Philosophy for Children

In 1963 James A. Jordan Jr. claimed that "It is not difficult nowadays to run into a claim that such and such teaching method follows the principle implicit in the method of Socrates." Jordan's claim refers particularly to supporters of programmed instruction or the use of teaching machines. He argued that the use or application of such materials cannot lead to genuine immitation of Socrates. Today, although the use and application of computers in schools has increased, the claim of following (...) the Socratic Method is usually made by teachers who allow or encourage "classroom discussions." Some might even claim that this is the only appropriate or suitable method of learning. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is more pedagogical than philosophical reflecting my involvement in Teacher Education and Professional Development Programs. Teachers are essentially practical people, having to cope with classes of, usually, twenty or more individuals by keeping them engaged in various learning activities lest they become uncontrollable. So they tend to evaluate curriculum innovations in terms of the number and range of structured practical, "hands-on," learning activities which will more fully engage pupil attention. Consequently they tend to be sceptical, (...) even rejecting, of programs, which, to them, seem to be more theoretical, abstract or academic in nature. Philosophy for Children, with its heavy verbal emphasis comes into this category and so may not be given the attention it deserves by many practicing teachers. The aim of this paper then, is to examine Philosophy for Children from the perspective of pedagogic theory to see how well it measures up, and to suggest ways in which the program might be made more attractive to both teachers and pupils. (shrink)

Word of the inauguration of a newsletter on the program in Analytical Thinking that is based in the School of Education at Texas Wesleyan College is indeed welcome. Knowing the energy and expertise of the two administrators of the program, Dean Joe Mitchell and Professor Ronald Reed, I have no doubt that the newsletter will be a success, and I shall look forward to receiving every issue.

It is twelve years since the article you are about to read was published. During that time, the philosophy in schools movement has expanded and diversified in response to curriculum developments, teaching guides, web-based resources, dissertations, empirical research and theoretical scholarship. Philosophy and philosophy of education journals regularly publish articles and special issues on pre-college philosophy. There are more opportunities for undergraduate and graduate philosophy students to practice and research philosophy for/with children in schools. The Ontario Philosophy Teachers Association reports (...) that in English-speaking Canada there are over 28,000 senior high school students studying philosophy in over 440 schools, and philosophy is now a Teachable Qualification. In the USA, the Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization was founded in 2009 to create a network of pre-college philosophy teachers. With the loss of its founders—Matthew Lipman, Ann Margaret Sharp and Gareth Matthews —the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children is developing a digital archive in P4C. My original article was inspired by the design and pilot of a new philosophy elective for the Victorian Certificate of Education. This initiative garnered considerable interest from the P4C community because many believed that the decision to offer a VCE philosophy elective reflected the effectiveness and popularity of P4C in elementary schools, and the new philosophy elective would establish P4C as an essential prerequisite for the study of philosophy in senior secondary school and at university. In my view, enthusiasts overlooked an important difference in the conception of philosophy informing the new philosophy elective: it introduced students to the theoretical or academic discipline of philosophy, whereas P4C conceived of philosophy as a wisdom tradition—otherwise known as the art of living. (shrink)

Like many others, I have resisted the idea that education, in general, is a form of training. We always talk about training for something, while an educated person is not educated for any one thing. But for this very reason, I do not wish to abandon the term ‘teacher training’ in favor of ‘teacher education’, although ideally I would prefer to speak of ‘teacher preparation’ because the term ‘training’ always reminds me of monkeys. I shall use the terms ‘training’ and (...) ‘preparation’ interchangeably, with both standing in contrast to ‘education’. All persons deserve to be educated; there is nothing specific to teachers here. Teacher training, whether general or specific to a subject or discipline, remains a contentious business. Some regard Pedagogy as a legitimate subject area and structure training around it; others prefer to see teacher training firmly in the context of the various disciplines that teachers will, in turn, be teaching: mathematics, literature, history and, in this case, philosophy. Indeed, when it comes to training teachers to teach philosophy, the problem is exacerbated by the plain fact that most teachers have no formal background in philosophy. So we are faced with the rather daunting prospect of providing such a background as well as providing whatever is needed in order to teach philosophy to others. Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp were well aware of this challenge when they set up the first training programs in Philosophy for Children at Montclair State College in the early 1970s; hence the requirement that if classroom teachers were not actually qualified in philosophy, at least those who trained them to do philosophy with children should be. However, this idealistic model was always going to be difficult to apply. The problem, as it developed in countries around the world, was two-fold: teachers with little or no philosophical background were, increasingly, being trained by other educators who were in the same boat ; and conversely, when professional philosophers did become involved in teacher training, it quickly became apparent that they lacked any real training in pedagogy, and so were inadequate to the task of modeling the role of the teacher in the classroom. To look on the bright side, some constructive attempts have been made to resolve these shortcomings. The one with which I am most familiar is the Australian model for what is termed ‘Level Two training’, that is, training those who will, in turn, train and work with classroom teachers. This model recognizes the complementary requirements of philosophical and pedagogic expertise, respectively, by awarding certificates of achievement based on whether those trained have come from the discipline of philosophy, the practice of teaching, or both. Ideally, then, training workshops for teachers would be directed by at least one person in the former category, and at least one in the latter. (shrink)

