Study Shows That Teaching Young Kids Philosophy Improves Their Academic Performance, Making Them Better at Reading & Math

in Education, Philosophy | February 28th, 2017

Should we teach phi­los­o­phy to chil­dren? You’d have a hard time, I imag­ine, con­vinc­ing many read­ers of this site that we shouldn’t. But why? It’s not self-evi­dent that Kant’s ethics will help John­ny or Susie bet­ter nav­i­gate play­ground pol­i­tics or lunch­room dis­putes, nor is Plato’s the­o­ry of forms like­ly to show up on an ele­men­tary school exam. Maybe it’s nev­er too ear­ly for kids to learn intel­lec­tu­al his­to­ry. But it’s less clear that they can or should wres­tle with Hegel.

Per­haps the ques­tion should be put anoth­er way: should we teach chil­dren to think philo­soph­i­cal­ly? As we not­ed in an ear­li­er post, Eng­lish edu­ca­tors and entre­pre­neurs Emma and Peter Wor­ley have answered affir­ma­tive­ly with their Phi­los­o­phy Foun­da­tion, which trains chil­dren in meth­ods of argu­men­ta­tion, prob­lem-solv­ing, and gen­er­al­ly “think­ing well.” They claim that prac­tic­ing philo­soph­i­cal inquiry “has an impact on affec­tive skills and… cog­ni­tive skills.”

Peter Wor­ley also argues that it makes kids less prone to pro­pa­gan­da and the fear-mon­ger­ing of total­i­tar­i­ans. While one read­er astute­ly point­ed out that sev­er­al philoso­phers have had “author­i­tar­i­an ten­den­cies,” we should note that even some of the most anti-democratic—Socrates for example—have used philo­soph­i­cal meth­ods to hold pow­er to account and ques­tion means of social con­trol.

But while this noble civic moti­va­tion may be a hard sell to a school board, or what­ev­er the British equiv­a­lent, the idea that philo­soph­i­cal think­ing pro­motes many kinds of lit­er­a­cy nec­es­sary for children’s suc­cess has found wide sup­port for decades in Eng­land and the U.S. as part of a move­ment apt­ly named “Phi­los­o­phy for chil­dren” (P4C), which “began with the work of Pro­fes­sor Matthew Lip­man, who found­ed the Insti­tute for the Advance­ment of Phi­los­o­phy for Chil­dren at Mont­clair State Uni­ver­si­ty, USA in 1974.”

Inspired by an ear­li­er Amer­i­can ped­a­gog­i­cal thinker, John Dewey, Lip­man and co-authors pub­lished Phi­los­o­phy in the Class­room, under “the assump­tion,” writes Tem­ple Uni­ver­si­ty Press, “that what is taught in schools is not (and should not be) sub­ject mat­ter but rather ways of think­ing.” Lip­man and his col­leagues have had sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on edu­ca­tors in the UK, prompt­ing a huge study by the Edu­ca­tion­al Endow­ment Foun­da­tion (EEF) that tracked nine and ten year old stu­dents in Eng­land from Jan­u­ary to Decem­ber of 2013.

As Jen­ny Ander­son writes at Quartz, “More than 3,000 kids in 48 schools across Eng­land par­tic­i­pat­ed in week­ly dis­cus­sions about con­cepts such as truth, jus­tice, friend­ship, and knowl­edge, with time carved out for silent reflec­tion, ques­tion mak­ing, ques­tion air­ing, and build­ing on one another’s thoughts and ideas.” The results were pret­ty astound­ing. “Over­all,” the study con­cludes, “pupils using the approach made approx­i­mate­ly two addi­tion­al months’ progress in read­ing and maths.” This despite the fact, notes Ander­son, that “the course was not designed to improve lit­er­a­cy or numer­a­cy.”

Chil­dren from dis­ad­van­taged back­grounds saw an even big­ger leap in per­for­mance: read­ing skills increased by four months, math by three months, and writ­ing by two months. Teach­ers also report­ed a ben­e­fi­cial impact on stu­dents’ con­fi­dence and abil­i­ty to lis­ten to oth­ers.

