The Squirrel Behind the Tree

About this curriculum

This novel is part of an innovative philosophy curriculum that uses engaging stories to introduce students to important philosophical concepts. This story traces a fictionalized version of American philosopher John Dewey’s intellectual development. In it, Dewey meets several great philosophers at a philosophers’ camp, where he explores the concepts of Pragmatism, democracy, and issues of social justice, including the rights of children. Dewey revolutionized the American educational system, and this book examines the forces that led him to that achievement while engaging readers in a compelling tale of curiosity and discovery. John Dewey was one of the greatest American philosophers of the twentieth century, and this novel traces a fictionalized version of his intellectual development. Although the plot is invented, the concepts and ideas that the story explores are the ones that Dewey was primarily concerned with, and the novel brings together the thinkers who most influenced him. John Dewey was raised by a strict, puritanical mother who believed that he was his deceased brother reincarnated. The first John Dewey inexplicably threw himself into a fire and died…