In this article we report the findings of a randomised control clinical trial that assessed the impact of a Philosophy for Children program and replicated a previous study conducted in Scotland by Topping and Trickey. A Cognitive Abilities Test was administered as a pretest and a posttest to randomly selected experimental groups and control groups. The students in the experimental group engaged in philosophy lessons in a setting of structured, collaborative inquiry in their language arts classes for one hour per (...) week for a number of weeks. The control group received the standard language arts curriculum in that one hour. The study found that the seventh grade students who had experienced the P4C program showed significant gains relative to those in the seventh grade control group at a high level of statistical significance, but the eighth grade students in the experimental group did not show such gains over the eighth grade control group. It was discovered that the seventh grade teachers started the program early in the school year and continued it for a period of 22 to 26 weeks, while the eighth grade teachers started much later and used the program for only 4 to 10 weeks. Our findings suggest that the P4C program must involve students in activities for a significant period of time before the program shows results, but that a meaningful impact on students’ cognitive abilities can be achieved in about 24 weeks of lessons, less than half the time evidenced by the study by Topping and Trickey. (shrink)

This article explores the necessary requirements for effective teacher facilitation of community of philosophical inquiry sessions among children, and suggests that the first and most important prerequisite is the capacity to listen to children, which in turn is based on a critical and reflective interrogation of one’s own philosophy of childhood —the set of beliefs and assumptions about children and childhood which adults tend to project onto real children. It argues that the most effective way to explore these assumptions is (...) in community of philosophical inquiry, where we encounter the same concepts—nature, person, good and evil, innocence, etc.—which underlie more general philosophical inquiry. It then describes the work of the American educator Patricia Carini, who developed the Descriptive Review Process as a phenomenological approach to understanding the children with whom one is in relation, and identifies the Descriptive Review Process as another form of the practice of philosophy of childhood which, together with the regular practice of POC-CPI among teachers, offers us a grounded, integrated methodology for schools dedicated to adult-child dialogue and to school as a site for cultural reconstruction. (shrink)

The notion of educating the ‘whole child’ invites suspicion because of the value-laden assumptions carried by such a goal. I argue that the intuitive appeal of the notion reflects the meaning of education but that the goal is also implicit in P4C in its respect for wholeness in content, rationale and practices whereby the learner is honoured and engaged. In this paper, I focus on the senior high school curriculum in which the rich resources of philosophy can speak to the (...) broad range of students’ questions and concerns: intellectual, existential and social, addressing their ‘whole’ persons with its legacy of wisdom. (shrink)

This paper describes the exploratory study which was carried out in Zimbabwe with an elementary Grade 7 class and with the firstand third- year student teachers, at a Teacher Training College, "doing philosophy", using Lipman's PIXIE and HARRY novels, respectively, and the proposed critical inquiry methodology.Secondly the perceptions of the participants, about their experiences during these exploratory sessions, which were derived from the researcher's self-evaluation and the students' informal evaluations, are presented in the paper.

Philosophy for Children promotes a pedagogy that builds on a collective process of truth-seeking and meaning-making. In contrast to seeing teachers as sources of knowledge, they are often described as facilitators in this communal process. PFC is part of the larger movement in education that has aimed to put the child at the center of the teaching and learning process. Yet, PFC, similar to other child-centered pedagogies, brings new challenges to understanding the role of the teacher. This article traces the (...) questions concerning the pedagogy of PFC by incorporating Alasdair Macintyre’s notion of practice and the scholarship of PFC. Macintyre’s concept of practice offers the source for unveiling the internal goods of teaching in PFC. This article locates the internal goods in the teacher and in the work or performance of the teacher. Especially, a particular moral phenomenology and a biographical genre of a PFC teacher are articulated to flesh out the internal goods found in the teacher. The work of the teacher is characterized as entailing two components that shape its role. One is in composing a platform for collective progress grounded on epistemic criteria and another level of specifically educational judgements the teacher has to make individually, which together form the internal goods found in the performance. The nature of teaching and the role of the teacher in PFC provides a set of goods for the PFC teacher in his or her educational task. (shrink)

This article investigates the place of trust in learning relations in the classroom, not only between teacher and student, but also between student and student. To do this, it will first examine a pedagogy called community of inquiry, espoused by John Dewey and used in most Philosophy for Children courses in Australia. It will then consider what different forms of trust are involved in other power relations in the classroom, particularly the rational structuralism of R.S Peters, or the experiential philosophy (...) of Maria Montessori. It concludes that a community of inquiry shifts the ethical learning relation in significantly different ways because for educational growth, it values ethical trust more highly than a strategic trust in logical principle, duty, Truth, or cost/benefit analysis. (shrink)

The following essay presents faculty reflections on field experiences required for students in an introductory Philosophy of Education course. The essay is a reflective tracing on the becoming of philosophical thinking that occurs when college students spend a significant time philosophizing with younger students at local elementary sites using community of inquiry methodology. In introductory philosophy courses students are being introduced to the array of philosophical positions in education, but more importantly, they are also learning ways of thinking philosophically about (...) issues in education. The question is how to best foster the growth of philosophical thinking in the limited weeks of a college semester with a diverse group of students. The authors find that communities of inquiry where adults and children interact offers additional layers of epistemology and ontology upon which to question and reflect. As college level students begin to see themselves as community members with children, conceptions of both what it means to be a philosophical thinker as well as what it means to do philosophy begin to change. (shrink)

