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They all saw a cat

Investigating the ways we come to know through picture books

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Gender And Sexuality Education Philosophy with Children Reflections on Pedagogy

RHEA KUTHOORE

Sept 05, 2023 · 6 min read

Overview

Week one was on ‘how do we see?’ For this, we chose ‘they all saw a cat.’ Except, we did not read it out loud to the children or reveal, from the beginning, how each page of the story was a different animal's perspective of a cat. Instead, we showed the children each page and asked them— what do you see? What is similar or different from one page to another? Here, the children were using their observations and giving us reasons for why they thought there was the same cat on each page or a different cat. By engaging the picture book in this way, it was not only becoming evident to the children that they were all seeing the same page differently but we were intentionally trying to engage the following thinking skills — observation, compare and contrast and giving reasons — through our stimulus/resource. After going through the pages and listening to the children’s responses, we used the ‘animal vision’ application to reveal to the children what was indeed taking place in the story. Our dialogue in class then focussed on what factors were influencing how each of the animals were seeing the cat.

Goal

An exploration of how we perceive and the factors that influence perception. Do all species see in the same way? What makes us see the way we do? Do all of us, humans, see the same object in the same way?

Pre-stimulus

1. How do you see?
2. When we all see one thing, are we all seeing the same thing?
3. Have there been times when you saw something and then in the very next second, you saw something else?
4. Are there times when you have seen something but just could not believe what you saw?

For question one, children mentioned ‘eyes’ and they said that we do see the same thing in the same way.
Conversation relating to the 3rd question:
C: One day I saw a frog and then the very second I saw a snake.
Thinking skill: remembering from experience
Me: Oh, do you think that the frog moved and the snake then came there?
C: No, I think, at first, I saw the frog, but the snake was there too. And, the second time, I saw the snake too.
Me: Oh, so it seems like we sometimes do not see everything that there is to see.
I drew this inference explicitly so that students could hear it

Conversation relating to the 4th question:
C: Sometimes, when I see a ghost, I cannot believe it.
Me: Do you all see ghosts? (Two children mentioned that they do not)
Me: How do ghosts look to you?
C1: We cannot see ghosts, we feel it like we feel air.
C2: I have seen a ghost with no head.
C3: I have seen white ghosts.
C4: I have seen ghosts in my dreams.
Me: So, it seems like we all have seen ghosts differently. So, maybe we can test whether we all see the same thing in the same way?
Thinking skill: testing a hypothesis

During reading/stimulus

On showing the children each of the pages, we asked: what are you seeing as we moved from one page to the other? Is there one cat or many cats? Why do you think so? What are the similarities and differences between the cat on each page? What could be the reason for the differences?

Responses on each page:

Pg1: cat, cheetah, toy
Me: What is the difference between a cat and a cheetah?
Thinking skill: learning to make distinction
Pg2: some children thought it was a different cat because they had a different size and different mustache.
Thinking skill: comparing and contrasting
Some mentioned it was a boy and others said it was a girl.
Me: Why is it a boy?
Thinking skill: challenging assumptions
C1: because they are wearing shorts
C2: but girls wear shorts too.
Thinking skill: counterexample
Pg3: Some children thought it was the same cat on all pages because they had the same bell. They noticed, ‘the cat looks thin’
Thinking skill: inference making
Pg4: ‘The fox is going to eat the cat’ By now, some children were saying that they are different cats because the size keeps changing on each page and others thought it was the same cat changing size.
Thinking skill: listening to different perspectives
C1: But how can we get smaller after getting bigger?
Me: Are there living things that can get smaller? Think about plants, when they do not get water?
Thinking skill: finding counterexamples
Pg6: cat in the water, penguin
Pg7: Me: pay attention to the other animals on the page. What is the mouse feeling? Children: scared
Pg9: Me: why do you think there is a different animal on each page?
C: All these animals are seeing the cat and seeing why they are different.
Pg10: ant Me: what is it seeing?
Pg11: Can there only be two cats?
C1: I think there are two cats — thin and fat
C2: I think there are three cats — one is small too
C3: I think there are 4 — one is long too
C4: Now I change my mind
Thinking skill: self-correcting
C5:This page looks like a painting
Pg12: bat, worm, many worms, drawing, cat feet, stars

After reading/in-class learning

Me: So, we have all seen differently — one cat, many cats, painting, drawing, etc. Let us see something before we reveal how many cats were there in the story.

Activity

We used the application on the phone through which you can see how the snake may be perceiving the world. After the children saw this, we once again asked them to guess what page 11 could be about. It is known as Animal Vision OpenCV filters.

C: Oh, the cat on the page is how the snake sees the cat.
Thinking skill: comparing what they saw on the animal vision app to the page in the book
Me: And so, in the other pages too it is about how different animals see a cat!
Me: Now, let us think about why each of these animals may be seeing a cat differently.

Activity

We took a print out of the following pages — and asked the children to guess what could be playing a part in how the animals are seeing.

Click to see images

For the page with the snake:
C1: The snake has different eyes and brains.
C2: But snakes do not have brains.
C3: But if snakes do not have brains, we will always be able to catch them, but they are clever in hiding.
Thinking skill: giving reasons and inferring

For the page with a thin cat (as seen by the dog):
C1: I think the dog was thinking, “it is looking thin, let me leave it” or “I want that bell”
Me: Why do you think the bell is so big?
Me: Dogs have a stronger sense of sound and hence they can hear someone on the door before we can.
Me: So it seems like how we see is also affected by our other senses like how we hear.

For the page with the bird seeing a cat:
Me: why is the cat looking so small?
C1: Because the bird is seeing from far.
Me: Yes, so distance affects how we see.
Thinking skill: drawing inference from observation

For the page with the mouse seeing a cat:
Me: why do you think the cat looks like this for the mouse?
C1: Because the mouse is scared.
Me: So how do you think your feelings affect how you see? Think about how you all saw a ghost differently and also said that you feel scared at night.

Final Activity

We used an application to see the inside of the eyes of various insects. It was – http://microsculpture.net. We would zoom into each of the images and then slowly zoom out so that the students can guess which insect’s eye they think it is.

Final Question

So, if we all saw differently, is there still one cat? Why so? And what are the features of the ‘one cat’? What is common from all the pages?

Suggestions

This activity can go into exploring different eyes of different organisms, the concept of qualia and the other factors that affect how we see — vibrations, medium (such as water) and how objects reflect wavelength. If children further question — why do different species have different eyes? Here, one can further explore questions linked to the design of the universe, God and evolution.

RHEA KUTHOORE is an educator who is passionate about facilitating philosophical and feminist thinking amongst young people.

Thinking Rhizomatically

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