Name: 【TEDx】TEDxOverlake - Dr. Sara Goering - Philosophy for Kids: Sparking a Love of Learning
Uploaded: 2014-03-14T16:34:37.000Z
Duration: 10 min 43 s
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Hello. When I tell people that I'm a philosopher in casual conversation,

Adverbs of manner

A look that I think is a bit of a mixture between awe and fear.

As in, "Wow! really cool stuff, deep questions," and also,

"Oh my God, please don't make me defend everything I think I know!"

So philosophy is really something that –

When I say I teach philosophy to kids as well as adults,

those same people look at me like I might be crazy.

Philosophy is understood to be a deep, abstract, rigorous,

People don't think children are capable of doing it.

When they look at me like I'm crazy, I think, "You're wrong.

Kids are actually very natural philosophers.

They ask these kinds of questions on their own."

And it's our job to help give them uptake on those questions.

Philosophers are wondering all the time from the Ancient Greeks through today,

all about the nature of the universe and our place in it.

Philosophers want to know, for instance, if we are really free.

And what it would mean for us to say that we're free?

And could we both be determined and free?

Most people think that's absolutely insane, impossible.

But a lot of philosophers believe that's the only way we can be free:

Or, we'll ask questions about the nature of right and wrong.

We don't just want to know the answers: "What's right?" and "What's wrong?",

"What should I do?", "What should I not do?",

but the reasons behind that, and whether we are really

justified in thinking that certain things are right and wrong.

or "If the Sun's going to burn out in five billion years,

How do we make meaning in our lives knowing that we're all going to die?

These are the kinds of philosophical questions.

Even, "Can you know right now that you're not dreaming?"

We'll get you to worry about that question. (Laughter)

You won't be sure right after an introduction to philosophy.

So these are the kinds of questions that philosophers ask

like I said, I think kids ask them very naturally.

Adults have a much harder time asking them.

examine the most fundamental assumptions that we have

about our place in the universe and who we are.

when we've put them in our background as adults.

"Adults have to unlearn those assumptions."

Learn to sort of be aware of what they are and then examine them really carefully,

and how the world works and what their place is in it.

They haven't yet made those assumptions and so they're very eager and open

So children raise these philosophical questions.

When I've gone into classes, and I've worked with third grade

A particular course I went to, fifth grade.

I did a little intro on what philosophy is,

because most people unfortunately have never heard of it

until they get to collage if they stumbled upon a class.

And I asked the fifth graders, after saying something about what a philosophy question is,

"Just take a minute and reflect, and write down philosophical questions that you ask yourself,

late at night when things are calm and quiet,

or on a car trip when your damn DVD player breaks down, right,

and you have to actually think for a little bit,

what are the questions that you ask yourself?"

So this particular fifth grade class, some of the questions they asked were:

What are numbers? Where do they come from?

And how is it possible that they go on forever?

Or they ask, "Why do people hate each other?

And others ones of them ask, in a public school,

"If there is a God, who created God?" (Laughter)

Right? These are great philosophical questions.

Questions that deserve a little uptake from the adult world, right?

We need to engage kids on the questions that they have.

They're trying to understand their world. And make meaning in it.

And I think, unfortunately, that in our current system,

So they don't really get uptake in the educational system,

in part because teachers aren't really trained to deal with those kinds of questions.

The answers are ambiguous: there are better and worse answers,

You can't teach that for the test very easily.

We're increasingly getting funneled in that direction in education.

But even at home, I think, often they don't get uptake.

Because parents, many of us, haven't fully thought these questions through

and informed our own answers, or figured out whether or not

we're justified in what we tend to think might be right about those questions.

We're a little embarrassed by that when our kids call us on it.

And so we fumble, right, and maybe we put it off a little bit

And the result is that kids think these are questions that don't matter.

They matter for our understanding of ourselves and our place in the world.

so in a word that i'm doing, we're trying to get philosophy into schools

as a way to excite kids about their learning

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【TEDx】TEDxOverlake - Dr. Sara Goering - Philosophy for Kids: Sparking a Love of Learning

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