Philosophy for Children

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Philosophy for Children, also sometimes called "Philosophy for Young People" or "Philosophy for Kids," is a movement that aims to teach young children reasoning and argumentative skills. The hope is that this will be a key influence in the eventual move towards a more democratic democracy.

Although the noted developmental psychologist Piaget was of the impression that children were not capable of critical thinking until age 11 or 12, the experience of many philosophers and teachers with young children gives reason to believe that children benefit from philosophical inquiry even in early primary school. Furthermore, there is empirical evidence that teaching children reasoning skills early in life greatly improves other cognitive and academic skills and greatly assists learning in general.

1 Notables and Their Styles
2 Programs, Competitions, and Publications
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Notables and Their Styles

Gareth Matthews works with a variety of students, but primarily with students in late primary school (5th grade and thereabouts). Matthews's method is to get the students to actively create philosophical settings, to “make the philosophical problem their own.” One of Matthews's most well-known techniques is to provide the beginning of a philosophically provocative story. He then records/transcribes student comments, puts them in the mouths of characters in the story, and then brings the story continuation in to the next class session for further discussion. Such interactions are compiled in his book Dialogues With Children.

By contrast, Matthew Lipman's style is much more guided and topical by comparison with Matthews's open-ended interaction with students. Lipman believes that we must start teaching philosophy early lest older teens and young adults permanently lose their native curiosity and philosophical skills. Lipman is especially clear that college is too late for anyone's first introduction to critical thinking because by then, education is tasked with countering 18+ years of what may well be bad habits. For this reason, Lipman advocates integration of philosophy into the K-12 curriculum, nationwide. Perhaps because Lipman intends to work with very young children, he has chosen a style that constrains debate to certain topics within the framework of pre-defined narratives. Lipman provides complete stories which address clearly defined philosophical problems wherein character dialogue reveals the main philosophical issues and stories are used as a basis for discussion. Lipman's stories are published and used as texts for formal classes and at-home work by parents interested in augmenting their child's education. Because Lipman's books have companion teacher’s manuals, they can be a good starting point for teachers . Examples include Lisa and Harry Stottlemeier’s Discovery.

For an article which nicely illustrates a particular way of doing philosophy with children, see the San Francisco Gate's 1999 article about Chris Phillips's work with the Philosophers Club at Cesar Chavez Elementary School in SF's Mission District: [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/01/22/MN18636.DTL Socrates' Children: A volunteer teaches kids philosophy -- and how to listen to one another"

[edit] Programs, Competitions, and Publications

There are a number of college-level academic philosophy programs in the United States that do outreach to public schools, most notably at UCLA-Long Beach, Montclair State University, and Michigan State University. In addition, several independent centers have arisen to perform similar tasks, including the Northwest Center for Philosophy for Children in Seattle, Washington. The Northwest Center has expanded from work in the Seattle area to running workshops throughout Washington state on how to integrate philosophy education into K-12 education.

Of additional note is the annual Philosophy Slam competition for kids in grades K-12. Younger children are encouraged to submit artwork which illustrates their philosophical reflections while older children submit increasingly sophisticated written work.

There are two refereed journals devoted to publishing work regarding philosophy for/with children. Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children contains some work by young philosophers but consists primarily of work by adults about their work doing philosophy for children including lesson plans, developmental psychology, and work from the emerging field called "hermeneutics of childhood" which is a multi-disciplinary approach to considering the intellectual and emotional life of children. By contrast, Questions: Philosophy for Young People has as its mission the publication of work that features the philosophical reflections of children, themselves. Thus, it contains essays authored by children, transcripts of classroom dialogues with some commentary by moderators, artwork by children, and so forth. It also publishes the winners of the Philosophy Slam competition.

A number of books have been published on philosophy for children other than those mentioned above by Matthews and Lipman. Some are intended to read by children, others by children with their parents, and still others by philosophers, educators, and policy-makers considering the merits of K-12 philosophy programs. A partial (by no means exhaustive or representative) list includes the books:

Philosophy for Kids: 40 Fun Questions That Help You Wonder About Everything and The Examined Life: Advanced Philosophy for Kids, both by David A. White
Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts, and anthology edited by David Baggett and Shawn Klein
Young Person's Guide to Philosophy from the excellent DK series of educational books
Wise Guy: The Life and Adventures of Socrates, a picture book version of the engaging life of Socrates by M.D. Usher and illustrator William Bramhall
The Philosophers' Club by Christopher Phillips and Kim Doner

Before the Department of Education cut funding for such programs in the early 1990's, there were over 5,000 programs in K-12 schools nationwide which engaged young people in philosophical reflection or critical thinking, more generally. This number has dropped substantially. If you are interested in establishing such a program for your school, the resources,below, and the books, above, can help you to develop a program for presentation to your local schoolboard, a particular school principal, or a particular classroom teacher.