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Educational Perspectives ❖ Volume 44 ❖ Numbers 1 and 2

Raising the Bar: Love, the Community of Inquiry, and theFlourishing Life
Thomas B. Yos
I’ve been working at the same elementary school in
Hawai‘i for nearly twenty years. First I was the school’s
philosophy for children (p4c Hawai‘i) teacher, then I wasa reading and special education teacher, and for the past
decade I’ve been doing counseling. Throughout these years
much has stayed the same. Some things, however, havechanged dramatically.
A decade ago a lot was left to the individual judgment,
initiative, and creativity of each teacher. “We may smileand nod our heads at what you say,” I remember one teacher
explaining to me in my moment of frustration as I struggled
to convince a couple of her peers that philosophy for children
was a really good thing, “but sometimes we just take what
you give us and stick it in the bottom desk drawer.” Back inthose days each teacher had a fair amount of discretion about
what to embrace and what to politely file away (never again
to see the light of day).
The teacher’s freedom to do such things has, to aconsiderable extent, been curtailed. Many things, nowadays,cannot be stuck in the bottom desk drawer. A set of state
standards have been created and are not to be ignored. Nor
can one simply file away the calls for “accountability,”
the demands that our school must “raise the bar,” or theconsequences of the high-stakes tests which define our
success. The educational climate at our school, and I suspect
at many others, has indeed changed.
Nearly ten years ago, I argued in my doctoral dissertation that philosophy for children and its pedagogy of thecommunity of inquiry is good for kids. I spoke a lot about
Vygotsky, philosophical inquiry, and how empowering children to think well is vital to the essential task of cultivating
good judgment.1
In some ways I think I got it right. I still whole-heartedly
believe in the power of philosophical inquiry. But I’ve alsocome to realize that there is a very important something elsethat makes the “community of inquiry” approach so valuable.
What’s so important about the idea of community of inquiry,

especially in this day and age, isn’t just the inquiry part, it’s
the community part.
My thesis is this: In today’s American educational
climate, with its laser-sharp focus on “accountability” and“raising the bar,” the community aspect of “communityof inquiry” is more important than ever. It is so importantbecause it purposefully cultivates what many of today’s
schools are unwisely leaving too far on the fringe: the loving,caring, fun-filled human relationships which are at the coreof human flourishing.
In order to support this thesis I will endeavor toestablish four points. First, I will argue that loving humanrelationships are at the heart of a well-lived life. Second,
I will contend that schools properly ought to concern
themselves with the cultivation of such relationships. Third, I
will propose the controversial claim that schools aren’t doinga good enough job of addressing this concern. And finally, I
will assert that P4C’s “community of inquiry”approach is aneffective means for cultivating such relationships.

BELIEF #1: Loving human relationships are
essential to a flourishing life.
Oftentimes I begin my college ethics course with asingle quote: “It is remarkable how many people sacrifice
the really good stuff for that which is not as important.”2 Do
you think, I ask the students, that this is true? Most of thembelieve that it is. Then I raise another question: But what doyou mean by “the really good stuff”? What is at the heart ofa well-lived, flourishing human life?
I have, over the course of the past years, heard numerous
answers to this question. Many of them are very wise
responses, for nearly all of my college students are militaryfolks who not only have overcome substantial hardships inlife but have also gained the nearly unimaginable insightthat comes from facing death in war. There is, of course,
considerable variety in the answers that I hear from so many
voices. But there is a common thread; a single, pivotal

Philosophy for Children

answer which arises again and again and again. What is
the really good stuff? Quite simply, most of my students
respond, it is love.
By “love” the students do not simply mean a sort ofromantic or sexual love. Rather, more broadly, they mean the
caring sort of love that a parent shares with a child, a spouseshares with his or her partner, buddies share over a beer,or even the kindness that is exchanged by near strangers.
Sometimes they cite Morrie Schwartz: “Love,” he says, “isso supremely important... Without love, we are birds withbroken wings” (Albom, 1997, pp. 91, 92). Knowing how
to give love and, so too, knowing how to receive love, they
contend, is among the very best of stuff.
This view is certainly widely accepted. It is also an
idea that enjoys a long and varied history of philosophicalsupport. Buddha speaks much of the ideal of cultivating
loving-kindness (Mettä). The Christian Bible commands:“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”3 Kant speaksof treating others never as means but always as ends. Andeven Sartre tells us that others are subjects and never objects.
Many philosophers, like most other people, tell us thattreating others with love—be it a passionate love or at least aless intense good-willed respect—is essentially connected tothe business of living well.

