Ph.D. students Jacqueline Wallis and Afton Greco are embedded at the Academy at Palumbo in South Philadelphia, where they give philosophy lessons on curriculum-relevant topics and run an after-school Philosophy Club.

Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization (PLATO) conference held at UW earlier this summer. PLATO, a nonprofit affiliated with the UW department of philosophy, conducts programs for students, educators, and families.This year’s conference, “Ethics in Schools, Communities, and the Public Sphere,” featured 65 speakers from across the world.

Interview with PLATO executive director Jana Mohr Lone.

Is it ethical to dine out in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic? Do you think the government should be able to restrict or ban platforms like TikTok? Is contributing to fast fashion wrong, even if it is the only thing you can afford? These are all questions that college and high school students grapple with in an ethics bowl.

Practicing philosophy with children helps them have some control over their world.

Since 1996, Jana Mohr Lone’s work has centered around the conviction that we ought both to challenge our beliefs about children’s limited capacities and enlarge our understanding of the meaning of philosophy and who is qualified to engage in it. She has authored several books on the topic, including her most recent Seen and Not Heard: Why Children’s Voices Matter which explores what children’s perspectives can contribute to philosophical thought.

Happiness is something that everyone wants. Sometimes, though, our imaginations create anxiety and actually prevent us from experiencing happiness. We make things worse than they actually are because of what we create in our minds. Yet, at other times, it is our actual experiences that create our suffering and our imaginations play no role. The power of the imagination is unique to each individual and can be a source of our happiness or despair.

In her new book, Jana Mohr Lone asks, how would the world benefit if children were recognized as independent thinkers? How would their lives change “if what they said was not often ignored or patronized?”

Children ask a lot of questions, and too often we dismiss them instead of embracing their wonder. Jana Mohr Lone joins host Krys Boyd to talk about why children offer unique viewpoints on life’s philosophical mysteries, and why it’s important to take them seriously.

Kids don’t just say ‘the darndest things’. Playful and probing, they can be closer to the grain of life’s deepest questions.

Dr. Michael Burroughs (California State University, Bakersfield) has been awarded one of the Fellowships for his project Humanities Beyond Bars.

Amy Reed-Sandoval, assistant professor in the department of philosophy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, discusses teaching philosophy for children in Oaxaca City, Mexico.

Student debate teams from the College Program at San Quentin and the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) matched wits once again on the prison chapel stage in front of a live audience on February 14, 2020.

There are certain values we’d love for our kids to have. But how do we go about teaching them? Experts offer ways to instill important values as they grow.

Your Scouts can recite the Scout Oath and Scout Law in their sleep, but can they apply those timeless values when they face tough decisions?

In Limbo is a space dedicated to exploring the philosophical dimensions of pandemic situation. Our hope is to offer a series of conversations that throw light on the numerous ways in which different philosophical domains receive and study the pandemic.

Thinking about big questions empowers children to feel more confident about the value of their own ideas, teachers say.

Talking with kids about what they are thinking without always feeling compelled to offer answers can help them explore their own concerns and ideas.

This month, the Center released a guide for parents on how to navigate questions their youngsters may be having during the pandemic. The document covers topics like fear, loneliness, boredom, and death, and includes books and videos that may stoke philosophical discussion.

Recent weeks have seen events that are affecting people of all ages. The UW Center for Philosophy for Children is offering materials to help families broach big questions and feelings that may be surfacing as kids experience the current realities of sickness and isolation.

Assistant Professor Cristina Cammarano, Salisbury University reflects on why doing philosophy for children is important for her and for philosophy.

The director of the UW Center for Philosophy for Children encourages families to embrace kids’ deep questions, uncomfortable as it may be.

Ethics Bowl program Kegley Institute of Ethic hosted at Tehachapi Prison.

You’re invited to a party. Your friend isn’t. Should you go? This problem is what is known as a moral dilemma—a tough situation in which the right thing to do isn’t clear.

Guided by a multidisciplinary research team, Rollins students have been introducing preschoolers to the wisdom of the ancients, using traditional early-education activities to examine concepts that great philosophers sought to bring to early civilization: fairness, bravery, self-control, civility.

Summer program examines themes behind ‘Harry Potter’ series

Bringing ethics education into schools benefits students in a variety of ways.