There are tensions within formal education between imparting knowledge and the development of skills for handling that knowledge. In the primary school sector, the latter can also be squeezed out of the curriculum by a focus on basic skills such as literacy and numeracy. What happens when an explicit attempt is made to develop young children's reasoning—both in terms of their apparent cognitive abilities and their basic skills? This paper reports an independent evaluation of an in-class intervention called ‘Philosophy for (...) Children’, after just over one year of schooling. The intervention aims to help children become more willing and able to question, reason, construct arguments and collaborate with others. A group of 48 volunteer schools were randomised to receive P4C or act as a control for one year. This paper reports the CAT results for all pupils in years 4 and 5 initially, and the Key Stage 2 attainment in English and Maths for those starting in year 5. There was no school dropout. Individual attrition from a total of 3,159 pupils was around 11 percent—roughly equal between groups. There were small positive ‘effect’ sizes in favour of the P4C group in progress in reading and maths, and even smaller perhaps negligible improvements in CAT scores and writing. The results for the most disadvantaged pupils were larger for attainment, but not for CATs. Observations and interviews suggest that the intervention was generally enjoyable and thought to be beneficial for pupil confidence. Our conclusion is that, for those wishing to improve attainment outcomes in the short term, an emphasis on developing reasoning is promising, especially for the poorest students, but perhaps not the most effective way forward. However, for those who value reasoning for its own sake, this evaluation demonstrates that using curriculum time in this way does not damage attainment, and so suggests that something like P4C is an appropriate educational approach. (shrink)

Four issues or problems philosophers should be concerned about when doing philosophy.

Philosophy for Children is, at its core, an educational movement that started in the 1970s and it is currently practiced in over 60 countries. Rather than teaching children philosophy, it aims to develop thinking, inquiry and reasoning skills by means of intellectual interaction and by questioning both with the facilitator and amongst themselves. Thus it creates a community of inquiry. This movement has created a sound literature within philosophy of education which indirectly relates to issues in meta-philosophy, epistemology and philosophy (...) of childhood. Despite the fact that Philosophy for Children is a movement which is predominantly based on questioning and inquiry, there is little emphasis on curiosity within its literature. This is not surprising because even in philosophy literature the concept of curiosity was ignored until quite recently. Producing the first book-length treatment of curiosity within philosophy literature, İnan provides a philosophical framework on how human curiosity is possible and how it finds expression. The notion of inostensible conceptualization, which İnan has developed and central to his theory of curiosity, could be utilized in order to demonstrate the significance of curiosity within Philosophy for Children. Philosophy for Children sessions are usually centered around a philosophical concept such as fairness, egoism, and identity. In this paper I argue that the in-class discussions in Philosophy for Children practice enable children to realize that the concept in question is inostensible for them. That is, they do not have all the knowledge about this specific concept. In order to explain the concept of curiosity in P4C sessions, I have developed two notions: the first notion is curiosity-arouser, which I utilize to explain how the community of inquiry could better concentrate on and discuss the inostensible concept. The second notion is joint curiosity, which I have developed in analogy to the trans-disciplinary notion of joint attention. Similar to the positive impact of joint attention on child development, I argue that joint curiosity has positive outcomes for children’s inquiry and questioning. I explain these notions in detail by providing examples of Philosophy for Children sessions. My overall aim is to emphasize the importance of curiosity in order for this practice to reach its fundamental aims. The practitioners and those who prepare materials have to take into consideration the concept of curiosity and must equip themselves with an understanding of it. (shrink)

Experience indicates that the questioning and democratic nature of the community of enquiry can be demanding and unsettling for teachers, presenting unaccustomed challenges and moral dilemmas. This paper argues that such significant episodes in the practice of Philosophical with Children offer rich opportunities for wider critical reflection on epistemological and pedagogical questions for teacher education and continuing professional development. We illustrate the nature of this ongoing work through noticing and focusing on critical incidents drawn from our lived experience of PwC (...) with learners, students, teachers and fellow practitioners in the UK and in South Africa, identifying common themes and offering an account of their origins. The article proposes a way of developing and refining educational practice through a grounded and collaborative practitioner action research orientation, investigating common themes that emerge from significant events in practice and mirroring the process of PwC itself. We conclude that the recurrent themes we identify show the value of PwC in opening up a transformative critical space in teacher education that disrupts prevalent epistemological frameworks and suggest that a deconstruction of the role of the educator, and the epistemological shift it provokes, is the hub of the project of bringing philosophy into schools and universities, and into the professional development of PwC teacher educators. (shrink)

To investigate the effect of philosophical thinking on the development of reasoning skills and behavioral performance among Iranian primary school students, we conducted a qualitative method study with ten fourth grade students selected from different primary schools in Tehran1. We also study the reactions of children and their parents to this new method of education, which thoroughly differs from the method practiced in our schools now. This study was carried out in the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, as an (...) extra class once a week for twenty sessions. Data collection strategies of this study including the authors’ observations during sessions, children’s parents’ observations and reports, and interviews with children and their parents. Our research result shows that reasoning skills enhance communication skills by enabling children to express their ideas more persuasively. We also found that children act more confidently and independently. (shrink)

The present narrative describes and problematizes one year of Educational and philosophical work with illiterate adults in contexts of urban poverty in the Public School Joaquim da Silva Peçanha, city of Duque de Caxias, suburbs of the State of Rio de Janeiro during 2008. The project, “Em Caxias a Filosofia En-caixa?!”, consists of a teacher education program in which public school teachers study and practice the art of composing philosophical experiences with their students, and the realization of actual experiences of (...) philosophy in classrooms with children and students in an adult literacy class. This narrative is concerned with the latter aspect of the project, more specifically experiences working with adult students practicing philosophy. The thirty students and three teachers involved in the course do not study the history of philosophy, nor do they create philosophical systems or theories. Rather they participate in a philosophical experience that might best be able to understand by examining Pierre Hadot’s concept of philosophy “as a way of living”. (shrink)

