Plato Was Wrong! Footnotes on Doing Philosophy with Young People

This book is a compendium of lesson plans for classroom exercises designed to foster philosophical inquiry with young people. It introduces the reader to a wide range of activities for exploring philosophical questions and problems with children from pre-school age through high-school. There are lessons for a full-range of topics in philosophy, including metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics, and each is intended to help foster a supportive and caring classroom community of inquiry. All of the activities have been used on numerous occasions and include reflections on what teachers who employ the lesson might expect when doing so. Using this book, teachers, parents, and others can successfully being fostering philosophical inquiry with young people of all ages.

David A. Shapiro is a faculty member in philosophy at Cascadia Community College and education director of the Northwest Center for Philosophy for Children at the University of Washington. He has been doing philosophy with young people in preschool through college classrooms since he was a graduate student back in the twentieth century.