The Divided Line

About this curriculum

This novel, for middle and high schoolers, is part of an innovative philosophy curriculum that uses engaging stories to introduce students to important philosophical concepts. In this story, a group of middle schoolers use virtual reality to enter famous paintings, where they meet Socrates, Plato, and Descartes. Socrates divides a line into sections in order to show how the human mind progresses, but is the goal of this progression certainty, as Descartes argues? The youngsters discover a fatal flaw in Descartes’s logic and find their own answer in an unexpected place. The Divided Line is the first book in the Noumenal Realm Trilogy, which focuses on the unconventional educational initiatives of an institution called the New Smithsonian Foundation, whose aim is to educate the children of America through virtual reality experiences instead of through the Smithsonian Institution’s dusty museum artifacts. In this novel, a group of middle schoolers enter famous paintings, where they meet Socrates, Plato, and René Descartes, who show them the secret to entering the Noumenal Realm…