Middle School Curriculum

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  1. Harry Stottlemeier's Discovery (novel) by Matthew Lipman

  Matthew Lipman

  One day Harry finds himself giving the wrong answer in science class and begins to wonder where he has gone wrong. This reflection soon involves his classmates, who begin to think together about the nature of thinking, inquiry and knowledge. With the help of their teacher, Harry and his classmates discover rules of formal and informal logic, relational logic and hypothetical thinking—-not as ends in themselves, but as tools in helping them understand themselves and their world. Some of the ideas they begin to explore this way include education, mind, rights, religion, art, cause and effect, causes and reasons, and fallibilism. Set within a group of middle school classmates and their families, this novel offers several models of reasonable dialogue, among young people and adults. Adults with a background in philosophy will easily recognize the perennial philosophical issues raised in the story. However, no such background is necessary for young people or adults to enjoy this thought-provoking novel.

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  2. PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY: Instructional Manual to Accompany Harry Stottlemeier's Discovery

  Matthew Lipman, Ann Margaret Sharp, and Frederick S. Oscanyan

  This instructional manual includes hundreds of short, accessible explanations of the philosophical ideas and issues written into HARRY the novel, and as such is a valuable introduction to philosophy. Adults with no experience in academic philosophy will have no trouble using this manual to engage young people in philosophical dialogue. The manual provides discussion plans and exercises to help the students think for themselves about the philosophical ideas most relevant to their experience. The manual is also a primer in critical thinking and formal and informal logic, which are treated as helpful tools for inquiry. Students will find the logic meaningful as they are able to use these new tools to find answers to their own philosophical questions.

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  3. Sources and References for Harry Stottlemeier's Discovery

  Matthew Lipman

  This sequential bibliography matches the 1982 edition of Harry Stottlemeier's Discovery page by page. It contains both sources—works that influenced Matthew Lipman in writing the novel, references to philosophical works he and Ann Margaret Sharp recommend to explore of the novels’ philosophical themes, and brief commentary on them by Lipman.

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  4. First Edition (1974) of Harry Stottlemeier's Discovery

  Matthew Lipman

  Harry Stottlemeier's Discovery is the student book for a project in philosophical thinking. It offers a model of dialogue—both of children with one another and of children with adults. The story is set among a classroom of children who begin to understand the basics of logical reasoning when Harry, who isn't paying attention in class, says that a comet is a planet because he remembers hearing that comets revolve around the sun just as planets do. The events that follow in the classroom and outside of school are a recreation of the ways that children night might find themselves thinking and acting. The story is a teaching model; non-authoritarian, and anti-indoctrinating, it respects the value of inquiry and reasoning, encourages the development of alternative modes of thought and imagination, and suggests how children are able to learn from one another. Further, it sketches what it might be like to live and participate in a small in a community where children have their own interests, yet respect each other as people, and are capable at times of engaging in cooperative inquiry for no other reason than the satisfaction of doing so.