The Philosopher-in-Residence Program at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School
By Debi Talukdar and Jack Flesher
The Philosopher-in-residence (PIR) program at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School, Seattle, began in 2018 in partnership with the University of Washington Center for Philosophy for Children (now PLATO). The program was designed to provide philosophy sessions, facilitated by the philosopher-in-residence, for any classroom teacher that was interested, on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, throughout the school year. The goal is to foster communities of philosophical inquiry in many of its classrooms and develop a culture of philosophical questioning throughout the school. This program is funded by donors and is offered at no cost to the school.
Thurgood Marshall has had 3 PIRs so far — Debi Talukdar from 2018-2021, Dustin Stoddart from 2021-2022, and the current PIR, Jack Flesher since 2022. The size of the program doubled from 5 to 10 classrooms in the first couple of years. Through word of mouth and demonstration classes, more and more teachers experienced the value of philosophical inquiry and became interested in incorporating philosophy into their weekly schedules. Almost all these classes continued doing philosophy online through the first full pandemic year and looked forward to it despite the early challenges of online learning. The PIR is at the school for 10 hours a week. Teachers participated in sessions to varying degrees depending on their level of comfort and experience with philosophical inquiry. Some observe the sessions outside the community of inquiry and others contribute questions and comments, and help students make connections with other content they are studying.
While the PIR always offers a wide range of philosophical questions and issues to explore, often supplied by the students themselves, each Philosopher-in-Residence brings their own strengths and interests to the program. Debi, a lover of thought experiments and ethical dilemmas, brought several of those to her sessions. With her, students have enjoyed discussing the experience machine, the ethics of self-driving cars, if it’s ever okay to lie, and other topics like the nature of reality. Jack, being an ethno-musicologist, has incorporated music and art as prompts for philosophizing about topics like social philosophy, and for considering the nature of art and music themselves. For example, students watched a live recording of Nina Simone performing “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free” as a launch-point for considering issues of freedom, justice, race, and gender. Some of the students’ questions coming out of this session were: “What does it mean to be ‘free’?,” “How do you know if you’re ‘free’?,” and “What does freedom feel like? Is it the same for everyone?”.
The PIR also serves as a resource for teachers in the building. If a teacher wants a session related to a particular topic in the curriculum, like the civil rights movement, or an issue the class is working through like bullying or privacy, they can request the PIR to design a lesson that facilitates a conversation about that topic from a philosophical perspective. Recently, a class prompted their own discussion question before the lesson began based on an issue that had come up in their classroom. They asked, “Is it okay to steal from others if you have less?” In answering this question, students explored needs vs. wants, intent vs. impact, the tragedy of the commons, and the nuances of what it means to “actively steal” vs. receiving things to which one might not otherwise be entitled such as getting extra items with your order. We forewent the originally planned lesson and had a rich discussion around this query instead.
Over the past five years, the PIR program has had a positive impact at Thurgood Marshall by starting to cultivate a philosophical culture among students. Students have big ideas and questions about the world; they are creative and deep thinkers who care about their school, families, and communities. Having regular philosophy has helped the students at Thurgood Marshall practice and cultivate the skills they need to better understand and organize their thoughts and ideas, hold space for different perspectives, and engage in civil intellectual disagreement. Debi was often asked philosophical questions in the hallway by the students she worked with, or told about their most recent wonderings. “Can ‘nothing’ actually exist?” One of the most rewarding parts of being at one school for multiple years is watching the students’ thinking evolve as they graduate from one grade to the next. A student Debi started working with in third grade took such an interest in philosophy that she continued taking PLATO’s online Zoom classes after she graduated from Thurgood Marshall, giving Debi the opportunity to witness significant growth in her philosophical sensitivity over four years.
Engaging with students and classes who have never had philosophy is a great reminder of the progress made by those who have been practicing philosophy for longer. This is perhaps the most noticeable impact of the PIR program. For example, students beginning to philosophize together for the first time often pose questions that are factual or comprehension-based. A recent class, led by Jack, read Maybe by Kobi Yamada. One group of students new to philosophy asked, “Where does she [the main character] live?” While this is not an irrelevant question, it doesn’t necessarily create a deeper engagement with the existential prompts throughout the book, which begins with the question, “Have you ever wondered why you’re here?” After workshopping this question with their group, which included a discussion about the main character whose gender identity remains ambiguous throughout the book, the group settled on “Why do we have genders? Why are genders ‘gendered’?” In contrast, classes familiar with philosophical inquiry and identifying different types of questions – factual, historical, scientific, and philosophical – will often self-correct when formulating their questions, as they have grown in their own philosophical thinking and practice over the course of the program.
The PIR program responds meaningfully to the changing nature of the world we live in, constantly addressing new issues and topics for students to consider. Artificial intelligence (AI), for example, has become a pertinent topic coinciding with the widespread proliferation of publicly available AI tools such as ChatGPT. Students are fascinated by these advancements and are capable of exploring the underlying ethical and existential implications of contemporary AI, a topic which adult philosophers are still coming to grips with. Students’ ideas, thoughts, and experiences will shape the future of our world. Helping them develop the tools needed to meaningfully explore developments–whether they are sociopolitical or technological–will ensure that the decisions we make as a society in the future will be well-founded and open to different perspectives and possibilities.
