[MUSIC PLAYING]
MORGAN STEBBINGS: I think the key thing that philosophy deals with or allows
for deep learning is the concept of instead of it being established
knowledge that we're trying to transfer onto our students,
it's more of an ability or an opportunity for them to inquire.
So there's no right or wrong.
There's no established response that we are trying to get out of our students.
And in doing so, we teach them how to question and rely on their reason,
so what their reasons are for whatever topic we're talking about.
So it moves away from this kind of rote learning
that we all know is not really working.
It's never really worked - memorization -
because that's just acquisition of knowledge.
What we want you to do is apply that knowledge, use it.
When you don't actually use it, you're not actually learning anything.
So and I think there's that real shift between learning and thinking.
Philosophy is always tied to these deep questions.
And so I think that when we encourage them to question things,
we give them that ability to really focus on the deeper level.
What is at the heart of what we're talking about?
With philosophy, because there's no right or wrong,
we want the students to pause and take a minute
and figure out if what another student has just responded with towards
them maybe alters what they had originally thought.
You will often see in a philosophical discussion
that students will hold very strongly to their beliefs.
And I think that's a human nature thing is we value our beliefs.
And if we have to change our beliefs, then we've lost in some way.
But with the philosophy classroom, we specifically state to them that,
and we encourage this idea of being able to change your opinions
and that it's a good thing if you do because sometimes,
through this art of communication and this community of inquiry,
we actually highlight on something that we might have realized
was a generalization that we've made or an assumption that we've made.
Or maybe we've created a stereotype, or we didn't look at something
from a particular point of view.
So in doing all of that, sometimes students
will change their points of view.
Or maybe they'll adjust what they were thinking.
Or they will respond with a passionate example
of what they originally had thought.
When you question students, you can get silence.
You can get passion.
You can get a change of opinion.
So there's many different ways in which they
respond to these kind of deep or these philosophical questions.
The effect that philosophical inquiry gives to reasoning and problem solving
is pretty fundamental because at the heart of philosophy
is being able to be reasonable or reason able.
You need to back up whatever you are communicating
in a community of inquiry.
You need to back it up with your justifications.
And those are your reasons for why you believe or think or have
a thought or an idea.
So in terms of their reasoning, it really
strengthens their ability to reason because it gives them
a foundation, or a safe environment, to be
able to exercise that reasoning skill.
And that's something that's central to all of philosophy.
You can never - in order to do philosophy,
you must take an opinion that you have, and you
must provide a reason for having it.
If you provide no reason, then you're not
engaging in a philosophical discussion.
You can think about this idea of fast and slow thinking.
And Daniel Kahneman was the one who kind of wrote a book about it.
And this idea of fast thinking is our heuristics, or our algorithms,
that we program.
And that's the way we approach a lot of things.
And it allows us to go through life really, really quickly.
The slow thinking is the logical.
It's the calculated.
It's what takes time.
And it's sometimes more infrequent than the other.
And that's what philosophy does.
Philosophy allows students the practice to be
able to engage in slow thinking, the logical side of this thinking
perspective.
And when they do it in the classroom, our classroom, they internalize it.
And they start taking it out, and they apply it to their other subjects
and beyond school.
They apply to other aspects of their lives.
I mean, philosophical inquiry has had positive effects on behaviors
and being able to ask or make good decisions.
I think one of the most important things about philosophical inquiry
is the fact that through the process, you're enabling students.
You're not shaping them in something that you want them to turn into.
You're giving them the opportunity to explore their own thinking
and their own understanding.
And it leads them to be in control.
And that's something that is really powerful.
If a student is in control of their thinking
or in control of what they're learning, then they'll
have a greater investment in it.
And they'll want to carry it out with more sincerity.
Because we don't expect this answer or that answer or a particular response,
it's about the process and how we arrive at our understanding,
we give students the opportunity to figure out their own way to that point.
So we give them the ability to shape their own learning in a sense.
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