Over recent years there has been a growing movement pushing for the inclusion of Philosophy in schools.[1] -/- As a subject, Philosophy is broad. It can be separated into many sub-disciplines such as Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Mind, Ethics, and Philosophy of Science, to name a few. These sub-disciplines reduce back to three broad pillars of Philosophy: Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Axiology. -/- Regardless of where one’s philosophical interest sits, the essential skill set remains the same. This is the ability (...) to reason. Philosophers produce rationally convincing arguments and critically assess the arguments of others. -/- In this fictional dialogue Socrates meets with Allison Fells, the Principal of Western Heights School, to discuss the inclusion of Philosophy in the school curriculum. Socrates has been running a successful Philosophy club at school and believes that students would benefit through the extension of the club into the regular school curriculum. Socrates argues that Philosophy equips students with the skill set needed to live the good life. (shrink)

In this paper, we study the manifestations of what we call “dialogical critical thinking” in elementary school pupils when they are engaged in philosophical exchanges among peers: What are thecharacteristics of dialogical critical thinking? How does it develop in youngsters? Our research was conducted during an entire school year, with eight groups of pupils from three different cultural contexts: Australia, Mexico and Quebec. Our findings were constructed in an inductive manner, inspired by qualitative analysis as defined by Glaser and Strauss. (...) From our analysis, a grid was developed, illustrating the process by which dialogical critical thinking developed among the pupils involved in our research. This process is manifested via four modes of thinking, which become increasingly complex according to three epistemological perspectives. (shrink)

In this dialogue, I illustrate why moral arguments from analogy are a valuable part of moral reasoning by considering how texting while driving is, morally speaking, no different than drunk driving.

This book was written to serve two functions. First it is an exploration of what I have called Socratic pedagogy, a collaborative inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning suitable not only to formal educational settings such as the school classroom but to all educational settings. The term is intended to capture a variety of philosophical approaches to classroom practice that could broadly be described Socratic in form. The term ‘philosophy in schools’ is ambiguous and could refer to teaching university style (...) philosophy to high school students or to the teaching of philosophy and logic or critical reasoning in senior years of high school. It is also used to describe the teaching of philosophy in schools generally. In the early and middle phases of schooling the term philosophy for children is often used. But this too is ambiguous as the name was adopted from Matthew Lipman’s Philosophy for Children curriculum that he and his colleagues at the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children developed. In Britain the term ‘philosophy with children’ is sometimes employed to mark two methods of teaching that have Socratic roots but have distinct differences, namely Philosophy for Children and Socratic Dialogue developed by Leonard Nelson. The use of the term Socratic pedagogy and its companion term Socratic classroom avoids the problem of distinguishing between various approaches to philosophical inquiry in the Socratic tradition but also separates it from the ‘study of philosophy’, such as university style philosophy or other approaches which place little or no emphasis on collaborative inquiry based teaching and learning. The second function builds from the first. It is to develop an effective framework for understanding the relationship between what I call the generative, evaluative and connective aspects of communal dialogue, which I think are necessary to the Socratic notion of inquiry. In doing so it is hoped that this book offers some way to show how philosophy as inquiry can contribute to educational theory and practice, while also demonstrating how it can be an effective way to approach teaching and learning. This has meant striking a balance between speaking to philosophers and to teachers and educators together, with the view that both see the virtues of such a project. In the strictest sense this book is not philosophy of education, insofar as its chief focus is not on the analysis of concepts or formulation of definitions specific to education with the aim of formulating directives that guide educational practice. It relinquishes the role of philosopher as ‘spectator’, to one of philosopher ‘immersed in matter’ – in this case philosophical issues in education, specifically those related to philosophical inquiry, pedagogy and classroom practice. Put another way, it is a book about philosophical education. (shrink)

While professional philosophers are often reluctant to address the issue of the aims of philosophy, the field of philosophy with children is abundant with articulated aims which tend to be more concrete and ambitious than those of academic philosophy. Is this asymmetry a problem? And how are we to think about the aims of philosophy with children? This article argues that not much will be gained from looking to academic philosophy because discussions here are surprisingly meager and have provided little (...) agreement. Nevertheless, it is also argued that the aims of philosophy with children must be constrained by what can be achieved by academic philosophy. (shrink)

The philosophy for children curriculum was specially written by Matthew Lipman and colleagues for the teaching of philosophy by non-philosophically educated teachers from foundation phase to further education colleges. In this article I argue that such a curriculum is neither a necessary, not a sufficient condition for the teaching of philosophical thinking. The philosophical knowledge and pedagogical tact of the teacher remains salient, in that the open-ended and unpredictable nature of philosophical enquiry demands of teachers to think in the moment (...) and draw on their own knowledge and experience of academic philosophy. Providing specialist training or induction in the P4C curriculum cannot and should not replace undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in academic philosophy at universities. However, although for academic philosophers the use of the P4C curriculum could be beneficial, I will argue that its use poses the risk of wanting to form children into the ideal ‘abnormal’ child, the thinking child—the adult philosopher’s child positioned as such by the Lipman novels. The notion of narrativity is central in my argument. With the help of two picturebooks—The Three Pigs by David Weisner and Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne—I illustrate my claim that philosophy as ‘side-shadowing’ or meta-thinking can only be generated in the space ‘in between’ text, child and educator, thereby foregrounding a ‘pedagogy of exposure’ rather than ‘teacher proof’ texts. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical exploration of the Philosophy for Children movement, which aims at the expansion of critical, creative and caring thinking skills in students through philosophical dialogue. It describe that such a practice can motivate children to take responsibility in recognizing their thinking and their actions which shape who one is becoming. The paper outlines the historical development of this dialogical framework followed by concentrating on some of the challenges and solutions with respect to the practice of philosophy (...) with children. Some of the dominating concerns raised by the critics of philosophical practice are addressed, before surveying the evidence to the effectiveness of such an approach using philosophical, sociological and psychological arguments. The paper offers a systematic critical review of studies that have implemented philosophical inquiry with children in different educational settings to find that its practice enables children to participate in an open community through reason. The concluding argument states implications for philosophical practice in the fields of implementation in education and future directions in research. The paper makes a final claim that engaged philosophical inquiry is a crucial and necessary means for the emergence and further social and emotional advancement in pupils where children can attain a stable sense of personal well-being. (shrink)

