By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer

The Hawai'i State Teachers Association has a new ad campaign, and it has nothing to do with the contract that has been left hanging in legal limbo for the last 10 months.

They want you to call your legislators and ask them to spend more money on public education.

With the Department of Education facing a cut of more than $7 million this year and a budget cut of $35 million starting in July, educators around the state are more than a little nervous. The atmosphere at Board of Education meetings has been bleak at best.

Seeing no alternative, board members have reluctantly approved the DOE's suggested budget cuts. Their rationale: It's better for the education experts to make the decisions than let the governor's office get hold of their budget and start slashing.

On the chopping block are dozens of academic programs. State schools superintendent Pat Hamamoto says these budget cuts are so deep that there is no way to shield the classroom as the department has tried to do in the past.

Philosophy in the Schools, one of the programs that will be dropped, has brought graduate students and a higher level of classroom discussion to some campuses for 15 years.

At $71,536, it's one of those small items in the budget that are so easy to miss.

It's not a big program and it's not everywhere, which means it's an easy target. The DOE's first cuts are to outside programs that benefit only a few schools.

"This happens practically every year," said Thomas Jackson, associate specialist in philosophy at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa and a coordinator of Philosophy in the Schools. "We're a line item and we're small. People say, 'Oh. this is easy. We'll just draw a line through it.'"

Fortunately for Jackson, others have saved the program in the past. With the current economic forecast, he's not so sure that will happen again.

Starting as young as kindergarten, Philosophy in the Schools helps teachers create an intellectually safe environment in their classroom and sets aside a time of day when students can ask questions that go beyond those typically found at the end of the textbook chapter.

"One of the subtexts of school is that your voice doesn't really matter. It's all this stuff that adults think that you should know," Jackson said. "In doing philosophy they find out that they do have a voice and they're able to refine that thinking."

Philosophy graduate students often say that children ask better questions than undergraduates because they take intellectual risks.

In Meredith Ing's classroom at Dole Intermediate, students read a Lois Ann Yamanaka poem. The first philosophical question they tackled: What does Yamanaka mean when she talks about the "true self?"

It's one of the biggest philosophical questions there are.

"This is not academic philosophy. These are real questions that people grapple with: Who am I?" Jackson said. "You know that young children are filled with these kinds of questions, why this and how come that. It's about keeping the sense of wonder alive."

Reach Jennifer Hiller at jhiller@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8084.