The rig­or­ous study not only found imme­di­ate improve­ment but also lon­gi­tu­di­nal­ly tracked the stu­dents’ devel­op­ment for two addi­tion­al years and found that the ben­e­fi­cial effects con­tin­ued through that time; “the inter­ven­tion group continu[ed] to out­per­form the con­trol group” from 22 of the schools “long after the class­es had fin­ished.” You can read the study for your­self here, and learn more about the Phi­los­o­phy for Chil­dren movement—“inspired by a dia­log­i­cal tra­di­tion of doing phi­los­o­phy begun by Socrates in Athens 2,500 years ago”—at the Phi­los­o­phy Foun­da­tion, the Insti­tute for the Advance­ment of Phi­los­o­phy for Chil­dren, and the Cen­ter for Phi­los­o­phy for Chil­dren at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton.

via Quartz/Big Think

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Med­i­ta­tion is Replac­ing Deten­tion in Baltimore’s Pub­lic Schools, and the Stu­dents Are Thriv­ing

Why We Need to Teach Kids Phi­los­o­phy & Safe­guard Soci­ety from Author­i­tar­i­an Con­trol

The Epis­te­mol­o­gy of Dr. Seuss & More Phi­los­o­phy Lessons from Great Children’s Sto­ries

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Walt Disney Creates a Frank Animation That Teaches High School Kids All About VD (1973)

in Animation, Education, Health, Life, Psychology | February 24th, 2017

The com­i­cal­ly plain­spo­ken, tough-guy sergeant is a heav­en sent assign­ment for char­ac­ter actors.

Think R. Lee Ermey in Full Met­al Jack­et…

Louis Gos­set Jr. in An Offi­cer and a Gen­tle­man…

Even Stripes’  War­ren Oates.

Keenan Wynn, who strove to keep Amer­i­ca safe from “devi­at­ed pre­verts” in 1964’s Dr. Strangelove, was award­ed the role of a life­time nine years lat­er, when Dis­ney Stu­dios was seek­ing vocal tal­ent for VD Attack Plan, above, a 16-minute ani­ma­tion intend­ed to teach high school­ers about the scourge of vene­re­al dis­ease.

Wynn (son of Ed) threw him­self into the part with gus­to, imbu­ing his bad­ly-com­plect­ed, Kaiser-hel­met­ed germ com­man­der with the sort of straight-talk­ing charis­ma rarely seen in high school Health class.

A risky maneu­ver, giv­en that Viet­nam-era teens did not share their parent’s generation’s respect for mil­i­tary author­i­ty and VD Attack Plan was the first edu­ca­tion­al short specif­i­cal­ly aimed at the high school audi­ence. Pri­or to that, such films were geared toward sol­diers. (Dis­ney wad­ed into those waters in 1944, with the train­ing film, A Few Quick Facts No. 7—Venereal Dis­ease, the same year Mick­ey Mouse appeared in LOOK mag­a­zine, wag­ing war on gon­or­rhea with sul­fa drugs.

Gon­or­rhea was well rep­re­sent­ed in the Wynn’s Con­ta­gion Corps. The ranks were fur­ther swelled by Syphilis. Both pla­toons were out­fit­ted with para­mil­i­tary style berets.

The Sarge pumped them up for the com­ing sneak attack by urg­ing them to maim or bet­ter yet, kill their human ene­my. Shaky recruits were reas­sured that Igno­rance, Fear, and Shame would have their backs.

Scriptwriter Bill Bosche had quite the knack for iden­ti­fy­ing what sort of sug­ar would make the med­i­cine go down. The Sarge inti­mates that only a few of the afflict­ed are “man enough” to inform their part­ners, and while Igno­rance and Shame cause the major­i­ty to put their faith in inef­fec­tu­al folk reme­dies, the “smart ones” seek treat­ment.

Ele­men­tary psy­chol­o­gy, but effec­tu­al nonethe­less.

Today’s view­ers can’t help but note that HIV and AIDS had yet to assert their fear­some hold.

On the oth­er hand, the Sarge’s mat­ter of fact deliv­ery regard­ing the poten­tial for same sex trans­mis­sion comes as a pleas­ant sur­prise. His pri­ma­ry objec­tive is to set the record straight. No, birth con­trol pills won’t pro­tect you from con­tract­ing the clap. But don’t waste time wor­ry­ing about pick­ing it up from pub­lic toi­let seats, either.

