Schools these days focus mostly on preparing students for tests of reading and math, but during lunchtime at Kenmoor Middle School in Landover, the youngsters sitting in a small circle were tackling the really deep questions: Ethics. Fairness. How to split dessert.

All three issues turned up as the seventh- and eighth-graders in the Philosophy Club tackled the question of the day: “Imagine that you are babysitting a 6-year-old and an 8-year-old. The parents have left some treats for dessert: two bananas, a lollipop and an ice cream bar. The parents’ instructions are to allow each child to choose one treat. Unfortunately, both kids want the ice cream bar. How can you distribute the goods fairly?”

Someone suggested that they split the ice cream bar in half, but other students had other ideas.

“Whoever wants the ice cream bar has to eat the banana,” said Malcolm Washington, an eighth-grader.

“I’d take a banana and pretend I like it, and then they’d be really, really jealous and they’d want the banana,” said Connie Hackett, a seventh-grader.

So it went for half an hour, to the delight of Kathy Gregory and Jan Plane, who led the session.

Gregory started the club four years ago at Glenarden Woods Elementary School while teaching language and social studies to fifth- and sixth-grade students in the school’s talented and gifted program. It gave them an intellectual diversion from preparing for the Maryland School Assessment, the examinations in reading and math that are a near-obsession for administrators and teachers.

They discussed issues that don’t have simple textbook answers, such as whether animals have rights or whether it is ever permissible to lie.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/03/AR2010010301690.html