Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 30, 1990 TAG: 9004300327
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B4 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: By ELIZABETH WILKERSON THE RICHMOND NEWS LEADER
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Medium
But these topics are entering the classroom in three Charlottesville-area schools through a pilot program in philosophy sponsored by Piedmont Virginia Community College.
Marietta McCarty, a Piedmont faculty member for eight years, leads the children in discussions of such topics as democracy, love, prejudice, fear and the meaning of life.
There is a national movement to bring philosophy into the elementary schools, she said, and about 4,000 schools across the country include philosophy in the elementary curriculum.
The pupils are "old enough to be able to express themselves and to want to express themselves and young enough that there's no peer pressure. . . . They're not uncomfortable in front of one another. There's still enough innocence for the real thing to happen at this age," she said.
"What they don't have . . . is the baggage and the preconceived notions. They're very clear. They're still at the heart of life.
"Nietzsche said that to create your own values, one needs to have the innocence of a child, so hopefully they're on the road to creating their own," she added.
One recent morning at Clark Elementary School in Charlottesville, the children sat quietly in a semicircle around McCarty, discussing things they are most afraid of.
"A lot of philosophers say one of the worst things about being human is fear," McCarty told them.
One pupil, April, said she was afraid to cross the street because once she had been hit by a car.
"That's an excellent example," said McCarty. "How can you handle that all your life you'll have to cross the street?"
"Start trying to believe that I can do it," she answered.
"And you can look both ways," McCarty reminded her.
"People talk about athletes training for a meet," she told the children. "We will train your mind as well. A lot of problems are solved if you just think clearly."
The children also discussed the meaning of compassion, the problem of hurt feelings and what it means to be a good person.
On the last of four days of classroom discussions, the children get to pose the one question in the world they most want answered.
At Yancey School in Albemarle County, one pupil said, "You may not be able to answer this, but I've always wondered why there's any life at all instead of nothing," McCarty recalled.
"Heidegger spent a lifetime writing about that. Sartre spent a lifetime writing about that," she said.
"The best one of all was at the Montessori School - `I wonder if we'd be happy if we had the answer to these questions,' " McCarty said.
McCarty hopes to take the program to more third grades for two more years, then conduct training seminars to make philosophy part of the third-grade curriculum in the city and county.
Philosophy has been taught in "an abstract, ivory tower, tweed coat, pipe-smoking stuffy way for a long time," said McCarty. "Philosophy is something that in a healthy society people would be doing every day."
by CNB