A word of cau­tion to those plan­ning to watch the film over break­fast, there are some tru­ly gnarly graph­ic pho­tos of rash­es, sores, and skin erup­tions. Help­ful to teens seek­ing straight dope on their wor­ri­some symp­toms. Less so for any­one try­ing to enjoy their break­fast links sans the specter of burn­ing uri­na­tion.

So here’s to the sergeants of the sil­ver screen, and the hard­work­ing actors who embod­ied them, even those whose cre­ations resem­bled Pillsbury’s Fun­ny Face drink mix mas­cots. Let’s do as the Sarge says, and make every day V‑D Day!

VD Attack Plan will be added to the ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Fam­i­ly Plan­ning, Walt Disney’s 1967 Sex Ed Pro­duc­tion, Star­ring Don­ald Duck

The Sto­ry Of Men­stru­a­tion: Watch Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946

Sal­vador Dalí Cre­ates a Chill­ing Anti-Vene­re­al Dis­ease Poster Dur­ing World War II

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City next week. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Slavoj Žižek Expounds on His Hatred of Teaching, Grading Papers, and Particularly Holding Office Hours

in Education | February 21st, 2017

“Those who can, do,” so we often used to hear, “and those who can’t, teach.” Nowa­days the sit­u­a­tion seems to have trans­formed into some­thing more like, “Those who can, do, at least in the occa­sion­al free moments when they don’t have to teach.” At first you just take a teach­ing gig on the side to sup­ple­ment your real career, and before you know it teach­ing has usurped that real career almost entire­ly. We’ve all heard com­plaints from aca­d­e­m­ic friends about the seem­ing­ly unbreak­able cycle of lec­tur­ing, grad­ing, and hold­ing office hours, but how many have put it in terms as stark as Slavoj Žižek does in the inter­view above?

“I hate, I hate, I hate — okay, talks are okay, but I hate giv­ing class­es,” says the Sloven­ian philoso­pher-crit­ic-show­man at a 2014 Uni­ver­si­ty of Cincin­nati Col­lege of Design, Archi­tec­ture, Art and Plan­ning con­fer­ence devot­ed to his work. “I’m proud to say, I did teach a cou­ple of semes­ters here, and all the grad­ing was pure bluff. I even open­ly told the stu­dents. I told them, I remem­ber — at the New School, for exam­ple, in New York, ‘If you don’t give me any of your shit­ty papers, you’ll get an A. If you give me a paper, I may read it and not like it, you can get a low­er grade.’ And it worked — I got no papers.” And so he solves the prob­lem of grad­ing.

But what of office hours? These he calls “the main rea­son I don’t want to teach,” because “stu­dents, they’re like oth­er peo­ple; the major­i­ty are bor­ing idiots, so I can­not imag­ine a worse expe­ri­ence than some idiot comes and starts to ask you ques­tions.” In oth­er coun­tries one might find a way to endure it, but “the prob­lem is, here in Unit­ed States, stu­dents tend to be so open that if you’re kind to them, they even start to ask you per­son­al ques­tions, like pri­vate prob­lems, could you help them, and so on. What should I tell them? ‘I don’t care. Kill your­self. Not my prob­lem.’ ”

These teach­ing expe­ri­ences led Žižek’s to one con­clu­sion: “I like uni­ver­si­ties with­out stu­dents.” But not every­one cheers his pro­nounce­ment: “When­ev­er some­thing like this pops up, I wor­ry that some peo­ple will see it and say, ‘You see? That’s what I’ve been say­ing about those ivory tow­er types all along,’ ” writes one anony­mous aca­d­e­m­ic in response. “Žižek is an out­lier, in terms of both his stature and his atti­tude. Most work­ing aca­d­e­mics can’t get away with being dis­mis­sive of stu­dents, and even if we could, almost all of us would­n’t.”

Slate’s Rebec­ca Schu­man argues that the “real prob­lem with Žižek isn’t that he feels this way or that he says these things aloud. It’s that he does so and peo­ple think it’s hilar­i­ous. It’s that his view is, believe it or not, a com­mon ‘super­star’ view of stu­dents — so com­mon, in fact, that if you work at a research uni­ver­si­ty and actu­al­ly like teach­ing, you should maybe pre­tend you don’t, lest you appear not ‘seri­ous’ enough about your research.” A semi-fre­quent crit­ic of Žižek, most recent­ly of his endorse­ment of Don­ald Trump (“after all, the two thrice-mar­ried, out­spo­ken old­er gen­tle­men do have quite a bit in com­mon, a fact that would sure­ly hor­ri­fy them both”), Schu­man knows that the fault lies nev­er so much with the provo­ca­teur him­self as it does with our ten­den­cy to take his provo­ca­tions at face val­ue.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Slavoj Žižek Answers the Ques­tion “Should We Teach Chil­dren to Believe in San­ta Claus?”

