About Sophizo
What is it?
It's Cleveland's first and only philosophy school for teens and young adults! See our Course Descriptions page for more information.
Why a philosophy school?
Sophizo was created because we love philosophy and want to make it available to young thinkers in a safe and vibrant setting. And:
Philosophy improves important skills!
"Our results suggest that these philosophy sessions can have a positive impact on pupils' maths, reading and perhaps their writing skills." Stephen Gourd
"Philosophers strive for conceptual clarity. Their training instills certain habits of thought—sensitivity to ambiguity, precision of expression, attention to theoretical detail—that are essential for understanding what a mathematical formalism might suggest about the actual world. Philosophers also learn to spot the gaps and elisions in everyday arguments. These gaps provide entry points for conceptual wedges: nooks where overlooked alternatives can take root and grow. The “shut up and calculate” ethos does not promote this critical attitude toward arguments; philosophy does.
What philosophy offers to science, then, is not mystical ideas but meticulous method. Philosophical skepticism focuses attention on the conceptual weak points in theories and in arguments. It encourages exploration of alternative explanations and new theoretical approaches. Philosophers obsess over subtle ambiguities of language and over what follows from what." Tim Maudlin
"Stephen Law, senior lecturer in philosophy at Heythrop College, put the case for philosophy’s role in “raising autonomous critical thinkers”.
He asked whether, since “I have an unavoidable responsibility to make my own moral judgement, a responsibility I can’t hand over to some supposed expert… shouldn’t our education system both confront us with that responsibility, and also ensure we have the intellectual and emotional maturity we’ll need to discharge it properly?” Matthew Reisz
"It teaches them to be self-critical, to look at their own opinions and see what the weak spots are. This is also important in getting them to defend their own positions, to take other people’s positions seriously, to be able to self-correct, to be tolerant, to be good citizens and not to be taken in by demagoguery. The other thing is to get them to think about moral views. Kids have a natural egotistical morality. Every kid by age three is saying, “That’s not fair!” Well, use that to get them to think about fairness." Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
"But a smattering of undergrad philosophy classes taught me something applicable to any and every job: clarity of thought. Name me one aspect of your life that doesn't benefit from being able to think something through clearly." Shannon Rupp
"Which is why I also recall a philosophy teaching assistant, who took a sabbatical from his fat-salaried job in the computer industry to do a company-funded PhD. He had benefited from that wave of computer development that hired logical thinkers to be trained in the new-fangled gizmos. For a brief, shining moment, BAs in philosophy had been hot commodities at places like IBM. One of his pals even wrote patents for companies that developed innovative tools and techniques. It turns out you need to define that new chair-like thing that isn't quite a chair before you can patent it. He thought some philosophy courses ought to be mandatory for every undergrad, partly because of the economic and technological upheaval of the time. The prognosticators warned that we would change careers an average of six times and work in jobs heretofore unimagined in this brave new world.
"Jobs change. But if you teach students to think clearly first, they can do whatever else they want to do," was the argument he made." Shannon Rupp
"Lucy Adams, human resources director of Serco, a services business and a consultancy firm, says: "Philosophy lies at the heart of our approach to recruiting and developing our leadership, and our leaders. We need people who have the ability to look for different approaches and take an open mind to issues. These skills are promoted by philosophical approaches."
Fiona Czerniawska, director of the Management Consultancies Association's think tank, says: "A philosophy degree has trained the individual's brain and given them the ability to provide management-consulting firms with the sort of skills that they require and clients demand. These skills can include the ability to be very analytical, provide clear and innovative thinking, and question assumptions."
Deborah Bowman, associate dean for widening participation at St George's, University of London, which offers medicine and health sciences courses, says philosophers are increasingly sought after by the NHS: "Graduates of philosophy who come in to graduate- entry medicine, or to nursing courses, are very useful. Growth areas in the NHS include clinical ethicists, who assist doctors and nurses. Medical ethics committees and ethics training courses for staff are also growing. More and more people are needed to comment on moral issues in healthcare, such as abortion."" Jessica Shepherd
"Most business-school students are gunning for jobs in banking, consulting or technology. So what are they doing reading Plato?
[C]ourses also address a common complaint of employers, who say recent graduates are trained to solve single problems but often miss the big picture." Melissa Korn
Philosophy students have better test scores!
Philosophy majors have the highest means scores for: LSAT, GRE Verbal, GRE Analytical Writing and GRE Composite
Students want to study philosophy!
""Do you think you should discuss morality and ethics more often in school?" … "The vast majority of heads nodded in agreement." Paul Barnwell
"I find there is an amazing hunger to shift the conversation. People are ready to talk a little less about how to do things and to talk a little more about why ultimately they are doing them. This is true among the young as much as the older. In fact, young people, raised in today’s hypercompetitive environment, are, if anything, hungrier to find ideals that will give meaning to their activities. It’s true of people in all social classes. Everyone is born with moral imagination — a need to feel that life is in service to some good." David Brooks
Who?
Our instructor, Monica L. Gerrek, PhD, has been teaching philosophy since 1998 and has consistently received outstanding teaching evaluations. For example, she received a 4.7/5.0 overall rating as the instructor and a 4.6/5.0 overall rating for the most recent course she taught at Case Western Reserve University in the spring of 2016. (Overall averages for Case Western Reserve University are 3.92 and 3.68 respectively.) She was named one of Cleveland State's Most Engaging Instructors in 2012. You can find out more about Dr. Gerrek on the The Instructor page.
Where?
Class sessions are held at an agreed upon public location, usually a coffee shop. Please contact us at 440.584.0040 or info@sophizo.org for further information.