I teach, therefore I am.

There's a strange dichotomy at work on the bookshelf in room 2115. At eye level, the center shelf showcases a handful of wooden knickknacks: a painted mallard figurine and an irregularly shaped basketball flank a fist-sized bust of Socrates. Above the clutter, impressive volumes of Immanuel Kant and Soren Kierkegaard vie for space with the smaller works of Albert Camus, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Jean-Paul Sartre. A few shelves below, books like Basketball FundaMENTALs, Creating a Winning Defense, and Youth Basketball Drills contrast their shelfmates' scholarly tone. Newspaper clippings of the Chicago Cubs' winning season lie scattered among academic journals, social science textbooks, and a set of "Great Philosophers" finger puppets. On the top shelf, in what can only have been a gross organizational error, I spy a copy of Jonathan Feinsteins A Season on the Brink lodged between The Myth of Sisyphus and the I Ching.

Contemplating the shelf, I toy with the idea of a cash strapped university asking its philosophy department to share office space with the coaching staff. (Potential for a sitcom? Perhaps.) But the setting of this particular bookshelf is not a university at all; it's Eau Claire Memorial High School in Eau Claire, Wisconsin--one of only a handful of public high schools in the United States that offers an independent philosophy curriculum. And the seemingly disparate book collection is no gag but rather the library of educator Jim Kasmarek, a basketball coach turned philosophy teacher who is leading the charge to introduce philosophy as a relevant and vital part of the curriculum in American high schools.

Do teenagers need philosophy? In an era when budget cuts are forcing many schools to slash all but the most essential programs, the widespread introduction of philosophy to secondary education seems like an unnecessary burden. Recent developments in education place high importance on standardized test scores in reading, math, and science. The "No Child Left Behind" emphasis on tangible results seems incompatible with a subject like philosophy--seemingly unparalleled in obscurity and abstraction.

But a growing number of advocates for precollege philosophy see things differently. A philosophy curriculum can be accessible to high school students, they argue, and it offers a myriad of benefits: exposure to new ideas and opinions, familiarity with abstract thinking, and the development of skills to analyze and construct effective arguments. The blanket term is critical thinking, and educators like Kasmarek contend that the best way to teach it is through philosophy.

"You might say that there's no room for anything philosophical because we have to teach these facts" explains the forty-three-year-old teacher, "but if you're going to teach these kids how to be thinkers, how to analyze information, and how to be better readers, philosophy only enhances their performance on these tests."

If the success of his own homegrown curriculum is any indication, Kasmarek is right. Enrollment in Memorial's philosophy course has tripled since the class's inception. Kasmarek has been a guest on Wisconsin Public Radio and his work is the subject of a public television documentary. In March 2003 the Wisconsin Humanities Council awarded him the Governor's Award for Excellence in K-12 Humanities Education. Take into account the two textbooks he has already published (there's a third in the works), and Kasmarek's success seems nothing short of metaphysical. Might his momentum foreshadow a larger trend toward high school philosophy?

An Unlikely Advocate

"While they are boys and lads they should occupy themselves with boyish education and philosophy...." Plato attributes this line from the Republic to his mentor, Socrates, who valued philosophy second only to physical development in the education of young people. But views on the role of philosophy have changed somewhat since Greek antiquity: Today the discipline is presented almost exclusively as the domain of colleges and universities. There are exceptions, of course: Ontario, Canada, officially endorsed high school philosophy programs in 1994, Australian secondary schools tend to include the subject, and the small but active Philosophy for Children movement has sought to extend the subject's audience since 1969. But philosophy's image problem has remained--especially in the United States. By and large, the study of philosophy is considered the pursuit of coffeehouse intellectuals, gray-headed academics, and a handful of enterprising liberal arts students.

Kasmarek, however, fits none of the philosopher's erudite stereotypes. Not unlike his bookshelf, the educator's general demeanor and classroom technique are a bizarre amalgam of the ivory tower and the basketball court. He has the frenetic mannerisms of a coach in the fourth quarter of the state finals and the enthusiasm of a college sophomore who has just stumbled upon a new major. And while he might be more comfortable wearing a whistle than a tweed jacket, Kasmarek's dedication to the classroom is unquestionable. The man is almost comically excited about philosophy. He speaks rapidly when discussing it, occasionally bursting into a mid-sentence whoop, like a sports fan watching his favorite team.