Slavoj Žižek Calls Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness a Form of “Mod­ern Total­i­tar­i­an­ism”

Philoso­phers (Includ­ing Slavoj Žižek) and Ethi­cists Answer the Ques­tion: Is It OK to Punch Nazis?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch Mr. Rogers Persuade Congress to Stop Cutting PBS Budget in 1969

in Education, Television | January 20th, 2017

Yes­ter­day, the news broke that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion will appar­ent­ly be slash­ing fed­er­al spend­ing, to the tune of $10.5 tril­lion over 10 years. Accord­ing to The Hill, the “depart­ments of Com­merce and Ener­gy would see major reduc­tions in fund­ing.” And “the Cor­po­ra­tion for Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing [aka PBS] would be pri­va­tized, while the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts and Nation­al Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties would be elim­i­nat­ed entire­ly.”

Attempts to cut fund­ing for the arts is noth­ing new. Above, we take you back to 1969, when Richard Nixon planned to reduce PBS’ fund­ing from $20 mil­lion to $10 mil­lion. That is, until Fred Rogers, the gen­tle cre­ator of Mis­ter Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood, spent six short min­utes before Sen­a­tor John Pas­tore, the chair­man of the Sub­com­mit­tee on Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and made his pitch for pub­licly-fund­ed edu­ca­tion­al tele­vi­sion. In those 360 sec­onds, Rogers gets the gruff sen­a­tor to do a com­plete 180 – to end up say­ing “It looks like you just earned the 20 mil­lion dol­lars.”

It’s unlike­ly that Mr. Rogers could get the same trac­tion today. Quite the con­trary, his sweet­ness and sin­cer­i­ty would like­ly be mocked quite mer­ci­less­ly, a sign of how coarse our soci­ety has become these days.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

Mr. Rogers Takes Break­danc­ing Lessons from a 12-Year-Old (1985)

Mis­ter Rogers Turns Kids On to Jazz with Help of a Young Wyn­ton Marsalis and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends (1986)

 

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Hip 1960s Latin Teacher Translated Beatles Songs into Latin for His Students: Read Lyrics for “O Teneum Manum,” “Diei Duri Nox” & More

in Education, Language Lessons, Music | January 13th, 2017

Click here (and then click the image) to view in a larg­er for­mat.

I’ve inter­act­ed with many enter­tain­ing lan­guage-learn­ing resources in var­i­ous classes—from minis­eries in Span­ish to com­ic books in French—all geared toward mak­ing the unfa­mil­iar lan­guage rel­e­vant to dai­ly life. Learn­ing coun­ter­in­tu­itive pro­nun­ci­a­tions, pars­ing a new sys­tem of gram­mar, or mem­o­riz­ing the gen­ders of word after word can be labo­ri­ous and intim­i­dat­ing in the class­room. Doing so in every­day pop cul­tur­al set­tings, not as much.

When it comes to the teach­ing of dead lan­guages, the resources can seem less approach­able. I cer­tain­ly appre­ci­ate the lit­er­ary and rhetor­i­cal genius of Vir­gil, Ovid, Horace, Cicero, and Julius Cae­sar. But dur­ing my high school years, I did not always find their work easy to read in Eng­lish, much less in for­mal clas­si­cal Latin. The ela­tion I felt after suc­cess­ful­ly trans­lat­ing a pas­sage was some­times damp­ened as I puz­zled over his­tor­i­cal notes and gloss­es that often left me with more ques­tions than answers.

Click here (and then click the image) to view in a larg­er for­mat.

That’s not at all to say that stu­dents of Latin shouldn’t be exposed to cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal con­text or read the finest exem­plars of the writ­ten lan­guage. Only that a break from the heavy stuff now and then goes a long way. Might I sub­mit to Latin instruc­tors one inge­nious tool from Eddie O’Hara, for­mer British Labour Par­ty MP and clas­sics teacher? O’Hara passed away in May of last year, and just this past week, his son Ter­ry O’Hara tweet­ed these trans­la­tions of Bea­t­les songs (includ­ing two Christ­mas tunes) his father made in the 60s for his stu­dents. At the time, these were the height of pop cul­ture rel­e­vance, and, while a far cry from the com­plex­i­ties of the Aeneid, a fun way for Latin learn­ers to relate to a lan­guage that can seem cold and impos­ing.

