How to use this with a child or a class

The ten-minute ritual

1. Read the question onlyRead the title. Stop. Ask what they think before anything else on the page is read. This is the whole trick.
2. Read the story togetherKeep it short — the story is a doorway, not the lesson.
3. Do the Try it boxMoving, drawing, timing, watching. All the retention lives here.
4. Ask two of the Talk about it questionsThen stop. Never resolve it. Leave the question open on purpose.

What makes a philosophy conversation with children work

• Answer with a question. “What do you mean by fair?” beats any definition you could give.
• Name the move, not the answer. “You just gave a reason — that’s what philosophers do” teaches more than praise for being right.
• Let silence sit for five seconds. Children need the gap to think inside. Adults normally fill it.
• Let them disagree with you. If they can, they have understood the page.
• Do not settle it. A page that ends in a conclusion teaches that thinking is a race to a finish line.

The philosophers, for your own reference

33 thinkers, one page each, chosen so that no single tradition carries the whole subject — and so that a child meets at least one person who is not a European man. Each page names its own big question, which is the line worth reading aloud before you open the story.

• Al-Ghazali — 1058–1111 CE What do you do when you stop being sure?
• B. R. Ambedkar — 1891–1956 Is an unequal society stable, or only quiet?
• Hannah Arendt — 1906–1975 Why do good people sometimes do bad things together?
• Aristotle — 384–322 BCE How do we find out how things really work?
• Confucius — 551–479 BCE How should we live well together?
• René Descartes — 1596–1650 How do you know you are really thinking right now?
• Diogenes — c. 413–323 BCE How little do you need to be happy?
• Dogen — 1200–1253 Is now just the way you get to later?
• W. E. B. Du Bois — 1868–1963 Who are you when other people see you wrongly?
• Frantz Fanon — 1925–1961 How does being ruled change how you see yourself?
• Hypatia — c. 350–415 CE Can numbers explain the sky?
• Ibn Khaldun — 1332–1406 Why do strong groups fall apart?
• Ibn Rushd — 1126–1198 Can thinking and believing disagree?
• Ibn Sina (Avicenna) — 980–1037 CE Are you your mind, or your body, or both?
• Ibn Tufayl — c. 1105–1185 How much could you work out with no one to teach you?
• Kautilya — c. 375–283 BCE What does it take to hold a country together?
• Laozi — c. 6th–4th century BCE Is it better to push, or to let things happen?
• Marcus Aurelius — 121–180 CE What is actually up to you?
• Mencius — c. 372–289 BCE Are people born good?
• John Stuart Mill — 1806–1873 How much freedom should you have?
• Mozi — c. 470–391 BCE Should you care about everyone equally?
• Nagarjuna — c. 150–250 CE If everything depends on something else, what holds it all up?
• Nishida Kitaro — 1870–1945 What is happening before you divide things into you and everything else?
• Plato — c. 427–347 BCE Is what we see all that is real?
• Adi Shankara — c. 788–820 CE If you strip away everything you call yourself, what is left?
• Socrates — 469–399 BCE What does it mean to live a good life?
• Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz — 1648–1695 Why were girls not allowed to learn?
• Thiruvalluvar — dates unknown; often placed c. 300 BCE–300 CE What is the shortest way to say how to live?
• Wang Yangming — 1472–1529 If you know what is right, why don't you do it?
• Mary Wollstonecraft — 1759–1797 Should everyone get the same chance to learn?
• Zera Yacob — 1599–1692 Can you work out what is right without being told?
• Zhu Xi — 1130–1200 How do you find out how things work?
• Zhuangzi — c. 369–286 BCE Is a dream less real than a day?

If it goes well

You will know it worked because the child asks you something you cannot answer. Write that question down somewhere you will both see it again. It is the next lesson, and neither of you needs to have solved it.

The pictures on this site are historical artworks and photographs, all in the public domain or openly licensed — each one is credited here.