• Kio and Gus: Reasoning About Nature Philosophy Text
• Recommended for students in 4th grade
• Friday Online Class: 12:30 PM PST (3:30 PM EST) [50 minutes in length]

Kio & Gus emphasizes cognitive proficiency. In particular, inferential skills, “deep reading,” concept formation, and analyzation of poetry and prose. The main character in the book, Gus, is presented as a child who is proud of her ability to cope with the world, despite her lack of sight, and she does not often engage in self-pity. She stands her ground well in discussions she has with Kio. As a matter of fact, the way in which the two children relate to one another can serve as an ethical model to the children who read and discuss the book. But its value is epistemological as well as ethical: the way in which Gus experiences and understand the world is not the same as the way in which Kio experiences and understands it. These differences of cognitive and epistemological perspectives need to be demonstrated to the children in the classroom, so that they can realize more dramatically that those who have the privilege of sight do not therefore possess an exclusively correct understanding of the ways in which the world can be said to work.