Philosophy is good for people. It develops critical thinking skills – giving us the tools to competently reason through complex, pressing issues and helping us understand the mechanics of an argument. It helps us know ourselves – highlighting our presuppositions, helping us to aptly and congenially express, defend, and revise our views, and enabling us to address life’s ‘big questions’. It helps us understand others – teaching us to show consideration for and learn from disagreement and helping us discern and assess the dizzying array of arguments and suppositions that bombard us in our everyday lives. And, frankly, philosophy is good for people because it is fun – offering a wide range of intrinsically interesting puzzles, paradoxes, and conundrums.

My goal as a philosophy teacher is to confer these benefits to students.