Jana Mohr Lone, Author at PLATO

College Students in Pre-College Classrooms: Philosophy Books and Other Ideas

Jana Mohr Lone | June 1, 2009

Thursday was our last seminar session at UW for the spring. Through this class, twelve college students introduced philosophy into public school classrooms around Seattle over the quarter. The seminar included students majoring in philosophy and education. On Thursday the seminar students presented the lesson plans they had implemented in the classrooms in which they … College Students in Pre-College Classrooms: Philosophy Books and Other Ideas

May

Jana Mohr Lone | May 22, 2009

From BlossomsFrom blossoms comesthis brown paper bag of peacheswe bought from the boyat the bend in the road where we turned towardsigns painted Peaches. From laden boughs, from hands,from sweet fellowship in the bins,comes nectar at the roadside, succulentpeaches we devour, dusty skin and all,comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat. O, to … May

Philosophy in the Classroom

Jana Mohr Lone | May 19, 2009

This week and next students in our Philosophy for Children seminar at the University of Washington will be doing philosophy lessons in a variety of public school classrooms around Seattle, from 5th through 10th grade. We have been meeting for seven weeks now, and in the seminar we’ve discussed topics ranging from the nature of … Philosophy in the Classroom

Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust: Blog Series Part VII

Jana Mohr Lone | May 11, 2009

Can one person make a difference? The last class for the Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust unit involves watching the film Not in Our Town, which describes a series of hate crimes that took place in Billings, Montana, in the 1990s, and the town’s reaction to these events. The people in the town really came … Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust: Blog Series Part VII

Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust: Blog Series Part VI

Jana Mohr Lone | May 5, 2009

Why did some people become rescuers during the Holocaust? What makes some people, despite the risks, act to prevent moral wrongs? Is being a bystander morally wrong? In this class we see the film The Courage to Care, involving profiles of individuals during the Third Reich who helped protect Jews in France, Holland and Poland. … Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust: Blog Series Part VI

Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust: Blog Series Part V

Jana Mohr Lone | April 29, 2009

In this class we view the film Heil Hitler: Confessions of a Hitler Youth. The film is an interview with Alfons Heck, who describes his childhood experiences as a member of the Hitler Youth and his rise to prominence as a leader in the organization, and then his shame and revulsion as he realized after … Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust: Blog Series Part V

Stellaluna

Jana Mohr Lone | April 24, 2009

The picture book Stellaluna, by Janell Cannon, is a wonderful book for inspiring discussions about what makes something what it is and about friendship. It tells the story of a young fruit bat who becomes separated from her mother and lands in a nest of baby birds, becoming an adoptive member of the bird family. … Stellaluna

Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust: Blog Series Part IV

Jana Mohr Lone | April 20, 2009

Why do people obey authority even when they sense that what they’re doing is wrong? Central to the conditions that allowed the Holocaust to occur was people’s tendencies to conform to the situations in which they find themselves. In this class we watch a clip from the film Obedience, which documents the Milgram experiments. In … Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust: Blog Series Part IV

Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust: Blog Series Part III

Jana Mohr Lone | April 15, 2009

When Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, Jane Elliott, a third grade teacher in Iowa, decided to implement an exercise in her classroom to help her students understand racism and discrimination. She divided the class into students with brown eyes and students with blue eyes, and spent one day discriminating against the brown-eyed students … Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust: Blog Series Part III

Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust — Blog Series Part II

Jana Mohr Lone | April 10, 2009

This morning I taught the second class of the “Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust” unit to two eighth grade classes. This class is an introduction to moral philosophy, a way to give the students some background before we launch into the issues raised by the Holocaust. We began by talking about Plato’s Ring of Gyges … Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust — Blog Series Part II

Jana Mohr Lone