I will admit, my Latin has fall­en into such a state that I can’t imme­di­ate­ly vouch for the accu­ra­cy or ele­gance of these trans­la­tions (“cue fierce argu­ments among Latin gram­mar­i­ans,” replies one Twit­ter user), but there’s no rea­son to doubt Mr. O’Hara knew his stuff. ““He was a born edu­ca­tor,” his son remem­bers, “He was a teacher and clas­si­cist by back­ground and he had a strong inter­est in edu­ca­tion­al mat­ters and Greek cul­tur­al her­itage.” Edu­cat­ed him­self at Mag­dalen Col­lege, Oxford, O’Hara taught at Perse School, Cam­bridge, Birken­head School, and in the ear­ly 70s, C.F. Mott Col­lege in the Bea­t­les’ own Liv­er­pool.

Click here (and then click the image) to view in a larg­er for­mat.

In addi­tion to his role as a states­man, the Liv­er­pool Echo remem­bers O’Hara’s many decades as “a pop­u­lar teacher who brought class­es to life trans­lat­ing Bea­t­les lyrics into Latin.” We do not have any indi­ca­tion of whether he actu­al­ly tried to sing the lyrics, though his stu­dents sure­ly must have attempt­ed it. What must the cho­rus of “All My Lov­ing” sound like as “Ita totum amorem dabo, Tibi totum, numquam cess­a­ba”? Or “She Loves You” as “Amat te, mehercle”? Singing them to myself, I can see that O’Hara was sen­si­tive to the meter of the orig­i­nal Eng­lish in his Latin ren­der­ings. But I’d real­ly love to see some­one set these to music and make a video. Any of our read­ers up to the chal­lenge?

Final­ly, since ear­ly six­ties Bea­t­les lyrics aren’t as like­ly to engage stu­dents in 2017, what pop cul­tur­al mate­r­i­al would you trans­late today—classics teach­ers out there—to reach the bemused, bewil­dered, and the bored? If you’re already hard at work using hip resources in the class­room, please do share them with us in the com­ments!

Note: To view the images in a larg­er for­mat, please click on the links to these indi­vid­u­als images: Image 1 - Image 2 — Image 3. When the image opens, click on it again to zoom in.

via Ted Gioia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn Latin, Old Eng­lish, San­skrit, Clas­si­cal Greek & Oth­er Ancient Lan­guages in 10 Lessons

What Ancient Latin Sound­ed Like, And How We Know It

The Sto­ry of Lorem Ipsum: How Scram­bled Text by Cicero Became the Stan­dard For Type­set­ters Every­where

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Triumphant Night When a Teacher Saved His Students from a Motorcycle Gang: A True, Hand-Animated Story

in Animation, Education | January 12th, 2017

“Sur­vival of the fittest, this still exists even today. If you’re weak, peo­ple pick on you, they take advan­tage. And if you don’t respond to what they do, they will con­tin­u­al­ly pick on you. You have to fright­en them and attack first.”

Those strong words come from Ralph Whims, a teacher who, one night back in 1973, agreed to chap­er­one a school dance in a church base­ment. It was a pret­ty ordi­nary affair, until a 20-mem­ber bik­er gang barged in, unin­vit­ed, and start­ed harass­ing the kids. What to do? Retreat? Or step for­ward and restore order? That’s the sto­ry, appar­ent­ly all true, told by the short ani­ma­tion, The Chap­er­one, cre­at­ed by Fras­er Munden. (His own father once had Ralph Whims as an ele­men­tary school teacher in Mon­tre­al.) This empow­er­ing short film has been screened at 70 film fes­ti­vals and won 25 awards. You can get more back­sto­ry on the film by read­ing an inter­view with the direc­tor here.

