Jana Mohr Lone

Grants Announced for Philosophy Programs Around the US

Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization (PLATO) announced its 2023 grant awards this week to fund a wide array of programs for all ages on diverse topics.  PLATO first developed its grants program in 2016 with the goal of funding innovative ethics and philosophy programs around the country for students of all ages and backgrounds.  In the past, PLATO <strong>Grants Announced for Philosophy Programs Around the US</strong>

Exploring Robert Nozick’s “Experience Machine” with Fourth Grade Students

This week I introduced philosopher Robert Nozick’s 1971 Experience Machine thought experiment in a fourth-grade class.  The experiment asks us to imagine that there is an “Experience Machine” that can give us any experience we desire. If you are hooked up to the machine, your brain would be stimulated so that you would think and feel that you were Exploring Robert Nozick’s “Experience Machine” with Fourth Grade Students

Philosophy comes to high schools around the US

Diverse group of students crowded around a table in a library with a teacher

This month the Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization (PLATO) is expanding its elementary school philosophers-in-residence program to three high schools, in Boston, Philadelphia, and Seattle. This expansion is possible thanks to a $60,000 grant from The Whiting Foundation.  PLATO is a growing national organization that nurtures young people’s curiosity, critical thinking, and desire to explore big questions through philosophy and ethics Philosophy comes to high schools around the US

PLATO is now accepting grant applications

Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization (PLATO) is now accepting grant applications for innovative philosophy and ethics programs across the United States.  PLATO grants have funded programs for every age, from kindergarten to senior citizens, in red, blue, and purple states all over America. They include community nature walks in Montana, a summer philosophy camp in Kentucky, elementary school philosophy PLATO is now accepting grant applications

Philosophical Themes in Fairy Tales

Guest Blog Post from Wendy TurgeonEditor-in-Chief of PLATO’s Journal Questions: Philosophy for Young People Recently I published Philosophical Adventures with Fairy Tales (2021), which introduced ways to do philosophy with 13 European tales, mostly familiar, from the Grimms Brothers collection. Building on that work, I am going to be editing a new collection that will examine fairy Philosophical Themes in Fairy Tales

Intergenerational Ethics Event

What is the moral significance of naming and renaming public buildings? Does wealth allow people to make more ethical choices? Is it ever appropriate for a school to implement policies that directly contradict parents’ values and preferences? PLATO is joining the University of Washington Retirement Association (UWRA) for our first event to bring together UWRA Intergenerational Ethics Event

“I Am Actually Somebody”

I finished my last classes in the schools for the summer earlier this month, and was presented with a beautiful booklet in which some of the children wrote to me about how they felt and thought about philosophy this year. It was particularly interesting to me that so many students wrote about the impact of “I Am Actually Somebody”