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Paulo Freire and Philosophy for Children: A Critical Dialogue

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When we kill the child in us, we are no longer.

P. Freire. In: Horton and Freire (1990: 64)

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to connect the Brazilian Paulo Freire’s well known educational thinking with the “philosophy for children” movement. It considers the relationship between the creator of philosophy for children (P4C), Matthew Lipman and Freire through different attempts to establish a relationship between these two educators. The paper shows that the relationship between them is not as close as many supporters of P4C have claimed, especially in Latin America. It also considers the context of Educational Policies in our time and why Freire’s understanding of the politics of education makes it impossible to be Freirean and at the same time be neutral or favorable to the actual status quo. Finally, after presenting Lipman’s understanding of the relationship between philosophy, education and democracy and their connection to capitalism, it proposes ways to begin the political path of philosophizing with children inspired by Paulo Freire’s educational thinking. As a result, a more politically committed path to doing philosophy with children is offered.

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Notes

  1. On the most general impact of Lipman’s ideas in Latin America, see Henning (2005) and Kohan (2000, 2014).

  2. The CBFC was created in 1985 at São Paulo by Catherine Young Silva. After more than twenty years in existence, it was closed and now the Institute of Philosophy and Education for Thinking continues its work at Curitiba, directed by Darcisio Muraro (http://www.philosletera.org.br/). Many other philosophical programs with children are carried on within public and private Universities and schools throughout Brazil.

  3. In private correspondence, Lorieri affirmed that the TV of the Catholic University of São Paulo intended to record another conversation between Lipman and Freire that would take place in the United States in August 1997. Unfortunately, Paulo Freire died some few months before, on May 2, 1997.

  4. Cruz shows the complexity of the concept of concientização and distinguishes several different levels of it, according to Freire: (magical) semi-intransitive; naive transitive and critical transitive (2013: 173).

  5. Unless originally published in English, I am reading Freire’s works in the original Portuguese with my translation.

  6. A more literal translation would be Pedagogy of Autonomy (Pedagogia da autonomia).

  7. Both conversations are included in English as appendix to my Dissertation (“Pensando la filosofía en la educación de los niños” Iberoamericana University, 1996) and are both published in Portuguese (Kohan and Leal 1999) and Spanish (Kohan and Waksman 1997) and unpublished in English.

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks Susan Gardner and Jason Wozniak for their suggestions. I really appreciate Susan's tremendous help in making this paper readable in English. I also thank the reviewers for their constructive comments to a previous version of this paper.

Funding

This research was funded by National Council of Research of Brazil (CNPq; Grant No. 202447/2017-0) and Foundation Carlos Chagas Filho Research Support of the State of Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ; Grant No. E26/203042/2015).

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  1. State University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Walter Omar Kohan

  2. University of British Columbia, 786 King Edward Ave. E, Vancouver, BC, V5V E2E, Canada

    Walter Omar Kohan

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Correspondence to Walter Omar Kohan.

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Kohan, W.O. Paulo Freire and Philosophy for Children: A Critical Dialogue. Stud Philos Educ 37, 615–629 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-018-9613-8

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