ADVOCACY

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Advocacy

OPTA is mandated to advocate for teaching philosophy in high schools and to assist those who want to introduce philosophy courses in their schools. Written by education and philosophy professionals, the following links provide answers to the two big questions about teaching philosophy in high school that parents and school administrators might ask.

What is Philosophy?

One answer: philosophy is the attempt to resolve mysteries—to answer the questions there is (at present) no clear method for answering.Compare and contrast the following questions:
  1. Is Rolf a dog?
  2. Does 111105 ÷ 9 = 12345?
  3. Is this all just a dream?
We know how to answer the first two questions: we answer the first by looking at Rolf; we answer the second by doing long division.

But how do we answer the third question? Pinching ourselves won’t work: someone in a dream could get pinched. Picking up a book and reading it to see if it makes sense won’t work: maybe this is a boring dream where books work normally (or maybe the book doesn’t make sense but we think it does). So how do we answer this question? We don’t know: but philosophers have taken a lot of cracks at it.

Source: http://philosophy.utoronto.ca/about/what-is-philosophy/

Why Study Philosophy?

The career opportunities open to philosophy graduates are many and varied. Any questions that philosophy students may have about the personal and professional value of the subject will be answered here. These sites include comprehensive information about personal intellectual fulfilment, transferable skills, graduate school acceptance in a wide variety of professions, and not least, the earning potential of philosophy graduates.

Skeptical parents of students who are interested in studying philosophy will be pleasantly surprised by this information. So will high school administrators who might be reluctant to offer philosophy in their schools.

https://www.uoguelph.ca/arts/philosophy/undergrad/why

http://philosophy.utoronto.ca/about/why-study-philosophy/

http://www.sfu.ca/philosophy/next.html

https://philosophy.cas2.lehigh.edu/node/25

https://philosophy.fas.harvard.edu/why-study-philosophy-0

http://www.lse.ac.uk/philosophy/why-study-philosophy/

Philosophy for Children

Teaching philosophy to pre-teens, either in school or at home, is now a matter of serious study. The following links provide information about this topic.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/children/

General article on p4c topics.

http://www.institutphilos.com

Books and games for middle and high school students and their parents, including Playwise.

http://amyleask.com

Books and games for elementary school children and their parents.

http://www.montclair.edu/cehs/academics/centers-and-institutes/iapc/

Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children, founded by Prof. Matthew Lipman.

https://depts.washingtonedu/nwcenter/

University of Washington Center for Philosophy for Children

https://www.plato-philosophy.org/

American Philosophical Association's Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization

https://www.sapere.org.uk

https://www.philosophy-foundation.org

http://p4c.ualberta.ca

Founded by Prof. Rob Wilson, P4Calberta supports the work of IAPC.