Kids are born philosophers

perspectives of others. Crucial to these texts is their way of introducing philosophical concepts and questions without resorting to jargon or technical language, thus reinforcing the idea that philosophy is not a foreign or abstruse matter.

In a community-of-inquiry platform, students work together as they grapple, session by session, with issues raised in a given fictional text. Depending on the grade level, an array of topics may be breached over the course of a story. Concepts arise such as the difference between appearance and reality, the distinction between change and permanence, the part versus the whole. Also addressed are ethical issues such as sexism, racism and animal rights; aesthetic matters dealing with harmony, form, balance and originality; and broad philosophical ideas like truth, friendship, justice, beauty and death.

Teachers, informed by supplementary material, mediate and actively participate in discussions. More a collaborator than an authority figure, the teacher helps students refine and revise thoughts, invite alternative viewpoints, listen with respect and attentiveness, and proceed through a communal dialogue in an honest, orderly and diligent manner.

Conducted properly, philosophical discussions, if nothing else, exercise and cultivate critical reading and thinking, two faculties that increase aptitude to learn at increasingly higher levels of education. Moreover, philosophy stands as the quintessential interdisciplinary subject. There is scarcely a topic located outside its ambit.