The Lorax

Philosophy on Thursday 25th October as part of our inquiry into survival.

Here are some of the children’s initial responses.

• I’m sad because all the animal were in the country and they chopped down all the trees so they had nothing to eat and they couldn’t breathe very well because they made all that pollution in the air and I feel for them, for the animals. 
• It made me think that when he plants the Truffula trees he should put electric fences around so the axes can’t cut it down. 
• It made me inspiring by trees and I’m also sad about when people thrown rubbish away because it could blow onto trees or into the Merri Creek or into the river and animals might eat the rubbish and die and as soon as they choke other people could be throwing more rubbish and sticks. 
• I think it’s nice of the Lorax to care about nature. 
• I feel sad for the Lorax because he had too much pollution in the air and he put smog and he nearly killed all the animals so he sent them away so they could find a better place to live and have a happier life. 
• If they cut down all the trees the wind won’t be able to blow the trees and if the wind doesn’t blow the trees we will miss the sound of the wind blowing the trees. 
• I like the Lorax because he cared about nature. 
• I think that the Lorax was good ‘cause he told the man not to chop the trees down but the man didn’t listen. If I was the man, I would have listened. 

The following week we revisited The Lorax, focussing on the points of view of each of the characters.

The Lorax He was sad because the Once-ler cut down all the trees then all the animals had to go away.  He was feeling sad because the trees got chopped down and he didn’t want them to and the Once-ler didn’t listen.	The trees More than you can even say sad. When they got cut down they felt dead.
The boy, ‘Ted’ He was feeling sad because he might have felt sad because might have wanted to look at the trees and how the days were at that time but now he can’t see them because there was only black.	The animals The animals felt sad because they had to leave and they loved that place. They were thinking that he doesn’t care about anyone or anything.
The Once-ler He wanted to make that stuff, he didn’t care about nature. He cared about making the Thneeds. He just wanted more and more money and he just wanted to get richer so they could live for more longer and buy more food. He just wanted to get a tree because there were so many trees in one place, but not in another.  At the end when he’s finished, he does care about Truffula trees and he gave him a seed to protect. (He cared at the end) because he just thought that they were nature and nature helps people live, then he became friends with nature and also wanted more nature. Also, he thought that nature could keep us alive for five billion years or more. He didn’t listen to the Lorax because he was just caring about himself. He wasn’t caring about anything or anyone.  Why did the Once-ler care about the trees at the end when he didn’t used to care? Why might he have change? Because he missed the animals. Because he wanted the trees back because he missed them because he cut them all down. Because he wanted air, maybe. Because they might be the specialist trees in the world. He felt sad because he missed the trees and the bright sky.

This prompted a discussion about why sometimes we don’t listen to other people and why they may not listen to us.

• Some people don’t listen to you because they’re concentrating on something else and they maybe aren’t listening and they just want to do what they want to do and they just listen to themselves and their friends.
• Some people don’t listen to you because they don’t care about what you say because it doesn’t really matter to them.
• I agree with (child) because last time I was finishing off mummy’s birthday card and she was really annoying. She just wanted to annoy me.
• Sometimes when people are not listening to you, you should just not listen to them when they don’t listen to you once, then when they’re trying to talk to you, you shouldn’t listen to them; because one trick deserves another.
• I don’t agree with (the previous child) because if you do it again then they’ll do it again and it’ll go on and on and there will be more people going to reflection and soon they’ll have to start a new one because all the books are full.
• If you don’t listen to them, they won’t listen to you. And also, if you annoy them, they will just do something bad like not listen to you.
• When it’s silent reading or personal writing and someone’s speaking to you, that’s why they’re not listening – because it’s silent.
• Well, sometimes in the yard, (child) is shouting at people and I tell him to stop and he doesn’t because he just wants to shout at people when people are doing something that he doesn’t want him to do. But they can do their own things in the yard – they’re not doing dangerous things.
• I agree with (another child) because my brother annoys me because he just wants to annoy me ‘cause he thinks it’s fun.
• I think people don’t listen to you because they’re not your friend and because they’re a bit shy.
• Sometimes in silent reading when other people are talking, I don’t say no, but I do the signs and other people just keep talking.