Jana Mohr Lone gave the keynote address at the Saigon International School’s Professional Development Conference on November 16, 2018, discussing the importance of questioning and philosophical inquiry in schools.

Watch how professors and Rollins students teach 4 to 5-year-olds at the Hume House Child Development Center philosophy in this Fox 35 segment.

Colorado College concluded this year’s Philosophy Colloquium Talks with a lecture from Dr. Jana Mohr Lone on March 28.

The Center for Philosophy for Children at the University of Washington is now offering a Certificate of Mastery in Philosophy for Children.

For an American teenager today, there are precious few examples of positive, collaborative civil discourse in online media or the entertainment industry. But for motivated high school students in Seattle, there’s the High School Ethics Bowl, a six-year-old competition sponsored by the University of Washington’s Center for Philosophy for Children.

Center director Jana Mohr Lone takes a deeper look at a Frog and Toad story and its philosophical implications on the podcast Sound Effect.

Congratulations to the Chief Sealth International High School Ethics Bowl Team, which just won the state championship! Their proud coach, social-studies teacher Matthew Baudhuin, sent the news and photos.

Children begin speculating about philosophical questions early in their lives. Almost as soon as they can formulate them, most children start asking what we call “big questions.”

Professor Kyle Robertson discusses teaching an ethics bowl course and holding an ethics bowl in with a team of prison inmates in San Quentin against a group an undergraduate ethics bowl team from UC Santa Cruz.

There are times in life when the answers aren’t black and white. Your friend is getting married, and asks you to be best man–but you don’t approve of his fiancee. Should you speak up about your reservations? Should you be quiet and agree to be best man?

Center-led classroom philosophy discussions are tinged with the flavors of Descartes, Confucius, and Kant, and have recently covered topics such as race, human rights and fairness. “Because they are so new to the world,” says Jana Mohr Lone, “children really wonder a lot. Often they’re asking what we think of as philosophical questions without the context of these thousands of-years-old conversations.”

The questions we tackle today are: “Do you have to be a grownup to study those questions? Can kids think about them? Should kids think about them?” Plug in and listen as we discuss how teaching kids philosophy could impact the entire world.

Adults often seem surprised when children offer bits of insight that seem wise beyond their years. But as one local philosophy professor knows, kids are plenty capable of critical thinking, if only the adults around know how to foster it.

No matter where we fall on the issues, our kids are bound to pick up on our agitation. How can we alleviate their fears while still being truthful? And just how upfront should we be? Local experts offer some guidelines for parents to help our children understand the world and offer some reassurance.

The nature of truth. Theories of fairness. The essence of bullying. These are big, weighty subjects, and apparently 9- and 10-year-olds just eat them up. As in, according to a Quartz piece by Jenny Anderson, placing grade-schoolers in weekly philosophical discussions has surprising effects on their academic performance.

A long-running philosophers in schools program has focused on racial inequity and social justice issues at a campus with clear divisions between race and class.

As a philosophy teacher to grade-school students, Jana Mohr Lone is no stranger to getting her mind blown.

Not too long ago, Jana Mohr Lone was at an education workshop in her hometown of Seattle when someone gave her a note.

Schools are generally taught to teach kids what to think, but what if they taught them how to think instead?

From time to time, we all ponder life’s most difficult questions. “Is there a god?” “How can I live a good life?” “What happens when you die?”

The room was filled with parents eager to hear what Dr. Jana Lone, director for the Center for Philosophy for Children, had to say about understanding their philosophical children.

Sound Effect is your weekly tour of ideas, inspired by the place we live. The show is hosted by KPLU’s Gabriel Spitzer.

America may be great at many things, but education isn’t one of them. It’s here that standardized testing creeps behind students like a shadow and where fun experiments take a back seat to rote memorization.

Jana Mohr Lone is the Director of the University of Washington Center for Philosophy for Children. She explains to Gabriel Spitzer how the book “Four Feet, Two Sandals” reveals the dilemmas of saving lives and poses questions about how we value one another.