BELIEF #2: Our schools ought to purposefully
cultivate loving human relationships.
“We parents,” a father once told a gathering ofcounselors, “want our children to be smart.” “But even morethan this,” he continued, “we want them to be good.” Thisdad, I think, has got it right. Our schools should help ourchildren to be good. They should also help our children tolive good lives. They should equip and empower our children
not just to live, but to live well.
Love, we argued, is inextricably bound up with living
well. This being the case, then, schools should—if they
are to follow this father’s advice—strive to purposefully
cultivate loving human relationships.
But not everyone would agree with this contention.
Many people believe that, while there are certainly somechildren who do not experience enough love, it shouldn’t be
the job of the school to address this emotional deficit. Let thefamily, the church, and the social services people deal with
that; the proper business of the schools ought to be simply toteach kids the facts and empower them with academic skills.

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I agree, to a certain extent, with this counter-argument.
Giving love is a global responsibility. It ought not, by anymeans, be the responsibility of the school alone. But fromthis fact it does not follow that our schools should have no
responsibility in this area. Indeed, I see three compelling
reason why our schools ought to be seriously concerned withthe cultivation of loving relationships.
The first reason is because cultivating such relationships
will help schools to achieve their academic goals. Abraham
Maslow theorized that there exists a hierarchy of humanneeds. If an individual’s underlying physical, social, andemotional needs are not met, she will not be fully ready togrow, learn, and actualize herself.
Oftentimes these underlying needs of students are
not met. One such student who I’ve encountered in mycounseling work is Carolyn. “Carolyn,” as I’ll call her here,
was a curious, intelligent, and strong-willed kindergartener.
She had, it was readily apparent to anyone who met her,a world of talent. Unfortunately, however, she also had a
big problem. The adults in her life were a mess. Struggling
with the effects of violence, homelessness, addiction, andnot being loved themselves, Carolyn’s caregivers were in
no position to give Carolyn the full dose of love that she sodesperately needed. I’ll never forget Carolyn’s eyes gazing
into mine and her words, too full of significance to becoming from a five-year old, to me: “We need help.”
Carolyn felt stressed out, worried, scared, and unloved.
How, in such a condition, could she keep her mind on her
studies and be fully ready to learn? She couldn’t. Academic
success rests, in no small part, upon a firm social andemotional foundation. Wishing that schools didn’t haveto work on this foundation won’t change the facts; many
children are not loved enough and structures built on
shoddy foundations will eventually topple. The purposefulcultivation of loving relationships is a patch that should be
liberally used.
The second reason why our schools ought to beconcerned with the cultivation of loving relationships
is because it contributes to the creation of a safe andharmonious society. There’s a name for very intelligent, very
well-taught, but unloving people: clever criminals. Angry,
hurting, unloved, and unloving people who have been armed
with the power to act effectively are not good for society.
Such individuals, as Jackson puts it, are likely to employ
what they’ve learned not as useful tools but rather as harmful

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Educational Perspectives ❖ Volume 44 ❖ Numbers 1 and 2

weapons. Our schools have a societal obligation to try, as
best as they can, to ensure that this does not happen.
The third reason why our schools ought to be concernedwith cultivating loving relationships is because we owe it
to each individual child. I put a lot of time and energy into
helping Carolyn. After some months, one of my co-workers
said to me, not unkindly, that I was spending too much timeand energy trying to help her. You need to move on, he said.
She’s a lost cause. I certainly see the logic in his point; when
there are limited resources, you have to make hard choices.
But ultimately I’m more convinced by the counter-point.
What if Carolyn was your daughter? What if she was you?
Behind the No Child Left Behind policy, whatever its faults,
is the admirable notion that you should never give up on an
individual. Never mind the calls for accountability and hightest scores, the bottom line is this: Regardless of whether
the problem is a broken heart or an uninformed mind, our
responsibility is still to help children to live flourishing lives.
Our duty to cherish others demands that we meet each childwhere he or she is at.
For these reasons, then, I contend that one of the firstand most important aims of our schools ought to be todeliberately create environments which are splendidly repletein caring, loving interpersonal relationships. We ought topurposefully strive—especially for those children who sufferfrom a deficit of love—to fill each student’s school day withnumerous opportunities to receive and, so too, to give love.