The Story of Rosy Dock

“Survival” inquiry group.  Philosophy, 19th September.

• I saw her planting two Rosy Docks at the start of the book. She should have only planted one. 
• But that would still make more than one Rosy Dock because it’s got seed pods. 
• So she should have planted zero. 
• I think I know why every single one came (ie why there were so many). She only planted two and maybe the seed pods can plant more, so maybe the seeds dropped into the ground and when it rained they grew. 

Do you think we have the right to introduce or bring plants or animals into another country? Why/why not? 

• Sometimes we bring some animals to kill other animals, like animals from other countries. But sometimes it doesn’t work. It did kind of work with cats and mice. 
• No, because if you bring other plants to Australia and they spread, they might get all the sun and all the other plants get the shade and they might get sick or die. 
• We shouldn’t bring other plants from someone else’s country because then they might feel sad and if lots of people take stuff from other people’s country then their place might not have anything. 
• Sometimes you can, if they’re good when you bring them, like apple trees. 
• I think we should bring animals that don’t eat other animals, just some, because if the other animals don’t have anything to eat they might die. 
• Some people have some things that belong to other countries and they have babies and they might be heaps of them and they’re giving away them, and that’s how some countries share their things, like our elephants –we share our elephants with other countries. And like the Western Wombat and the Hairy Nose wombat. So we can share animals with all countries, but if they’re dangerous, we’ll have to test them out and see if they will eat them or not. The woman in Rosy Dock didn’t test it – she didn’t know if it would spread. 
• But she brought it from a different country and it was already tested because it was somewhere else. It was in her garden in a pot. 
• It was in a pot, so it couldn’t spread. If you have a big clump of sand from the country, you can test to see if it spreads in that clump of sand. 
• Maybe it only spreads if it’s in sand. 
• When you plant the Rosy Dock in a pot it can still spread because the seeds can drop and they’ll be in the sand and they’ll go everywhere. 
• Maybe the Rosy Dock is the only plant that can spread. 

We then watched some videos about rabbits, feral pigs and cane toads in response to the children’s comments about bringing animals to our country.

Philosophy - “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein

We have been looking at The Giving Tree over the past couple of weeks both for philosophy and for our inquiry into survival. Here are some responses to the book:

That’s a sad story, because the boy killed the tree.

Why did it keep saying that the tree was happy?

• The tree was offering.
• The tree changed her mind. He chopped down her stump and then she was just a stump and she wasn’t happy.
• The tree was happy even though it was cut down because she wanted the boy to live, that’s why she was happy.

Also as part of philosophy and our inquiry into survival, we are exploring and reflecting upon our rights and responsibilities and the rights of nature. I was amazed at the children’s understanding of our rights in our first discussion of what our rights are (apart from talking about our right to learn and our right to feel safe).

What are our rights?

• We have the right to play
• We have the right to build houses
• We have the right to run
• We have the right to eat and drink
• We have the right to sleep
• We have the right to a home
• We have the right to have pets.
• I think us and trees and nature have the same amount of rights
• I think people have the right to do anything
• We have the right not to kill nature
• We don’t have the right to starve people
• We don’t have the right to kill nature
• We have the right to eat
• We have the right to build cubby houses in trees

Discussion about one child’s claimed right – Do we have the right to have pets?

• Human beings have the right to have pets ‘cause people need guide dogs to guide them ‘cause they might be blind.
• Same as child x because I have a cat at home; because if you get bored you can play with them.
• We have the right to hold pets but only if you ask the owner. You can’t take them from someone else.
• I don’t agree - I don’t have a pet.
• You have the right to get pets from the pet shop because they sell them and it’s all right to get them.
• We have the right to have pets because I have (several animals) and my mum bought them with her own money... they were saved by people. They were sick or something. I think that we have the right to have pets because if we don’t they might get sick or die.

Do we have the right to keep birds in cages?