In this article, I contextualize the community of inquiry approach, and Philosophy for Children, within the current milieu of education. Specifically, I argue that whereas former scholarship on Philosophy for Children had a tendency to critique the problems of teacher authority and knowledge transmission, we must now consider subtler, learner-centered scenarios of education as a threat to Philosophy for Children. I begin by offering a personal anecdote about my own experience attending a ‘reverse-integrated’ elementary school in 1968. I use this (...) anecdote to show the detrimental aspects of the turn to learning—and the concomitant turn away from teaching—over past five decades. I go on to detail what I call “the logic of learning.” The logic of learning has five components: 1) That learning has a theory, or ‘logic,’ in other words, that learners can be figured out. 2) That learning is instrumental, that people need to learn things in order to acquire something that will be obtained after the learning is complete. 3) That learning concerns normation, or, some people get learning ‘right’ while others do not. 4) That teaching is the same as instruction, so that teaching always means delivering knowledge to students. 5) That authority should reside as a possession of the learner, and thus authority is understood as a thing rather than a relation. I show that these elements of the logic of learning stand in the way of the goals of Philosophy for Children, and that opponents of Philosophy for Children have used these elements to assail the Philosophy for Children project. I continue by describing a relational understanding of authority. I demonstrate the importance of relational authority and relational teaching as key components of Philosophy for Children. In conclusion, I argue that Philosophy for Children needs to spearhead a movement of relational teaching. (shrink)

While some argue that the only way to make a place for Philosophy for Children in today's strict, standardised classroom is to measure its efficacy in promoting reasoning, we believe that this must be avoided in order to safeguard what is truly unique in P4C dialogue. When P4C acquiesces to the very same quantitative measures that define the rest of learning, then the philosophical dimension drops out and P4C becomes yet another progressive curriculum and pedagogy for enhancing argumentation skills that (...) can easily be appropriated by any content area. What we want to offer in this article is a reevaluation of P4C that remains faithful to a radical kernel that we find when we do philosophy with children and young adults. To theorise the potential for P4C, we draw heavily on Agamben's work, and in particular his reflections on speech and infancy. We propose that the redemption of P4C necessitates a shift from a community of inquiry to a community of infancy. Such a community is not a community that operates according to predefined rules or standardised assessment protocols but rather is an inoperative community that is defined by letting ends idle. On our account, a community of infancy is an example of dialogic studious play that is neither ritual nor just play, thus avoiding the extreme polarities of the ritualised classrooms of high-stakes testing and the ‘ludic’ postmodern classroom of free play. What is at stake here is to preserve the last vestige of freedom within the school. (shrink)

An education that does not recognise schools as places for the mere transmission and assimilation of knowledge, but as places for critical and creative inquiry, is quality education. Philosophising with children in schools assumes that children are actively and deliberately encouraged in seeking responses to the questions about reality they raise at a very early age. The practice of philosophy is undoubtedly one of the underpinnings of a quality education for all. By contributing to opening children‘s minds, building their critical (...) reflection and autonomous thinking, philosophy contributes to the protection against manipulation and exclusion at the hands of adults. If education in general must open up to children the maps of an intricate world in a continuous state of tension, then philosophy is a compass for navigating that world. Hence children, irrespective of their geographical location and regardless of their social milieu or state of development of their country, deserve to be equipped with the tools so motivated for. Using conceptual analysis as a tool, I explore the Lipman method of Philosophy for Children by presenting a case for an African perspective of the same. I situate doing philosophy with children in the context of the African philosophy debate. While Lipman‘s model provides the case for the role of rational, logical and systematic thinking in children, the African background promises the raw materials on which the said instruments work. I therefore settle for a hybridised Philosophy for Children programme that marries the universalist and the particularist views of doing philosophy. I argue that the traditional African notion of community plays a significant role in our understanding of the community of inquiry as pedagogy of doing philosophy with children. Embedded in African ―community‖ is the concept of ukama qua relationality, which constitutes a keystone in the envisaged African perspective of Philosophy for Children. I conclude that doing philosophy with children in schools in Africa contributes to the interpretation of the cultural, economic and circumstances of the African situation. (shrink)

I wish to carry out a philosophical inquiry into contemporary intercultural public spheres. The thesis I will support is that the achievement of inclusive public spheres (namely, with respect to our European and Western experience, the accomplishment of democracy) largely depends on one’s willingness and capacity to foster an “appreciation of diversities” by first, enhancing policies and forms of cooperation between the citizens’ emotional and motivational resources, and then enhancing their cognitive competences. More specifically, my proposal is to understand such (...) an effort from the viewpoint of postWeberian responsibility, that is of an ethics and politics that overcome the traditional divisions between theory and practice, cognition and emotion, “Verantwortung” (responsibility) and “Gesinnung” (conviction), and therefore succeed in enhancing the citizens’ awareness and attitudes as – in Habermas’ words – “democratic co-legislators”. Fiinally, a case study of Matthew Lipman’s “Philosophy for Children/Community of Inquiry” succeeds precisely in embodying this cultural project. (shrink)

