Hi Emily! It’s good to start, if you can, with a friend or two who will definitely show up. That way, there will at least be two or three of you to talk. A week before a meeting, you might advertise a “problem” or a “debate” that the group will discuss, and put flyers up around the school. You know, something like “do objects keep their colors even when the lights are turned off?”.

In the U.S. the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC) is probably the first place to turn for additional resources:

https://www.montclair.edu/iapc/

In the U.K., SAPERE plays a similar role:

https://www.montclair.edu/iapc/

Mathew Lipman (founder of IAPC) wrote a book called Harry Stottlemeier’s Discovery that is a classic in the field of philosophy for kids. It’s written for people about your age. Another classic is Sophie’s World, by Jostein Gaarder. It is for kids a little older.

But I’ve had success talking about Plato, Aristotle, and Kant (all philosophers for “adults”) with kids your age, and you might reach out to your local university and see whether there are any philosophy instructors or students who are interested in helping you or giving suggestions. I suspect you’ll find people willing to help!

Hello Emily,

One topic that might generate interest is whether teachers should assign grades. Laurie Santos has a good podcast episode that makes the case that we shouldn’t. Maybe you can get some teachers to argue in favour of assigning grades! https://www.happinesslab.fm/season-1-episodes/making-the-grade

Another idea is to create a team to participate in a high school ethics bowl. I was a judge at such an event last year and it was really amazing, I would highly encourage you to try to go this route:
Canada https://www.ethicsbowl.ca/en-ca/
USA https://nhseb.unc.edu

Also, there is this site that has some arguments that might be of interest to your peers (the course is paid content though some resources on the site are free) https://argumentmaps.org

7th grade means 13-14 years old right? You’d be old enough to read some writers from the existentialist movement. You could shape your club as a reading group around Camus’ The Stranger, novels by Sartre, Milan Kundera, etc… Especially if you explore the literary side of philosophy you would be exposed to important questions that matter at your age (e.g.: What’s the meaning of life, what should you do with your life, etc.).

I think this website might have some resources but I’m not sure if the audience they target is too young for you: https://www.philosophyforchildren.org/resources/lesson-plans/

In all cases don’t be afraid to explore literary classics as a group. Good luck!

Hello, Emily. Goodness, you sound like an impressive and interesting person. Your story brings back memories of my own first tries at getting these things going (though I was never as organized as you seem to be). I was in 8th grade when I first found a couple of friends who wanted to talk with me about these things. Two things I remember talking about were: how can we know whether others see the same colors that we do? And is it always wrong to tell a lie? (I was especially interested in cases where people ask questions that are none of their business, and you just make something up). I had also thought on and off for years of a story my 3rd grade teacher gave us. This teacher was quite elderly, and had survived the Nazi Holocaust, which was perhaps why she had so many philosophical things to ask us about. In her story, a village of sinners is punished by having their well contaminated, so that they become more and more stupid. The one good man there is spared this punishment: an angel shows him another, safer water source. The villagers don’t realize that they’re becoming less and less intelligent, so they think at first that the good man is becoming brilliant, but later they can’t understand him at all and agree that he’s gone insane. The question she asked was whether it would ever be good for him to drink the contaminated water, and lose his intelligence just to become a part of their community again. I found that story very disturbing to think about, but I thought of it often.

To the point: like some others in this thread, I think that you’re better off finding a small group of people — maybe even one or two friends — to have those conversations with, rather than a bunch of people who really aren’t that keen on it. If you have to fight hard to get them to join, they’re probably not the best people for your conversations, anyway.

Here’s something I’m curious about: why do you want to have a club? I think that trying to surround yourself with friends you can philosophize with is a great idea; but I’ve stopped thinking that most people want to have these conversations at all. Perhaps I’m projecting my younger tendencies onto you — I’m sorry if I am — but I’m pretty sure that I used to think that philosophy is so exciting, everyone would love it if only they knew what it was all about. I don’t think that any longer. I’ll bet there are enough people at your school for you to have some good conversations, but maybe it’ll only be four or five of you. Do you have some reason for wanting it to be a club rather than a few friends who spend time together?

One thing that jumps out to me from what you’ve said so far is this:

“I go to a gifted school and apparently gifted kids aren’t interested in debating and finding answers. I think they really do want answers but they don’t want to seem ‘nerdy’. I could try to get some people to join, but no one wants to. Is there a way to make philosophy sound fun without it sounding nerdy?”

Do you find it disappointing that others at a gifted school are so afraid of seeming ‘nerdy’ that they don’t want to join a philosophy club? I would! I mean, what’s the point of going to a gifted school if you aren’t there to make the most of your abilities? I never went to a gifted school, but I would have expected better from my peers than that if I had. It sounds as though some of these people have to grow up a little and stop caring so much about what other people think of them, especially when those other people seem to care about such silly things. Unfortunately, based on what I’ve seen over my years since 7th grade, I wouldn’t count on that happening at any time soon. I really feel that you should give up on those people and not pander to them. Have your club, or group of friends, or whatever it turns out to be in the end; and if they turn out to be worth having in your conversations, they can seek you out on your terms. I don’t think you’ll get much good out of them if you have to cater to their fears of seeming nerdy just because you’re having some interesting conversations about something deeper than they’re used to talking about. But again, maybe you have some other reason for wanting to make it a big club.

Oh, by the way — there are many games that you might enjoy playing together. One of them is called ‘counterexamples’, and involves one person coming up with a principle (like ‘If you have no evidence that something exists, you should assume it doesn’t exist’) and other people trying to come up with real or invented things that prove the principle wrong. Activities like this get people into the fun of thinking like a philosopher without making them do a bunch of reading in advance.

Good luck with it all!