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Myth 1- Kids are too young to do philosophy.

When I was a graduate student, I took a methods course in which we had to give a few lessons to our class.  After one of my lessons, the class spent the next hour during the debriefing time to debate whether or not I would be best to teach at the high school level or the middle school level.  The class split right down the middle and they engaged in a vigorous debate about it.  I understand now that it was because the lesson revolved around important philosophical questions, but I had also structured it to include a lot of movement and coloring and being loud.  The graduate students and the professor, who started the whole thing, just couldn't get their head around the idea of 12 year olds talking about matters of ultimate concern, and they couldn't get their head around high schoolers being active learners in the classroom.  Over the years, I've seen both to be quite powerfully true, but unfortunately, throughout my career, many people are bothered by it. No matter how engaged the students are or how powerfully the lessons seem to be impacting the kids, some people are resistant to the notion that our children are thoughtful, creative, reflective philosophers.

Some critics of  philosophical inquiry in school will sometimes concede- Well, maybe juniors or seniors in high school but not middle school or elementary kids! They don't think abstractly.  They are very concrete!

I think an important step toward bringing philosophy into our schools is to carefully and thoroughly bust the myth that kids can't do philosophy.  The younger we get our kids thinking, the more likely they will become critical independent thinkers as adults.

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