One of the most traditional ways to teach philosophy in secondary school is a historical approach”, which takes a historicist view of philosophy and uses teaching practice based on teacher-centred lessons and textbook study by students. Only recently a debate on different approaches to teach philosophy is developing, considering the discipline as practical and dialogical activity to be fostered in the classroom. What could mean “doing philosophy” in the classroom from an instructional perspective? What are the premises and constraints which (...) allow the transformation of philosophy from a discipline to a community activity? In this paper a teaching model based on cultural-historical theory is proposed and discussed. The model is composed by three level of specification of the activity, from lower to higher, which correspond to three different analysis plans of the philosophical practice in an instructional context. Each level is composed by seven fundamental dimensions which highlight the meanings, the constraints, and the tools implied and developed in philosophizing as socio-cultural activity. Finally, if and how Philosophy for Children should be considered an activity respondent to the model and its educational aims is discussed. (shrink)

This is a small collection of proverbs with some philosophical content. I also included here are some of my favorite philosophical quotes. The quotes were collected during many years from my personal reading. I am sure that the reader will identify and enjoy proverbs and some quotes that are new and unique to this publication. A printed copy available at amazon.com. Feedback: gondork@yahoo.com .

This paper is centered on analyzing how a ‘philosophy for children’ lecturing methodology can foster learning amongst foundation-level students at the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology, MCAST. This is a college that offers VET in different areas to students aged 16 and over. Foundation level courses are at level 1 of the National Vocational Qualifications framework, this level being the most basic. The students in this study are reading Health and Social Care. The courses on offer at MCAST (...) in Health and Social Care go up to level 6, the level of an undergraduate degree level qualification. It is possible for students to progress from level 1 to level 6 over seven years of study. Alternatively, they may terminate their studies with a lower level of qualification, including after completing the Foundation level course. The methodology that has been adopted is based on engaging these students in continual questioning and philosophical reflection on the subject matter and on their connecting it with learning derived from other sources and from their personal life-experiences. It is based on engaging them in asking their own questions, exploring concepts that they deem as important, learning from each other’s points of view, and thereby understanding themselves and others from a more reflexive perspective. It is both lecturer-centered and student-centered since lecturers model appropriate procedures of inquiry, encouraging students to find a voice so as to challenge what they deem as unacceptable, rather than intervening so as to impose pre-empted conclusions. The analysis is based on an ethnographic approach that is informed by the students’ voices and that involves field observation and focus-groups. It is anticipated that this study will provide an understanding of the student’s own assessment of the benefits of stimulating their philosophical curiosity through the medium of applying a philosophy for children methodology to Health and Social Care studies amongst college students. (shrink)

This study attempts to describe and analyze the question of teacher formation in Philosophy for Children by focusing on two central principles: the first is that we defend the introduction of philosophy into elementary schools; the second that we place greater emphasis on current programs of teacher formation in the field. We begin the article by analyzing the work and research of the creator and pioneer of the program Philosophy for Children, Matthew Lipman. The article proceeds to inquire into and (...) describe the teacher formation efforts in the field in Brasil, mainly those of the Brasilian Center of Philosophy for Children and some alternative efforts coordinated by Walter Kohan and Paula Ramos de Oliveira. A general overview of teacher formation and the teaching profession in Brasil is also conducted. The theoretical base, from which we analyze the concept of formation, is built on the Frankfurt School, particularly Theodor W. Adorno’s texts on education, formation, and semi-formation. (shrink)

This contribution presents a research developed in 2007, based on the data gathered during the first Italian meeting of Philosophy for Children which took place in Padua, with the collaboration of the University of Padua. The application forms and the proposals made during the meeting have been used to draw some guide lines of the Italian P4C outline. It is important to underline that this inquiry does not pretend to be complete because some teachers were not able to be present (...) at the meeting and because members of Italian P4C community are increasing every year. For these reasons the portrait presented, even if useful and careful in our opinion, is not complete. The aim of this paper is to describe the different training courses that are present in Italy and that are officially recognized by the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children and by the International Council for Philosophical Inquiry with Children , and to present a variety of experiences that were realized in Italian regions in 2006/2007. (shrink)

Supporters of the philosophy for children movement often claim that philosophy is the ideal subject to teach children if we seek to improve their critical thinking. Claiming that only philosophy encompasses the whole of the critical thinking enterprise, and that it alone teaches meta-cognition, these proponents argue for its inclusion in both elementary and secondary school curricula. Yet, if we accept a mainstream description of critical thinking as an activity demanding both aptitude and disposition, the discipline of philosophy, independent of (...) any particular pedagogy, does not offer the unique ability to improve either aspect of the critical thinker. Indeed, matched with the "wrong" pedagogy, the teaching of philosophy does nothing to encourage the disposition to think critically.The pedagogy of Community of Inquiry, however, does encourage such a disposition, even independent of its use in teaching philosophy. As a public model of the process of critical thinking, this pedagogy acts as the "training wheels" of the critical thinker, allowing the individual to both observe and participate in the process. The expectation of the educator is that exposure to the model will, in time, result in its internalization. While philosophy itself may not improve either critical aptitude or disposition, the nature of the discipline does uniquely enable efficient, productive, and extended practice of Community of Inquiry in an educational context. And it is this indirect link between philosophy and critical thinking, a link mediated by the pedagogy of Community of Inquiry, that should be cited by proponents of philosophy for children. (shrink)

