If you have gifted children, defined as average children who are consistently exposed to gifted level exercises, then you probably have argumentative children. This is the hallmark of a gifted child. You may not notice this if you have a single child and you don't hang out at the playground listening to their conversations. If you have multiple children, then every dinner conversation topic (e.g, 'pass me the ketchup') devolves into a vigorous debate over who is right. Mom's hate it. Dad's are too busy arguing to notice, (e.g, the ketchup bottle is in reach, stop moving it, you already have enough ketchup, no that's not the exact amount that belongs on a fry).
Lately, my favorite At Home Schooling exercise is to state the thesis of a philosopher and then invite my children to evaluate how totally right this person is on this particular topic. It's hard not to smile. The first reaction I get is a 10 minute look of disbelief at how wrong I must be while my child unpacks the logic. With a really good argument, it might take a few days.
In fairness to long dead philosophers, we have much going for us today that was not available in the 18th or 19th centuries. Kant and Descartes provided some really powerful tools for thinking that might not have been accepted as widely back then as they are today. The IQ of the average 13 year old today is much higher than the average IQ of an 18th or 19th century philosopher. Eighth graders don't drink wine during breakfast or lunch, and so have a greater capacity to think through a complicated problem after dinner. The only commonality between an 18th or 19th century philosopher and the modern teenager is that both are convinced that they are right and everyone else is stupid.
As a side note, I never understood why The Left decried the narrow focus on studying the Eurocentric view of the world. After all, math is math, and math historians are careful to point out where other cultures discovered Algebra, Trig, Calculus and number theory before it was rediscovered and codified by European academics. Granted, it's well known that historical research is usually wrong; this reputation is well earned by European and American historians who are blind to the fact that there may be something they don't know. Since I started studying philosophy a few weeks ago, my eyes are opened to just how arrogant and clueless the average European philosophers is, and this field would benefit enormously from input of the other continents.
An example of stupidity
The whole field of ontology is based on the same faulty premise as alchemy. According to Anselm's famous logical fallacy, God is the best thing you can think of, but this thing would be better if it existed, therefore God must exist. What?
We thoroughly debated a few of these arguments realizing that the definition of God, no matter how carefully defined, will not logically prove his existence.
On the other hand, Karl Popper's description of what is science versus what is not science is as profound as it is simple. (Thanks Crash Course in Philosophy on youtube). For every 10 philosophy arguments that I read, one of them is really good. The other 9 are the reason I think 8th graders are smarter than 18th and 19th century philosophers.
The never ending debate
Every philosophical concept and argument is fair game for learning. Some of these are not only good for learning, but age appropriate as well.
How do you define the self? I put this question to 3 thirteen year old boys. Here is the list I received from the first one, we'll call him Arthur: "I'm humorous, play video games, and have friends." So if you're travelling abroad and in a bad mood and all you have is a book for company, then you're not you? The next friend, Stuart, proposed "International, sports minded, sarcastic, and not Arthur." Well played. You're still you on a trip.
We didn't even get into the philosophical arguments on self since this discussion took so long. Are you your cells, your brain, a soul, etc. The next morning Arthur announced "I have 4 moods. Humorous, serious, bored, and before a cross country meet I go like this a lot (flailing about)". So he is still himself on a trip abroad. But that's not the point.
Why don't you want to die? "Because I can do fun stuff and death is boring". I had to help here - we don't know death is boring but we don't know that it isn't, but we know for a fact that today's fun stuff is in fact fun. I'm not 100% sure of this, but I don't see this argument in the body of material on the death of philosophy. A fun discussion, but again, not the point.
What is the point?
The point is that the kids are learning to 'see'. I develop this skill in pre-math kids who learn to 'see' shapes and shape attributes in a complicated diagram during COGAT test prep, or 'see' the missing equation in a complicated math word problem at age 8. Now they're learning to 'see' relationships and characteristics and logic that they didn't know existed behind a simple word like 'self'. This is not just a skill, it's a super power. When paired with the super power of vocabulary (ontological, abductive, etc) I've got a kid who's going to do well in AP English. This assumes that their grade school teachers are doing the same thing with literature, which they are, or I would be doing it at home.
Apparently philosophers, despite their hang overs and limited IQ's, knew this all along. Philosophy is about asking questions and extending, changing, refuting, or proposing arguments. In other words, it's really great preparation for getting papers done quickly and not being challenged by college despite taking advanced courses.