The Chap­er­one will be added to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce Picked Drunk­en Fights, Then Hid Behind Ernest Hem­ing­way; Hem­ing­way Called Joyce “The Great­est Writer in the World”

10 Rules for Stu­dents and Teach­ers Pop­u­lar­ized by John Cage

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by The Hell’s Angels: Where’s Our Two Kegs of Beer? (1967)

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Meditation is Replacing Detention in Baltimore’s Public Schools, and the Students Are Thriving

in Education, Health, K-12 | January 4th, 2017

By now, most peo­ple are famil­iar with the term “school-to-prison pipeline,” the descrip­tion of a sys­tem that fun­nels trou­bled stu­dents through dis­ci­pli­nary pro­gram after pro­gram. Deten­tions, sus­pen­sions, and often expul­sions fur­ther aggra­vate many stu­dents’ already dif­fi­cult lives, and send them “back to the ori­gin of their angst and unhappiness—their home envi­ron­ments or their neigh­bor­hoods,” writes Car­la Amu­rao for PBS’ Tavis Smi­ley Reports. Harsh dis­ci­pli­nary poli­cies don’t actu­al­ly change behav­ior, and “sta­tis­tics reflect that these poli­cies dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly tar­get stu­dents of col­or and those with a his­to­ry of abuse, neglect, pover­ty or learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties.”

In short, stu­dents come to school with sig­nif­i­cant stress­es and set­backs, and are them­selves treat­ed as prob­lems to be quar­an­tined or forced out. But why not instead teach those students—why not teach all students—effective means of cop­ing with stress and set­backs? I can think of almost no more use­ful a set of skills to car­ry into adult­hood, or into a trou­bled home or neigh­bor­hood sit­u­a­tion. As the CBS This Morn­ing seg­ment above reports, one school in Bal­ti­more is attempt­ing to so equip their stu­dents, with a yoga and med­i­ta­tion pro­gram dur­ing and after school that takes the place of deten­tion and oth­er pun­ish­ments.

The Robert W. Cole­man Ele­men­tary School adopt­ed a twice-a-day yoga and mind­ful­ness prac­tice dur­ing school hours for all stu­dents, called “Mind­ful Moments”; and an after-school pro­gram called Holis­tic Me, which “hosts 120 male and female stu­dents,” writes Newsweek, “and involves yoga, breath­ing exer­cis­es and med­i­ta­tive activ­i­ties. Dis­rup­tive stu­dents are brought to the Mind­ful Moment Room for breath­ing prac­tices and dis­cus­sion with a coun­selor and are instruct­ed on how to man­age their emo­tions.” As we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly not­ed on this site, these kinds of activ­i­ties have been shown in research stud­ies to sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce stress, anx­i­ety, and depres­sion and to improve con­cen­tra­tion and mem­o­ry.

In the Holis­tic Me pro­gram at Cole­man, “which focus­es on prekinder­gar­den through fifth-grade stu­dents,” admin­is­tra­tors already noticed a dif­fer­ence in the first year. “Instead of the stu­dents fight­ing or lash­ing out,” says prin­ci­pal Carlil­lian Thomp­son in the video above, they start­ed to use words to solve their prob­lems.” None of the stu­dents in the pro­gram have received sus­pen­sions or deten­tions, and many have become lead­ers and high achiev­ers. The pro­gram was found­ed in 2001 by broth­ers Atman and Ali Smith and their friend Andres Gon­za­lez, all Bal­ti­more locals. In the past 15 years, their Holis­tic Life Foun­da­tion and its part­ners have offered a vari­ety of enrich­ment activ­i­ties but focused pri­mar­i­ly on yoga and mind­ful­ness prac­tices.

Using these tech­niques, stu­dents learn to resolve con­flicts peace­ful­ly and to reduce the amount of emo­tion­al tur­moil in their lives. Rather than fur­ther alien­at­ing or trau­ma­tiz­ing already stressed-out kids, this kind of inter­ven­tion pre­pares them for aca­d­e­m­ic and social resilience. The foun­da­tion has rapid­ly expand­ed since 2015, receiv­ing fed­er­al fund­ing and deliv­er­ing pro­grams to Char­lottesville, Min­neapo­lis, Madi­son, and abroad. It may not have changed the course of “school-to-prison pipeline” poli­cies just yet, but it has shown a con­struc­tive way for­ward for oth­er schools like Baltimore’s Pat­ter­son High, which has adopt­ed a 15-minute yoga and mind­ful­ness prac­tice at the begin­ning and end of each day for every one of its stu­dents.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions From UCLA: Boost Your Aware­ness & Ease Your Stress