Childhood & philosophy é uma revista que está esperando por nascer pelo menos desde que Sócrates ocupou um lugar singular na pólis do século v a. C. e fundou uma disciplina. A concepção dessa revista se sustenta, muito mais tarde, no providencial encontro histórico entre a educação da infância e a filosofia. esse encontro, por sua vez, teve que esperar pelas proféticas declarações de Rousseau no Emílio, enviadas qual um manuscrito posto numa garrafa à revolução iminente e também pelo lento (...) desenvolvimento, ao longo dos séculos XIX e XX, de um tipo de adulto realmente capaz de ouvir as crianças, senão de escutá-las. Para isso foi necessária a desconstrução romântica de tal adulto vivamente esclarecido quem, devemos admitir, fez possível a revolução. (shrink)

The paper deals with the analysis of the buffer or transitional nature of humanistic-oriented school subjects like “Philosophy for children” first introduced in the USA by Dr. M. Lipman and Dr. Ann Sharp. A new ecopsychological and ecofacilitative vision is suggested. The ecofacilitative approach is assumed to be better fit a) into the framework of the ongoing educational ecocrisis and b) as a resolution of the emergent eurointegration and globalization issues.

"Socratic dialogue" get in the contemporary philosophical counseling and psychotherapy field of attention, this article explores the concept of Socratic dialogue with the background, rationale, procedures, characteristics and rules, try to put this method in the philosophy of education can be some applications. In particular, children, philosophy and philosophical counseling program has emphasized two groups for discussion, it seems more appropriate to use Socratic dialogue. Appendix to this article, "What is family?" To explore the theme of Socratic dialogue to explore (...) ways, showing the possibility of a philosophical education scene. Socrates 'Dialogue is highly estimated by contemporary scholars of philosophical counseling and psychotherapy, and this paper is to explore the ideas, background, rationale, procedure, features and rules of Socrates' Dialogue as well as attempt to propose possible applications of such a methodology in the education of philosophy. In particular, the courses of both philosophy for children and philosophical counseling are oriented toward the aspect of group discussion and therefore more suitable for the application of Socrates' Dialogue. Here in this article, we explore the question of "What is Family? "in the light of Socrates' Dialogue so as to present another possibility on the arena of the education of philosophy. (shrink)

The ancient Athenians, whose cultural contributions form the cornerstone of much of Western Civilization, considered philosophy to be the most essential of all educational disciplines. If we accept this notion, then we today are guilty of woeful neglect regarding the place of philosophical training in modern education. One of the great difficulties in the contemporary classroom is that students today, and, by and large, many of their teachers have never had that which they learn and teach anchored in any philosophical (...) foundation. They may learn that George Washington was the first president of the United States but they have scarce reason to understand why he may have been a great man. ;The values and value systems of culture and society rarely find their way into the crowded curricula of contemporary education and, in fact, they have been pushed to the bottom of the priority ladder, either by design or through ignorance. We may forgive ourselves this sin as it pertains to the mainstream classroom but among those students whom we classify as the best and the brightest the omission is not desirable. The problem therefore is obvious. How to introduce philosophical training into the classrooms of talented and gifted students and teachers in order to facilitate the qualitative thinking of pupils and to give them a rationale for the formation of ideas and opinions in all the disciplines to which they are exposed. ;This study accumulated data from teachers of AP classes, and the results of the survey indicate that many teachers do not utilize the prescribed methods and strategies recommended by a review of the literature in the field of gifted education. Based upon the results of this study, the author has arrived at the conclusion that, in order to improve upon the way in which gifted and talented high school students absorb and synthesize what they learn, and to make that which they are taught more relevant to their education and ultimately their lives, students taking AP courses should be offered an additional class in "doing philosophy.". (shrink)

In these two long-distance interviews, Iranian Saeed Naji, founder of the Philosophy for Children movement in Iran, questions two veteran practitioners of philosophy for children/community of philosophical inquiry . He raises issues related to P4C/CPI as representative of a larger educational paradigm, which he calls “reflective education,” and weighs its prospects for replacing what he calls the “traditional paradigm” worldwide. He also queries the two scholars on issues such as criteria for appropriate texts/stimuli for practicing philosophy with children; issues around (...) teacher preparation; the epistemological paradigm of CPI and its relation to the logic of scientific discovery and mathematical proof; the status of CPI as a “new” or reconstructed form of the discipline of philosophy; the prospects for a narrative approach to philosophy as exemplified in the new literary genre of the Lipmanian philosophical novel for children; the relationship between the practice of CPI in schools and the possibility for educational reconstruction, particularly in the area of social democracy and school governance; the significance of understanding the child as a “privileged stranger” to patriarchal colonialist culture, and the social implications of a form of education based on dialogue rather than forced enculturation; and the implications for the construction and delivery of curriculum in a school in which CPI and emergent curriculum were central organizational elements. (shrink)