Jana Mohr Lone discusses engaging children in conversations about death on KPLU’s Sound Effect

Jana Mohr Lone list her 12 favorite picture books for inspiring philosophical conversation with children. Listening to stories being read aloud, an experience many of us had when we were children, is conducive to creating an open and relaxed atmosphere for thinking about deep and fundamental questions.

Jana Mohr Lone and Sara Goering help UW students think deeply, from multiple perspectives, and with an open-minded spirit of inquiry. In turn, their UW students help K-12 children do the same.

Should college athletes be paid? To what extent should politicians’ sexual indiscretions be forgiven? Is it ethical to arm rebels in countries where we’re not at war? These sorts of ethical questions have no easy answers, as high school students discovered at the first annual Washington State High School Ethics Bowl, held on the University of Washington campus in February.

Most people think of philosophy as a subject for college, not kindergarten. But University of Washington philosopher Jana Mohr Lone believes young children benefit just as much from discussing big questions about life.

Students at Seattle’s John Muir Elementary School are trying to answer life’s big questions. Along with reading and math, the school’s curriculum includes philosophy.

In the first Washington State High School Ethics Bowl, 100 students spent their Saturday discussing topics from the legalization of marijuana to forgiving political sex scandals to supporting research on genetically engineered meat.

Jana Mohr Lone doesn’t have answers for kids, just many questions. As the founder and director of the University of Washington Center for Philosophy for Children, she is committed to bring philosophy into young people’s lives.

A lot of young people seem to be obsessed with taking pictures of themselves and posting it to Instagram and Facebook. But some experts say, it doesn’t mean they’re narcissistic or vain – in fact, it’s perfectly normal.

The Heart of the Matter” attempts to further the conversation about the importance of humanities. The report “calls on parents, teachers, scholars, the media and the public at-large to join a cohesive and constructive national discussion of these issues.” We spoke with several academics in an attempt to do just that.

SheSource is an online braintrust of female experts on diverse topics designed to serve journalists, producers and bookers who need female guests and sources.

Are thoughts real? When professor Jana Mohr Lone’s four-year-old son started asking such questions, it prompted her to consider how critical thinking and dialogical skills are taught to young children.

Almost all very young children are alive with questions; they seem to naturally recognize that this is the way to investigate and understand the world. At some point, however, most children absorb the message that questions are often not particularly welcome. They learn that having a question means that there is something they should have already grasped but have not.

Children grow up full of questions and wrestle with deep, thoughtful issues—What does it mean to be good? Why do people die? Who am I? That’s natural, says Jana Mohr Lone, director of the UW’s Center for Philosophy for Children and faculty at the University of Washington’s Department of Philosophy, because to mature emotionally, kids must develop their desire and ability to think abstractly about themselves and their experiences. But as parents, how do we answer those questions?

Children are natural philosophers, says Jana Mohr Lone of the University of Washington Department of Philosophy. Lone, an affiliate faculty member and director of the Northwest Center for Philosophy for Children, says she wrote her new book, “The Philosophical Child,” to help parents, teachers and other adults conduct conversations with children about life’s mysteries.

“The Philosophical Child” by Jana Mohr Lone (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, $32.95). University of Washington’s Jana Mohr Lone, director of the Northwest Center for Philosophy for Children, gives her advice to parents on how to approach philosophical questions with children. The book offers guidance on answering abstract questions such as “What is happiness?” and “What does it mean to be real?”

Professor Jana Mohr Lone, founder of the University of Washington’s Center for Philosophy for Children, brings philosophy lessons to Seattle public school students in K-12 classrooms.

Children have the capaciry to boggle the brain of even the most intelligent adult. If something like, “Why’s lying so bad?” doesn’t give you pausee, “Do I have to tell the truth, if the truth isn’t nice?”just might.

Jana Mohr–Lone is the founder of the Northwest Center for Philosophy for Children, and she teaches philosophy to kids. She’s also a professor at the University of Washington. She’ll tell us how kids can understand and use philosophy.

For 15 years, Jana Mohr-Lone (PhD, ’96) has guided philosophical discussions of everything from art to happiness in K-12 classrooms. Now the rest of us can hear one of those discussions on Philosophy Talk, an hour-long radio program.

The United States is one of the few countries in the world that doesn’t require high school students to take philosophy, so the subject is often a mystery to students. But most of us actually start asking philosophical questions early on.