Belief #3: Our schools are not focusing
enough on the cultivation of loving humanrelationships.
There is, at my elementary school, considerable
discussion about the high-stakes test scores. The scores,
broken down by grade, and even by teacher, are projected up
onto the screen. We take note of where the scores are high andwhere they are low. We wonder why one grade, or teacher,has higher scores and another has lower scores. We brainstorm
about what we can do to get the borderline students to pass.
This recurring exercise saddens me. I look around theroom and I see so many smart, caring individuals. Couldn’t
we be applying all this talent, I wonder, to other things? Yes,
I get it; it is important for students to develop the sorts ofliteracy and mathematical skills that these tests measure. But
isn’t there much more to living the flourishing life than justthis? Aren’t we focusing all of our energy on a very narrow

set of skills and, in the process of doing so, ignoring much of
the really good stuff?
Admittedly, my experience and knowledge is largely
limited to my school. But, based on what I’ve read and who
I’ve talked to, it seems to me that this narrowing that I’mobserving is a typical consequence of our nation’s emphasison high-stakes tests. It seems to me, to evoke Freud and torecall a peculiar condition which once plagued philosophy,that the American educational system has developed an acutecase of “physics envy.” Wanting to satisfy the increasingly
deafening cries for accountability and measurable progress,
educators have turned to high-stakes exams and the “hard,”
pseudo-scientific data which such tests provide. Validation,
then, becomes largely dependent on good test scores. Fueledby the oftentimes immense pressure to be “successful,”
the desire for this validation influences, often heavily so,
educators’ choices about what to teach and how to teach. It
is, as Jackson puts it, a classic case of the tail wagging thedog; the means of assessment determine the content andform of instruction.
The problem with all of this, of course, is that manyof the most important virtues—such as being able to giveand to receive love—cannot be measured by a standardized
test. And so the search for validation becomes an
exercise in narrowing. As I have observed at my school,
educators focus with laser-like precision on certain skills
and, precisely in so doing, leave much of what is really
important out on the fringe.
In saying this I am not claiming that educators teach
only to the test. Being good and caring people, mosteducators naturally take time to address the broader setof skills and dispositions which are essential to humanflourishing.
Nor am I claiming that educators have no awareness that
there is more to life than what shows up on a high-stakes test.
I remember attending a complex-wide training. The theme
for the day, we were told, was to consider the importanceof “rigor, relevance, and relationships.”4 Then a half dozen
high school students stood up to address the hundreds ofgathered teachers. Each spoke, in his or her own way, about
the importance of their relationships with caring teachers;
this, to them, was at the core of education. But there was
one problem: I’m not sure if anyone really heard them.
Throughout the rest of the day I heard a lot more about
rigor and relevance. I didn’t, however, hear another single

Philosophy for Children

word uttered about the importance of relationships. We makemention of the good stuff, but then, in our preoccupation, weforget about it.
What I am claiming, then, is that our preoccupation withaccountability, validation, and test scores distracts us frommany of the most important ingredients of the flourishing life.
It narrows the scope of our moral imagination and leads us toignore much of what matters most. Ironically enough, by trying so hard to “raise the bar” we are, in fact, lowering it; we’re
doing a really good job of shooting at a lesser target.
This needs to change. We need to aim ambitiously andsquarely at equipping our students to live love-filled, flourishing lives. This is a moral imperative because, as I observe
most every day, our current state of preoccupation is causing
significant pain to both teachers and their students.
Even if they can’t always articulate it, I think manyteachers, in their hearts, are aware of this gap between what
our schools are doing and what they should be doing. One day
a veteran teacher looked at me, gave a weary sigh, and said “I
got into teaching because I care about kids, but now I feel likeI don’t have time to do that.” Many teachers would like to aim
higher, but they lack the freedom to do so. Depersonalized by
expectations that they do what everyone else is doing and harried by too many tasks, they feel discouraged because they’rebeing pulled away from what they were called to do.
Students, I’ve found, have less trouble articulating theirdistress. Their problem, however, is getting anybody to listen
them. “You have no idea,” a student recently wrote to me,“how hard my life is.” She’s right; we oftentimes, in the hustle
and bustle of the day, see children as objects to be instructed
rather than subjects to be heard. But if you listen carefully,
you’ll hear their voices, surprisingly unified and loud: “It’svery nice that you want to teach us all of these things. But you
grown-ups are so busy preparing us for tomorrow that you’re
forgetting that we need your help to make it through today.”In our preoccupation, in our quest to “raise the bar,” we are
failing to hear the cries of those, like Carolyn, whose concerns
go far beyond higher test scores: “We need help,” they say.

