of the book, … Waterloo & Trafalgar
Andrew Pessin’s The 60-Second Philosopher is a series of 60 very short chapters (each two pages) that provide ideas for thinking about a wide range of philosophical topics (time, color, various ethical questions, knowledge, free will, etc.). The first chapter, “The Philosopher Within You,” begins: There’s the legend of the fish who swam around asking … The 60-Second Philosopher
PLATO is part of a global UNESCO network that encourages children to participate in philosophical inquiry. As a partner in the UNESCO Chair on the Practice of Philosophy with Children, based at the Université de Nantes in France, PLATO is connected to other educational leaders around the world.
Connect With Us!