• I think we have the right to keep birds in cages if the windows or doors are open.
• We don’t have the right to keep them in cages because then they can’t fly around and they don’t have fresh air.
• We do have the right to keep birds in cages because some cages are only metal squares and they can get fresh air and still fly around a bit.
• I think we don’t have the right to keep birds in cages ‘cause if they’re in cages they don’t have much room. 
• If we keep birds in cages, and we forget to give them water or food, then they’ll die (thus, we are making them dependent on us for their survival).
• We can keep birds in cages if they are endangered because then we can protect them and keep them safe. 

We then spoke briefly about protected breeding programs and then releasing them back into the wild.

What are our responsibilities if we do keep pets?

• We have to give them drinks, food, and names because, like for rabbits, they need this little bottle that has a tube, and if we don’t let them have any of that, food or drinks or names, they’ll die.
• You can have pets because they need help from humans, like food. Our responsibility is to give them food and water.

Philosophy Discussion - Human Rights

Last week (Friday 31st August) we used the book The United Declaration of Human Rights in Pictures as a stimulus for discussion. These are some of the things that we came up with:

Sometimes they have lots and lots of countries that have different amounts of prime ministers and they like to fight over which country is the best.

You don’t have the right to say someone’s idea is stupid.

We don’t have the right to start wars, ‘cause if we start wars, I went to England and I saw some holes in buildings ‘cause of the wars.

We don’t have the right to have people’s houses when they say we can’t.

We don’t have the right to bully people.

We don’t have the right to chop down trees.

We don’t have the right to talk when other people are talking.

We don’t have the right to snatch.



We do not have the right to kill other people if they say no.

We don’t have the right to hit people.

We don’t have the right to follow people when they move.

We don’t have the right to bite.

We don’t have the right to catch sharks and chop their fins off and chuck them back in the water. Some other countries kill whales.

We don’t have the right to kill animals.

Shops don’t have the right to kill animals ‘cause then there might only be one left and then they might be extinct.




Do we have the right to kill animals to eat?
You don’t have the right to kill some animals if we don’t want to eat that type of meat. and we think it’s not nice to kill that type of animal because some animals are really nice to you and they give you stuff like chickens because they give you eggs and dogs because they are cute.

We do have the right to kill lambs because they have babies every summer and spring. The farmers get new lambs every summer and spring. They are yummy to eat fun to eat them.

Robots & Minds

As you may be aware, a group of students have been investigating machines in inquiry, and shown a strong interest in robots in particular.  To support this interest we explored robots a little further in our philosophy session recently.  We watched some videos and photos of very human like robots and discussed how they are similar and different to humans.  Here is a snapshot of what we came up with.

"Because there’s a hole inside his head, that’s why he couldn’t be a person."

"They’re called a robot and we’re called a person, if they were real they’d be called a human"

"robots have wires inside them and they can’t get them out and that cannot mean they can be human."

"Because people have bones and tubes and robots have wires and they’re made out of diferent things and people are made out of skin and flesh and robots are made out of like metals and paper and string and things that humans do not have in their body."

What if part of you was replaced with wires and metal? What if you lost your arms and legs and had them replaced with prosthetics/robot parts? (Teacher Question)

"You’re still a person"

         Why?

"Cos the other ones are not like the ones that aren’t there any more...the other arms and the legs, they're not like the other arm."

         

"I think that you’re still human, because that makes part of your body metal and wires and tubes, so that makes you a robot"

"Then what happens if you’ve broken everything, and you need to replace everything?"

"You would definitely be a robot"

"I agree with that"

What if they replace only some parts of your body? (Teacher Question)

"You’re still a robot, I think you’d call yourself a human robot"

"You should call yourself a Roson (robot person)"

Can robots have a mind? (Teacher Q)

"maybe they do have a mind, maybe they took a brain out of a dead person."

(disagree, shake head) "because, if a person’s dead how would you break the skull to get inside?"

"They could have wires for a pretend brain"

Are they thinking? (Teacher Q)

"You’re thinking now, you’re thinking now!"

"No, because they don’t have any brain."

"Yes, cos’ of the electric cord in their head, all curly around inside them and going into their brain."

"Wires make robots think and brains make us think."

"I don’t understand what the difference is."

"I know there is a difference but I don’t know what the difference is."