Philosophy first caught Kasmarek's attention while he was an undergraduate. Pursuing a bachelor's degree in social studies, his early focus was largely on his minor--coaching--when the fervor of a philosophy professor piqued his interest. "He [the professor] was just so passionate about it," remembers Kasmarek, "I'll be honest with you, I didn't understand a lot of it, but it made a great impression on me."

Most of Kasmarek's early teaching career revolved around coaching. In 1992 he accepted a position as a social studies teacher and basketball coach at Eau Claire Memorial, a school of about 6,000 students and a premier slot on Wisconsin's high school basketball circuit. The teacher and coach was working toward a master's degree in education when, in 1997, a supplementary course in ancient philosophy rekindled his interest in the subject. "We were talking about the pre-Socratics, and I just thought, 'How much fun would this be at a high school level?"' he explains. "That's what started it. It began as just a shot in the dark."

Kasmarek pursued the idea, seeking administrative permission to begin a new course. By the spring semester nearly ninety students were signed up for a newly created philosophy elective. With only a basic understanding of the subject and few model curricula available, the coach-cum-philosopher set out to create the class from scratch. "I had been teaching for fifteen years," Kasmarek recalls, "but this was the same experience that I had had as a student teacher.... I wasn't quite sure where the answers were going.... It was real difficult to explain, 'I don't know everything--I'm learning some things right along with you.'" The class was experimental, versatile, and a complete success.

By the summer of 1998 Kasmarek had left his coaching position and turned his attention to creating a high school philosophy textbook. "I started thinking, since there isn't any high school material, is it because nobody's ever tried? Or is this because there isn't a need for it? I went with the former" The result--Philosophy, published by the Center for Learning--is a collection and refinement of the lessons and activities created during the course's first semester. From skits reenacting Plato's famous allegory of the cave to "Political Philosophy Charades," the text takes a hands-on approach to a subject that doesn't generally involve hands, weaving excerpts from philosophical texts in with performance-based activities. Open ended questions and discussion prompts encourage students to discuss concepts, emphasizing ways in which philosophical topics are relevant to them. A review of the textbook in the journal Inquiry called it "a significant achievement" and the endeavor became Kasmarek's graduate capstone project.

"Once I started teaching the material" he comments, "I realized that this was ... the perfect curriculum for the perfect age. Teenagers by nature question, and if you don't allow them to question then you're saying that questioning has no part in learning."

Within two years of the publishing of the textbook Memorial was running as many as five sessions of the philosophy course per semester. In 2001 Kasmarek began teaching "Philosophy II," exploring the sub-schools of philosophy in greater depth. In 2002 a second textbook was published.

"[Kasmarek] is a first rate educator," says Dr. James Brummer, philosophy chair at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire. Brummer, who taught Kasmarek's 1997 ancient philosophy course, has worked together with the high school teacher to develop the curriculum and has high praise for him: "He approaches teaching like a coach, which ultimately means he acts like a mentor to students. His enthusiasm is contagious."

Throughout the curriculums development the newly motivated philosopher has been learning as he goes along. His status as a relative ingenue gives his lessons an organic feel, bridging the gap between teacher and student that would otherwise make the subject seem overly esoteric. Kasmarek's fascination with philosophy, after all, is relatively recent. And one gets the impression that his efforts to make the subject accessible and germane are as much for his own sake as for that of his students. "Even when he is perplexed," explains Brummer, "his desire to find the correct answer lets students know that they don't have to have all the answers--what is most needed is the desire to satisfy effectively their sense of wonder and curiosity."

Constructing the Teenage Ubermensch

Anyone who questions the relevancy of philosophy to high school students has never listened to a group of seventeen-year-aids debate which ethical system best applies to the question of Internet file sharing.

From the rear of room 2115, I watched the third-hour "Philosophy I" students' semester-ending "Applied Ethics" presentations. It was just before finals week at Memorial and the crew of upperclass students seemed a little groggy that morning. Kasmarek tried to raise morale with a joke about putting "Descartes before the horse" but received only a handful of drowsy groans (the joke fared no better when he repeated it during the fifth-hour session). It wasn't until a tousled-haired senior began his presentation on file sharing that things really started to pick up.

The presenter applied the utilitarian ethical system to the current controversy over illegal music downloading. Utilitarians, like John Stuart Mill or Jeremy Bentham, judge a moral action as that which causes the greatest amount of good for the most people. A classical utilitarian would condone the activity, the student reasoned, since over sixty million people would benefit from file swapping regularly--more people, he conjectured, than would be hurt by the practice.

