Thomas Jackson

Thomas Jackson is a specialist in the Department of Philosophy and serves as executive director of UH Mānoa’s Uehiro Academy for Philosophy and Ethics in Education. Jackson has been recognized for his sustained commitment to education and a unique regard for the integration of his academic life’s work with local and global communities. He is regarded by community teachers as “an educator in the truest sense, eliciting the magic of authentic learning.” Since 1984, Jackson has been passionately committed to the development of the Philosophy for Children movement (P4C) in Hawaiʻi and around the world. P4C has transformed lives on a core premise that philosophy could be and should be taught to children if presented in a different way than in its current academic form. Jackson’s work with P4C has created transformational long-term outcomes that have thrived and multiplied in settings from an early Hawaiʻi Island experiment to the deeply rooted Waikīkī Elementary School and Kailua High School programs to the university’s Uehiro Academy.