The study analyzes the theoretical basis of the Philosophy for Children program elaborated by Matthew Lipman. The aim is, firstly, to identify the main philosophical and pedagogical principles of P4C based on American pragmatism, and to locate their pedagogization and possible problems in Lipman's thinking. Here the discussion is especially targeted to the thinking of John Dewey and George H. Mead as well as Lev Vygotsky, whom Lipman himself names as the most pivotal sources for his own thinking. On the (...) other hand, the study aims at opening up new perspectives and thematizations on P4C from the viewpoint of the continental tradition of thought. The essential principles of P4C connected with reasonableness and judgment are ultimately interpreted as a neo-Aristotelian effort to contextualize philosophy by tracing it back to moderation, the man's ability to consider and solve problems that he meets in practical life kata ton orthon logon – by doing right things in the right place at the right time in the right way. This phronetic idea of 'humanizing modernity' combined with the evolution of the adult-child concept is argued to be one of the conditions for the possibility of P4C, yet leaving unsolved the basic problems involving pedagogical action as such. John Dewey's ideas arising from the critique of the modern philosophy of consciousness, focusing on the significance of philosophy in practical human life and linked to the basic nature of human knowing and intellectual growth and, further, to the ideal of a democratic community, are shown to form the main intellectual sources of P4C. Dewey's philosophy as a general theory of education means a solid linking of the concepts of experience and inquiry to the practice of education. This is based on the naturalistic conception of man according to which man is built in dynamic transaction with his environment, experiencing the true meanings of his ideas in the consequences of his actions as he tries to solve problematic situations. So, inquiry as a method of reflective thinking forms the basis for education based on intellectual growth. A condition for it is a context meaningful for the child in which the paradigm of inquiry can be realized authentically. It is therefore important in education to provide circumstances that stimulate the child's curiosity, initiating a process of inquiry that further enables, through the formation of reflective habits, the development of a democratic community. The purpose of the pedagogical interaction taking place in the process of inquiry is to produce educative experiences for the child, making the pedagogical relationship vanish at the same time. The idea is that in pedagogical action the child's subjectivity, his desire and impulses are adapted to the tradition, yet generating at the same time a prospective, reflective habit, thus freeing the educatee to think intelligently for himself. The study shows the articulation of these principles in Lipman's practical effort to convert the classroom into a community of inquiry, but it also argues that the above-mentioned Bildung theoretical core problem of pedagogical action, related to its paradoxical special characteristics to produce autonomous subjectivity, is not thematized. In connection with this issue, the educational thinking of Kant and Hegel is discussed especially from the viewpoint of philosophy teaching. To provide a new perspective for the discussion, the study outlines the community of inquiry as an 'educative space' from the viewpoints of the pedagogical relationship typical of hermeneutic pedagogy and of non-reflective functional structures and phenomena based on pedagogical intuition that are linked to it. (shrink)

The article examines the need to increase an education toward the development of complex thinking in urban areas where there is a considerable amount of social unrest. The school often fails to bridge the gap between educator/education and learner and this happens in particular when it comes to kids ‘disadvantaged’. The P4C is a pedagogical method that can heal this divide, inter alia, through its dialogic practice. The practice of philosophy can became a way to bridge the sense of fragmentation (...) that the learner feels during his school track when he is having to do with a series of parceled knowledge, because it facilitate the cognitive access to them. The risk to which the student meets with the traditional education, as Freire says, is to undermine the faculty to make aware and to problematize his learning process. To built complex thinking opens the possibility of a 360-degree access to the real and increases the development of critical, creative and caring cognitive spheres. The P4C methodology application should be widespread in many school settings possible, but not only. The article continues with a brief description of some non-formal educational services offered to minors in situations of social disadvantage in Naples, focusing in particular on the Territorial Educational Laboratories. In one of these, L’Officina dei Sogni, an organization working in the territory of the 1st Municipality of the city, I carried out from October 2010 to June 2011 a P4C laboratory with children between 8 and 12 years old, driven by the reflection that this educational methodology can improve on cognitive skills in children and adolescents who are living in situations of high social problems and difficulties at school, in order to reduce for them the risk of social exclusion. The success encountered by the laboratory has had a positive effect also on the other daily Territorial Educational Laboratories activities. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that the use of this philosophical practice is not only possible but necessary in the educational fields that attend in urban areas where there is a strong presence of social problems. (shrink)

In order to theorize about the nature and scope of the philosophical reflection, philosophers have used a wide array of metaphors and analogies, from Plato's cave to Wittgenstein “family resemblances”. This paper reviews some of those metaphors and discusses what they show about the nature of philosophy, and most important, about the teaching of philosophy. It is not enough to be in favour of the presence of philosophical dialogue or to demand a specific philosophical subject matter in the curriculum of (...) formal or compulsory schooling. We need to offer a more precise description of the kind of philosophical learning we are proposing, and which educational goals we think that students can achieve if they are exposed to philosophical reflection all along their school life. Philosophical metaphors can help us to present the style of philosophical dialogue we want to implement in our class rooms in order to philosophy empower children in such a way the can think for themselves in a critical, creative and cooperative way. (shrink)

This paper is a short report about a series of picture books and manuals designed for P4C (especially Philosophy for Korean Young Children). There were not proper educational reading materials or books to help Korean young children to think by (or for) themselves and dialogue with. Dr. Sharp’s <Doll Hospital> is a very helpful guidebook for young children to think by themselves, dialogue with friends, and discuss with others (peers, older or younger children, teacher and parents, etc.). However, there remain (...) some needs for consideration of Korean culture. I developed new eight picture books for young children and short manuals for parents and teachers to do ‘thinking experiments’ with children. The stories were created in the contexts of Korean young children’s daily lives and typical episodes. The community of inquiry, which Korean young children participate in, needs to consider general and special aspects, such as the relationship between peers, children-parents, and children-teachers, Confucius or new western customs, new and old generations, moral and cultural atmosphere of Korean kindergartens or childcare centers, etc. Various episodes and scenes in the picture books will revoke and encourage Korean children’s deeper or higher thinking, interesting and creative dialogues, vivid and harmonious discussions based on their own experiences and contexts of life in the community of inquiry. (shrink)