At the end of the presentation Kasmarek opened the floor for discussion and a barrage of hands went up immediately. What followed was more than just a series of random comments and more than just a squabble among competing views.

"It's still illegal," argued one classmate, "and just because a lot of people do it doesn't make it right."

"The question is whether it's ethical," the presenter countered, asserting that to look to the law for moral standards would be a formalist approach, not a utilitarian one.

Another student questioned how a utilitarian might accurately weigh the profit of many music fans against the cost to any one musician. A third imagined the ethical repercussions of file sharing as civil disobedience--an attempt to force change in the music industry. It was a bona fide critique session and, for a group of teenagers, was both impressively analytical and remarkably civil. "It never ceases to amaze me," declares Kasmarek, who remained a moderator for most of the discussion, "the depth of their answers and the insightfulness that they have."

Learning to effectively articulate beliefs is a skill that many proponents of precollege philosophy place great importance on and is a cornerstone of Kasmarek's curriculum. The class gives students ample opportunities to consider and evaluate their stance on any number of topics--particularly those that are relevant to teenagers and developing decision making skills.

One activity, for example, places students in the role of a "Stoic therapist." The class must use the principles of the early Greek movement to advise imaginary patients on self-esteem issues, romantic breakups, and family arguments. Another lesson asks students to create a poster or doll of the "teenage Ubermensch," exploring how a teen version of Friedrich Nietzsche's ideal, independent "Overman" might cope with peer pressure, substance abuse, or media expectations. Lessons like these make Kasmarek's approach noteworthy, effectively taking philosophy out of the ethereal and into the immediate.

"We're not telling kids what to think, but they need to be thinking about their behavior and the behavior of others," Kasmarek explains. "It's not enough to just give them information; they need to be able to process it and say, 'This is meaningful to me.' With philosophy you can do that.... That's the beauty of it,"

Asking the Right Questions

Kasmarek is certainly not the first or only high school teacher to bring philosophy into the classroom. Ken Knisely is the recently appointed chair of the American Philosophical Association's (APA) Committee on Pre-College Instruction. While he admits that more research needs to be done, Knisely estimates that at least one hundred schools across the United States have introduced philosophy curricula. "What I have found is that there are gifted teachers like [Kasmarek] around the country," he says, "from center city schools like the Bronx to affluent schools perched on the Pacific coast.... [These teachers] have begun philosophy courses on their own, pulling together their own readings and creating their own materials."

At an April 2003 meeting of the APA Committee on Pre-College Instruction, Knisely, Kasmarek, and a small band of these philosophy educators created the North American High School Philosophers Association, a group dedicated in part to creating networking opportunities among high school philosophy teachers and promoting the benefits of the subject within the education community.

"I don't want this passion for philosophy to be like a road flare," Kasmarek declares, "burning really bright, but for a short period of time. I would really like for this to be the eternal flame, for people to recognize how easy it is to incorporate philosophy into what they already do and how helpful it is for all involved."

Just one educator in what he hopes is a burgeoning movement, Kasmarek, with his teen-centered approach and unique background, stands out from the rest. An old jock with a new passion, Kasmarek personifies his belief that philosophy is for everyone. In a way, his own discovery of the subject reflects the possibilities that advocates of high school philosophy hope to offer their students--possibilities that, Kasmarek maintains, extend far beyond the classroom. "If you're talking about a way to make a stronger democracy, this is it," he says. "We want better citizens, citizens who are interested and are asking the right questions. Doesn't mean that you're a cynic.... You just know how to think."

What does the future hold for the role of philosophy in secondary education? With instructional materials becoming more readily available, and a growing community of educators working to promote the subject's merits, supporters hope to see philosophy gain a foothold in U.S. high schools in coming years. Horizons in secondary education are constantly shifting and, with enigmatic educators like Kasmarek pushing the boundaries, a time may come when copies of Plato and Mill are as common in lockers as algebra textbooks. And while philosophy may never gain the prestige of, say, a high school basketball program, in Kasmarek the subject has at least found a mascot.

Brian Kevin is a freelance writer from Minneapolis, Minnesota, with a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire. He served in the education field for two years with AmeriCorps and his essays have been featured in several consumer, academic, and literary publications.