Stream 18 Hours of Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions

Philoso­pher Sam Har­ris Leads You Through a 26-Minute Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion

Dai­ly Med­i­ta­tion Boosts & Revi­tal­izes the Brain and Reduces Stress, Har­vard Study Finds

 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Why We Need to Teach Kids Philosophy & Safeguard Society from Authoritarian Control

in Education, Philosophy, Politics | January 3rd, 2017

Sev­er­al friends and rel­a­tives of mine teach phi­los­o­phy, writ­ing, and crit­i­cal think­ing to under­grad­u­ate col­lege stu­dents. And many of those peo­ple have con­fessed their dis­may in recent months. Threats and McCarthyite attacks on high­er edu­ca­tors have increased (and in places like Turkey esca­lat­ed to full-on war against aca­d­e­mics). Many edu­ca­tors are also filled with doubt about the mean­ing of their pro­fes­sion. How can they stand in the pul­pits of high­er learn­ing, many won­der, extolling the virtues of clear expres­sion, log­ic, rea­son and evi­dence, ethics, etc., when the world out­side the class­room seems to be telling their stu­dents none of these things mat­ter?

But then there are some with a more opti­mistic bent, who see more rea­son than ever to extol said virtues, with even more rig­or and urgency. Phi­los­o­phy improves our men­tal and emo­tion­al lives in every pos­si­ble sit­u­a­tion. While mil­lions of peo­ple in sup­pos­ed­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­tries have decid­ed to put their trust in auto­crat­ic, author­i­tar­i­an lead­ers, mil­lions more have deter­mined to resist the cur­tail­ing of civ­il lib­er­ties, demo­c­ra­t­ic rights, and social progress. Edu­ca­tors see the tools of lan­guage and crit­i­cal think­ing as inte­gral to those of polit­i­cal action and civ­il dis­obe­di­ence. And not only do col­lege stu­dents need these tools, argue the exec­u­tives of UK’s Phi­los­o­phy Foun­da­tion, but chil­dren do as well, and for many of the same rea­sons.

Cre­at­ed in 2007 to con­duct “philo­soph­i­cal enquiry in schools, com­mu­ni­ties, and work­places,” the Foun­da­tion works with both chil­dren and adults. In the Aeon Mag­a­zine video above, COO and CEO Emma and Peter Wor­ley explain the spe­cial appeal of phi­los­o­phy for kids, mak­ing the case for teach­ing “think­ing well” at a young age. Rather than lec­tur­ing on the his­to­ry of ideas or pre­sent­ing a the­sis, their approach involves get­ting chil­dren “think­ing about things togeth­er, work­ing togeth­er col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly, com­ing up with counter-exam­ples… real­ly doing phi­los­o­phy in the true sense.” Young stu­dents see prob­lems for them­selves and apply their own philo­soph­i­cal solu­tions, using the nascent rea­son­ing fac­ul­ties most of us can access as soon as we’ve reached school age.

The Foun­da­tion has shown that the teach­ing of phi­los­o­phy to chil­dren “has an impact on affec­tive skills and also on cog­ni­tive skills.” In oth­er words, kids become more emo­tion­al­ly intel­li­gent as they become bet­ter thinkers, devel­op­ing what Socrates called “the silent dia­logue” with them­selves. These ben­e­fits are goods in their own right, argues Emma Wor­ley, and as valu­able as the arts in our lives. “We need phi­los­o­phy because it’s a human thing to do,” she says, “to think, to rea­son, to reflect.” But there is a decid­ed social util­i­ty as well. Phi­los­o­phy can “safe­guard against the ways in which edu­ca­tion might some­times be used to con­trol peo­ple,” says Peter Wor­ley: “If we have some­thing like phi­los­o­phy with­in the sys­tem, some­thing that steps out­side that sys­tem and asks ques­tions about it, then we have some­thing to pro­tect us” against author­i­tar­i­an means of thought and lan­guage con­trol.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Noam Chom­sky Defines What It Means to Be a Tru­ly Edu­cat­ed Per­son

Why Socrates Hat­ed Democ­ra­cies: An Ani­mat­ed Case for Why Self-Gov­ern­ment Requires Wis­dom & Edu­ca­tion

Hen­ry Rollins Pitch­es Edu­ca­tion as the Key to Restor­ing Democ­ra­cy

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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