Thank you. Yes, religious people can be philosophical. I’m really happy to hear that fair assessment. Not everyone wants to accept that religious people are intelligent or philosophical.
Jana's book is wonderful - even my 4th grade daughter made a comment about how it was good after she found it and started reading one of Jana's stories. It's powerful, perspective changing on how our children are educated, and could be educated. The philosophical approach with children values learning how to question, versus learning how to answer.
I am 66 and as a kid, I read about Carl Jung, Socrates, Plato, Descartes, etc. If kids have all kinds of questions they are philosophical thinkers and always have been born thinkers. It is when some of us adults shut them down, "Shut up, you ask too many questions!" Kids ask "why, why, why all of the time!
For a popular simple but not simplistic practical booklet on this general topic Five-Big-Questions-Life : handy for parents possibly OK for older teens, for sale at Amazon and elsewhere.
This is a great idea! But as a former teacher this will never occur in a standardized testing environment. The "education process" is robbing the students of the opportunity to have these conversations, hence stifling their intellect over a looooooooooooong (o= every year of the K-12 experience) period of time.