With the fifth graders, who are reading Crow by Barbara Wright, we record unfamiliar vocabulary words for their learning and I quiz them from time to time. Recently the word 'philosophy' appeared in the text, and, because it was new to them we dutifully recorded it. Typically, I try to find a synonym as a definition to make the memorization easier for the students. However, philosophy was hard to define with a single word so I used a phrase.
Crow is a young readers novel, I'd guess at a ninth grade level, about a black family living in Georgia in 1898, which is at the ending of the Reconstruction Period in the South and the beginning of Jim Crow...thus the title of the book. The main character is Moses, age twelve, whose father writes for a Black newspaper and is a college graduate. The editor of the paper, who is black but looks white, has written and editorial in response to a white woman who called black men brutes. In the editorial the writer argues that it's ironic that white people should worry about protecting the purity of white females while white men have long abused black women.
With the ending of federal protection via Reconstruction, this editorial has inflamed white vigilante ire. An Episcopal priest warns the editor that he's about to be lynched by a vigilante mob and arranges for him to spirited to the train station where he can travel to safety. The priest's young associate pastor is enlisted to carry the editor to the train station via buggy.
Before they arrive at the station they are stopped by vigilantes. When they are asked about their destination the young priest says they are on their way to a horse sale, which is a lie. The vigilante says "There's no horse sale this time of day." To which the priest replies "It's in..the next town,,,so we're going tonight to be prepared in the morning," The vigilante lets them pass.
Stopping the reading I said "The priest just told a lie." Engrossed in the story, that revelation brought the students up short. These are very proper students, who, if they encounter what they consider a bad word such as 'hell' or 'ass', will substitute 'blank' so they don't have to say it. Caught up in the drama of the escape they were just glad for the quick thinking of the priest.
These students are ten and eleven years old. Typically that would place them still in the category of 'concrete thinkers', just on the cusp of thinking more abstractly. In spite of that, three of the students could form cogent arguments to support the priest's decision to lie, while they continued to recognize that it is wrong to lie. The fourth student wanted a solution that would save the man's life without a lie. Is this student an illustration of the curse of idealism? However, he also tends to be an oppositional thinker who is very ready to argue the opposite of anyone else.
What followed was an interesting discussion of the nature of truth. I suggested that truth is larger than verbal veracity, though I didn't use those words. It was very satisfying that these young scholars could grasp that idea and wrestle with it.
At the conclusion of the discussion I pointed out that we had been engaged in philosophy, which, I think, helped them understand that new word.
PS When I reported this incident to the Curmudgeonette she said "Oh, you're teaching them situational ethics? :)