BELIEF #4: Philosophy for Children is aneffective means to cultivate loving
human relationships.
I think that our approach should change. I also thinkthat it can change. We can broaden our focus and teach in a
way that deliberately cultivates not only loving relationships

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but also the other virtues that are essential to living well.
How can we do this? Once again, my answer arises from anexperience with a student.
“Ann,” as I’ll call her here, was a fourth grader who is
one of the most talented people I’ve ever met. She was a topnotch student and was good at just about everything. Except,
she too, had a problem: She felt so sad and alone because
she was surrounded by family members who were altogether
preoccupied by their own anger, grief, and pain. One day,as we sat talking, I observed that, for all her strengths, shewasn’t a very kind person. She looked at me and said with aquiet and thoughtful voice: “How am I supposed to be kind if
I don’t even know what kindness is?”Ann raises the million dollar question. How do you
cultivate skills and dispositions in an environment—be it ahome or a school—that is at odds with such an effort? The
answer, quite simply, is to change the environment. Ann willlearn kindness not by us telling her to be kind, but by being
immersed in an environment where love is consistently practiced, expressed, modeled, and thereby learned. It’s the ideaof the hidden curriculum: Children learn not only from what
we tell them, but, perhaps even more significantly, from how
we relate with them.
Now I loop back to where I began a decade ago.
Thinking, Vygotsky argued, is internalized speech (1978,
pp. 56,57). You can cultivate intellectual skills and dispositions, P4C founder Matthew Lipman realized, by creating
a community of inquiry where these skills and dispositions
are consistently expressed and modeled through speech.5
The same thing, I now argue, goes for social, emotional, andethical capacities. As the generations-old advice to choose
your friends carefully attests to, one can create a culture
which leads children not only to be smart but also to be kind,loving, happy, and good.
The implications of this point are both simple andprofound. You can prepare a child to live well tomorrow byliving well with them today. Certainly, if the good life sometimes calls, as it seems to do, for diligently buckling-down
and doing what you don’t want to do, then we should put
students in an environment where this sometimes happens.
But just as surely, and this is the part that we seem to be forgetting, if being able to give and to receive love is part of theflourishing life, then children need to spend time in loving,laughter-filled places. We need to purposefully create loving
places—with the same amount of forethought and care that

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Educational Perspectives ❖ Volume 44 ❖ Numbers 1 and 2

