Cristina Cammarano

Cristina Cammarano is an assistant professor at Salisbury University. Her dissertation, The Philosophically Educated Teacher as Traveler, explores the metaphor of travel in its connections to teaching and learning.

1. Which of your courses get students out of the classroom? What project(s) do your students do?

I have incorporated civic engagement projects in two courses: Philosophy of Education, which is a course I teach every fall that is attended mainly by philosophy majors and education majors, and Proseminar in Philosophy, which is a requirement for our majors that I get to teach when it is my turn in the department. In both, civic engagement consists of planning and leading philosophy-based activities in the community, especially in K-12 public schools.

2. Give an example of a successful project.

Last fall, the science teacher at the local elementary school asked us to collaborate to create an eight-week module of epistemology and philosophy of science for the fifth grade. I put together a team of students who were taking Philosophy of Science taught by my colleague, Dr. Joerg Tuske, and students who were taking my Philosophy of Education course. We met a few times with the teacher to understand what he had in mind, and then we planned and taught the module with weekly sessions in three fifth-grade classrooms. I offered a bit of guidance, but basically the students were in charge. They picked the questions and activities, and they led the discussions. In a particularly successful session, Salisbury University (SU) student volunteers wrote a Sponge Bob story about David Hume’s problem of the “missing shade of blue” and presented it to the children for discussion.

3. What do you think students gain from doing this civic engagement?

My students learn many things from doing philosophy with children in the public school system. First, they gain an understanding of what it is to philosophize in a community of inquiry. They see that it is true that one really learns something when one teaches it. They also learn to be aware of the metacognitive elements of the group discussion and to gently guide it without imposing on it or changing its direction. Finally, students learn to select materials. We normally pick either from the tradition with a twist, like in the Hume-Sponge Bob example, or from Philosophy for Children curricula such as the ones written by Montclair State’s Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children or the Philosophy Foundation. Alternatively, students create their own materials for discussion, in this way building their own understanding of philosophical problems, tools of research, and theories.

4. What does the civic engagement project offer to wider communities?

The Philosophy Department at SU has a long tradition of sustained engagement with the local community, and since I joined it three years ago, we have been happy to add school outreach to our activities. In our rural area, any initiative aimed at widening educational offerings to our youth is welcome and necessary. Regular exposure to philosophy lessons has been shown to improve children’s academic and social skills, and the public-school administration has been extraordinarily receptive to our collaboration. The program has grown to include a philosophy club at two local high schools, a seventh-grade class for students with emotional challenges, a Saturday group for teens at the local public library, and most grades at our local elementary school. So far, we have engaged in weekly philosophy sessions with about 300 children and their teachers, and hopefully the benefits of those discussions have also extended to their families.

5. Why do you choose to ask students to do civic engagement projects?

It is fun. I love seeing my students engage with younger children, and I enjoy seeing them grow into themselves, developing their philosophical sense in ways that are unique to that setting. We derive many pleasures from the hour spent with a group of 27 second-graders discussing, say, the difference between befriending a person and befriending a stuffed animal: we enjoy the depth of questioning, energy, creativity, and curiosity and try to bring it back to our college classrooms as well. My students come to love this experience, and they often volunteer beyond the required number of meetings. I also believe that this experience allows for a real understanding of some philosophy for them (and for me), and it serves to remedy the perception that one may have philosophy detached from life.

6. Do you connect your civic engagement work to larger justice issues?

Yes, I do. In the Philosophy of Education course we examine philosophies of schooling and pedagogy. It is unavoidable to connect our experience in the local public school, which has wonderful dedicated teachers serving a student population that is for the most part in poverty, with larger questions about inequality, policy, and resource allocation. Students also unpack questions around evaluation of academic development through mandated standardized testing, and related issues of access and privilege. The way discipline is handled in schools is also an object of puzzlement and critique for my students. Overall, I see that students through this experience develop an interest in better understanding the world of public schooling, and a desire to effect change. I hope at some point to form a group of students for local advocacy for the presence of philosophy in the pre-college curriculum—at least at our county level!

7. What do you think is the biggest mistake you have made doing this work?

This is a story about a mistake I made—but beware, it could also be a case of humble-bragging because I kind of like how the story develops. We were teaching third-grade philosophy with the help of two seasoned student volunteers. They asked if they could do the “trolley problem.” I said, okay, just make sure you change it and make it kid-friendly. FIRST MISTAKE: do not assume that “kid-friendly” means anything precise to a late teenager. It does not. SECOND MISTAKE: I did not check with them about how they had decided to change the problem ahead of time. Instead, I asked just before entering the classroom, and they told me, “Cristina, we got this. Instead of a large man, we used an elephant.” So the kids had to discuss whether pushing an elephant to its death was okay in order to save five people. The eight-year-olds seemed to be getting somewhere. A child said she thought that, given that elephants are endangered and humans are not, she would spare the elephant. Other kids pensively nodded. One boy commented he thought humans were more important, but when another kid asked him on what grounds, he did not know how to support his claim. The bell rang and we had to leave the classroom. That evening, the teacher received a few phone calls from parents concerned about what kids had been doing in Philosophy. I offered a blanket apology and reassured her that this would not happen again, leaving the nature of “this” unexamined. When I told my students about it, they loved the story, and they were proud that the children had shared the discussion with their parents and it sparked discussion. I secretly hope “this” happens over and over for my students when they philosophize with younger persons and in the other parts of their lives.