we devote to designing other instructional strategies—for all
children and especially for children who do not experience
love often enough.
There are, to be sure, a variety of ways to craft suchan environment. Perhaps the simplest and most effective
strategy would be to provide teachers with the freedom
to be true to themselves. I do believe, however, that an
exemplary example of such a way is P4C’s Communityof Inquiry. The Community of Inquiry is, as Jackson puts
it, “a safe place” “where people care about each other andshow that they do” (1998).
That the Community of Inquiry can be a place that not
only sharpens the mind but purposefully cultivates loving
relationships is a truth that my experience has repeatedly
affirmed. Certain, as we say in Hawaii, “chicken-skin”
moments stand out in my mind; times when I witnessed, inawe, the loving power of the community of inquiry.
I remember doing p4c with a class of sixth graders.
Whenever they had p4c, the students would close all thewindows and doors. “Philosophy time is our time,” theywould say, “we don’t want anyone to bother us.” One week
the students decided to talk about the following question:
Should you hang out with your boy/girlfriend or yourfriends? Of course, they laughed, you should hang out withyour boyfriend or girlfriend. That is, most everyone agreed,
the cool thing to do. Then a girl who hardly ever spokeraised her hand. “I think that you’re better off hanging out
with your friends,” she quietly said, “because of domestic
violence and stuff.”
You could have heard a pin drop. “Uncle,” the otherstudents perhaps knew, beat up the girl’s mom. Maybe hebeat her too. The tone of the inquiry changed. No morejoking. No more trying to seem cool. You could feel theirlove and support wrapping around the quiet girl like a warm
blanket. In a genuine community people care about eachother and show that they do.
I vividly remember another discussion. This one was acollege class full of military folks. It was the last class andwe were nearing the climax of a movie that the students had
been eagerly anticipating. Then one of my students walked
to the back of the darkened room and sat down next to me.
“Sorry I’ve been absent,” he whispered. “Do you know,” hesaid, “the tsunami that hit American Samoa?” Yes, I said
with a sinking feeling because I knew that the soldier wasfrom there. “Well,” he continued, “my 5 year-old niece waskilled by it.” Then his voice cracked: “Dr. Yos, I have aquestion: Why would God let such a beautiful, innocent
child die? Can we talk about it in our community ofinquiry?”
We stopped the movie. We got in our circle andgot out our community ball. The soldier, his voice again
cracking with pain, asked his question. Some students werequiet. Some gently cried. And then, one by one, they began
to give their answers. Some talked about God having aplan, some talked about heaven needing a new angel, some
said that, sadly enough, is just what life dealt us, and some
said they simply didn’t know.
What the community answered, in each of these cases,
wasn’t necessarily clear. The students didn’t arrive at
definitive solutions as to why men beat women or innocent
children have to die. But there was no doubt about how
the community members were relating to one another. The
giving and receiving of love was being lived, experienced,
modeled, and most powerfully taught. “This class,” oneof my university students wrote on her evaluation, “ismy salvation.” She understood what many of us forget:
Education is, in large part, about relationships.
Fun, it sometimes seems, has become a dirty word
in today’s schools. Spending time caring for one anotherand appreciating each other’s company is oftentimes
considered to be “off-task” time. But it is only “off-task”
if we define the task too narrowly. Giving love to one
another, receiving love from one another, having fun
together, and the rest of the really good stuff: These are
not superfluous things but are, indeed, essential piecesof the flourishing life. If we are to take seriously ourtask of preparing our children for such a life and to truly“raise the bar,” then we must purposefully strive to create
environments, like P4C’s Community of Inquiry, wherethese valuable qualities are lived and, so, taught.
A decade ago I argued that the “community” in theCommunity of Inquiry has tremendous instrumental value.
Community precedes inquiry. Far from being at odds
with intellectual rigor, the genuine relationships of thecommunity make such rigor possible. Now, what I realize
is that this aspect of community is not only of instrumental
value. It is, in and of itself, of great intrinsic value. Indeed,
forming caring and loving relationships with people does
not merely lead to the good life; it, in part, is constitutiveof the good life. As Mahatma Gandhi said: you must bePhilosophy for Children

the change you want to see in the world. If our children are
to live well, if our society is to be harmonious, then our
schools, most definitely, ought to be places full of love, joy,and laughter.
REFERENCES
Albom, M. (1997), Tuesdays with Morrie. New York: Broadway
Books.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1997) Mind in Society. Edited by M. Cole, V.
John-Steiner, S. Scribner, and E. Souberman. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Jackson, T. (1998). Philosophy in the Schools Project: A Guide for
Teachers. Unpublished Manuscript.
ENDNOTES
1

Yos, Thomas. Educating for Good Judgment. Ann Arbor,
Michigan: UMI, 2002.

2

This is my modification of a quote that I heard on Todd Wilson’s
Help! I’m Married to a Homeschooling Mom (audio book).
www.familymanweb.com, 2007.

3

See James 2:8. The Holy Bible (New King James Version),
Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1982.

4

These terms, it seems, originate from the research of theInternational Center for Leadership in Education. See
http://www.leadered.com/rrr.html.

5See, for instance, Lipman, Matthew. Natasha: Vygotskian
Dialogues. New York: Teachers College Press, 1996.
pp. 104–105.

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